Be careful when setting expectations

Expectations are a funny thing. A former president famously attributed his political success to setting low expectations and then beating them. While some might argue he struggled to accomplish even that, his point is worth considering when it comes to how you set objectives for your hospital marketing efforts. It’s the old “perception vs. reality” equation at work again – the perception of whether you hit or miss your established target can be more powerful that the actual results themselves.

In many cases, the problem is that without a track record of measurement to guide you in knowing what to expect from a marketing initiative, you’re making an undereducated guess. As I note in “A Marketer’s Guide to Measuring Results,” this can lead to trouble:

“The danger with setting objectives is that once they’re articulated, they can often represent success or failure within the organization, regardless of whether they were set with a clear understanding of what is to be expected. If you hope to increase orthopedic volumes 10% with your marketing campaign and you state that as the top objective, there will be some who will consider a 9% increase failure.”

And on the other end, aim too low, and leadership may question the value of the effort – “if we only expect to increase volumes .5%, what’s the point?”

If you’re just beginning to measure your marketing efforts in a consistent way, you may want to consider not assigning a specific target to your marketing initiative. You still should always articulate a goal – “increase volumes” or “improve awareness” – and measure your results. But until you can make a smart guess about what your expected outcomes should be, you may be be better off without one at all. Success can be determined by an effort ROI calculation, and if that’s not possible, by comparing the results to a baseline period where no marketing occurred.

How do you set targets for your marketing efforts? Can you think of examples of past marketing initiatives where hitting or missing the target defined success – regardless of what impact the actual results may have had?

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