More whack-a-mole marketing

Perhaps it’s the economy, or healthcare reform, I’m not sure. But for whatever reason, we’re seeing more and more hospitals in reactionary mode when it comes to marketing. Reacting to competitive advertising. Reacting to new awards. Reacting to physician demands. Reacting to drops in volume. Reacting to whatever has popped up this week, today, this morning, NOW.

This has always been part of the hospital marketing dynamic, of course. When the industry in general doesn’t value marketing as a strategic endeavor, it’s not surprising marketing departments are used as some kind of whack-a-mole by organizations, smacking frantically at whatever issue pops up. What is discouraging, however, is that this marketing-by-spasm approach seems to be gripping more and more organizations in more and more situations.

While short-term myopia is in and of itself not very effective marketing, it carries with it a more damaging side-affect. The more reactionary marketing that’s carried out, the less time, money and energy there is for long-term strategic marketing efforts. This creates a vicious self-fulfilling cycle: the issues you’re whacking at today were likely caused by a lack of strategic thinking yesterday. If you need to increase general surgery volumes by the end of the quarter, no consumer advertising you can conceive will help that. And by not thinking strategically today (because you’re running around putting out fires), your organization is ensuring you aren’t addressing the problems of tomorrow, which then ensures more reactive panic later. And so on.

A good friend of mine told me about a strategic planning engagement he had with a small community hospital that was struggling financially. In the first meeting with the leadership group, the CEO grew frustrated and said: “We have too many problems now – we don’t have time for strategic thinking.”

And that, I believe, says everything there is to say about how many hospitals are approaching marketing. Hopefully, you work in one of the few organizations that mitigates that type of thinking. If not, at least you can take solace in the fact that you have lots of company.