The Assault on Hospital Marketing
Hospital marketers can be forgiven if they feel like they have a target on their backs these days. While many marketers are used to having to battle budget pressures and an ignorance or undervaluing of marketing from within, now two new sources from outside the organization have their sights set directly on hospital marketing.
First, in early March, a state legislator from Vermont proposed a law that would prohibit hospitals from spending money on advertising or marketing. Democrat Steve Maier doesn’t approve of that type of spending when the state struggles year after to year to contain skyrocketing healthcare costs:
“It’s not producing health care,” Maier said in an interview in the Burlington Free Press.
Second is the growing trend of hospitals and health systems engaging productivity consultants to investigate and recommend cost savings throughout the organization. Typically, the recommendations are tied to a benchmark of similar organizations throughout the country, so a hospital may find it stands at the 78th percentile in spending on its oncology service line, and then can peg cost cutting to attaining a goal of, say, 50%. These assessments have been around for some time, no doubt. But they seem to have accelerated dramatically over the past two years, in the wake of the Great Recession. And it seems that in almost every case where one of these consultants is brought in, marketing takes a hit, sometimes a significant one, in overall budget allotment. Often, FTEs are reduced as well.
So what’s a healthcare marketer to do in the face of these new and potentially devastating assaults on their profession?
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Don’t sweat the political heat.
Banning hospital advertising is an easy mark for politicians. With all the discussion of healthcare reform and the ever-increasing costs associated with healthcare, most people in the public would have a hard time arguing with a politician calling for a ban on hospital advertising. But of course, it’s not nearly that simple. As we noted in an earlier blog post, the likelihood of a government ban on hospital marketing becoming law is very slim. But perhaps more importantly, there’s not much you can do about it anyway from your position. Certainly keep tabs on political efforts in your state (though it’s likely nothing will happen at a federal level), but if something does emerge, let your organizational leaders, trade associations and other affiliates do their jobs to combat this misguided effort.
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Measure, measure, measure.
Given the financial pressures many hospitals face these days, it’s understandable that they are looking to outside help to find new ways to improve productivity and save money. The best way to protect your department from budget cuts, whether from ongoing annual budget planning or from the recommendations of an outside productivity consultant, is to demonstrate that resources used for marketing are an investment in the organization’s financial success, not an expense. And the only way to show marketing is an investment that pays dividends is to measure the success of your marketing efforts consistently and comprehensively. It can take time – months, probably years – to build a system for effectively measuring the impact of marketing on your organization. But your ultimate goal is to be able to say: “Here’s how our annual investment of $2 million in marketing can be directly tied to $20 million in annual revenue, with a likelihood of another $20 million over the next two years. So instead of talking about cutting 25% of our resources – a $400,000 savings that will likely reduce impacted revenue by $4,000,000 – we should be talking about finding money to increase our marketing investment to $4 million, so we can double impacted revenue to $40 million.”
Seem like a pipe dream? With dedication and a commitment to measurement, you have a shot at attaining this goal.
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I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.
We’ve talked with a few healthcare marketers who – between these new threats and their ongoing fight to establish respect within their hospital – are feeling pretty despondent about their chosen profession. While the challenges we’ve covered here are real and potentially significant, we can’t forget that our profession matters. It matters to the organizations we serve, who – whether they appreciate it fully or not – depend on our expertise to build brand and help drive in the patients needed to not only survive, but hopefully thrive. It matters to the physicians, who turn to us to help them fulfill their potential in treating patients. And it matters to the communities we serve – patients, customers, consumers – who benefit from our public service communications on injury prevention and immunizations, who learn how to deal with pain or improve their health from our educational materials, classes and online resources. And when we help connect the right patient with the right service in the organization, we help save lives.
For information related to this topic, see:
- Banning hospital advertising – it was only a matter of time.
- Truth #5: Healthcare marketing must become less of an art and more of a science.
- More on why those who cut marketing now will pay later.
- Also see “A Marketer’s Guide to Measurement: Prove the Impact of New Media and Traditional Healthcare Marketing Efforts,” (2010, HealthLeader’s Media.)
As a graphic designer who works with healthcare practices, I view my role as someone who can help educate the public about preventative services that a practice may offer, and to help explain complex information with visuals.
Healthcare marketing is essential in helping the patient make an informed choice.