Musicians do not have a marketing plan, advertising budget or ROI target when they start composing or developing a song. They need to create great music that people will like. The fans and music lovers/critics/DJs vote with radio plays, downloads, purchases of fixed media and their feet – buying tickets to concerts. What if every musician had to have a measured campaign and ROI justification for each song before they started composing?

Marketing is less and less about “campaigns” and “impressions” with ROI measurements and more about conversations that lead to direct trust and attention relationships with cusotmers. Healthcare marketing decision makers and ad agencies typically prefer the safety of executive and board presentations that focus on large traditional campaign metrics like “hits”, “drive by views”, “statisfaction surveys”, “calls to the call center”, “controlled circulation” or “Neilsen results.” The large numbers from measured media campaigns are meant to impress and certainly work well with associated ROI analysis but may or may not reflect any meaningful trust or attention relationships with customers or patients.

And if all those “measured” marketing campaigns have predictable ROI, why are most hospitals facing dramatic declines in elective private pay patient admissions? Have the customers stopped watching TV, listening to radio, reading print media, looking at billboards or opening their postal mail? Or have they stopped listening to a one-way conversation?

Equate social media, and the participation therein/thereof, to that of the customer service realm. Great companies have come to understand the valuable, yet intangible benefit (ROI) of good vs. bad customer service. I would argue that businesses will spend money to increase the quality of their customer service without knowing a specific ROI. Why? Because good customer service creates good word of mouth marketing…arguably the best kind of marketing out there.

The closer we position social media to customer service, the less dependent on ROI our presentations will be.

Just my opinion.
Warm regards,
- Jim
@medxcentral

However, there are some marketing methods that are easy to quantify and measure successes. Service line development, for instance. And, utilizing online marketing (not just social media) can also bear out fruitful results.

It boils down to determining what you are measuring, setting realistic expectations, and defining a rigorous process to measuring to that outcome. If done right, these measurable approaches can not only pay for themselves, but also help offset those less-measurable efforts of branding.

This gives time for the hospital marketer to work on building value, changing community perception, driving physician loyalty (efforts that will pay off in the long-term).

But let’s face it, in this economy, there has to be some component of ROI measurement – hospitals can’t afford not to…