4 Ways Healthcare Marketers Can Stand Out

Excelling in the workplace requires more than just showing up on time and doing what’s asked of you. If you’re looking to rise up the corporate ladder, you’ll want to find ways to stand out. We talked to high performers on our team, as well as our top partners at hospitals across the country to learn their secrets.

If you’re looking to take your healthcare marketing career to the next level, consider practicing the fundamentals below to truly shine.

Don’t Be Afraid to Say No
Throughout the day, hospital marketers are asked, time and again, to achieve competing goals and implement one-off tactics. These ideas could range from the chief of cardiothoracic surgery wanting their picture on a billboard above the city’s busiest highway or the facilities department requesting new elevator wraps to replace the old ones that featured an even older logo. While, at times, those ideas may be perfect for your overarching campaigns, at the end of the day, success is often measured by whether or not (and by how much) marketers are helping increase patient volume. If a request isn’t going to help you reach that goal, don’t be afraid to reply with a diplomatic “no” and steer the conversation towards initiatives that would.
Identify and Lean On Your Physician Champions
Some physicians may believe that marketing is a waste of time, money, and resources. But there’s a whole other group of physicians who are very interested in their hospital’s marketing initiatives and want to be involved. It’s smart to take the time to identify those key physicians and foster a relationship with them. Teach your champions to understand the difference between volume-focused projects and those developed for pure optics purposes. Many of our partners enlist their go-getter physicians as champions of their brands. Third-party platforms, like Doximity, can be a great place for such physicians to get involved and help boost brand awareness and, ultimately, garner new patients.
Prove Your Value with ROI
Facebook “likes” and branded t-shirts all have their place in the marketing world, but are they going to provide valuable insight into the effectiveness of your campaigns? In today’s post-COVID-19 world, where marketing budgets are slashed left, and right, it’s never been more important to claim your contribution to the bottom line in establishing your team’s relevance. Make sure that you’re utilizing tracking to your advantage. Do you have everything you need in place? What types of analytics are your third-party vendors providing? Don’t be afraid to push both your vendors and internal team to plug in any gaps you see in data. Ultimately, it will all drive back to your ability to prove campaign success.
Make Data-Driven Decisions
Too often, marketing decisions are made based on optics, assumptions, or politics. Don’t fall into this trap! Go the extra mile and ensure your marketing dollars are invested in tactics that will better serve you. How do you do that? Data. More effective business decisions are made when marketers have access to data showcasing their target audience’s behavior. With all that data you’re gathering for ROI, you can begin to put together a story. Are your potential patients dropping off when they reach form fills? Check to see what types of devices they're browsing with and make sure your form is compatible. Maybe you’ll see that a group of patients isn’t scheduling follow-up appointments when they need to. That provides an opportunity for a reminder email. No matter the case, make sure you’re using data to back up your decisions.