This article first appeared on the HITMC website.
It’s said every cloud has a silver lining, and that adage applies to our current difficult circumstances.
The persistence of COVID-19 has an upside for healthcare systems: rising reputation scores. Edelman’s Trust Barometer reports that the public’s trust in all sectors of the healthcare industry rose by 8 percentage points from January to May of this year, putting hospitals and healthcare systems at their highest point since the study began.
There’s also a faint silver lining to the budgetary pressure accompanying the pandemic: It is providing an impetus for healthcare marketers to improve their brand and marketing operations.
The reality is that right now, healthcare marketers are under pressure to squeeze more value from their existing activities. With tight budgets and a growing list of objectives, your team may struggle to keep on top of tactical mandates, let alone increase efficiency and ROI. But there are things you can do today now and over the next couple of months that will both boost ROI and free up budget for next year and beyond. That puts you in good position to capitalize on that rise in industry reputation, attract patients back to your facilities—and continue as trusted voice people rely upon.
I’ve seen that healthcare marketers are already thinking and acting along these lines. Forty-seven percent of the attendees polled at a recent Modern Healthcare/BrandActive webinar said they were expecting their marketing budgets to decline. When asked where they would turn first to save money in their brand and marketing operations, they identified:
- Streamlining branded assets (31%)
- Freeing up marketing resources to focus on strategic actions (29%)
- Standardizing repeatable processes (24%)
- Addressing the marketing tech stack (9%)
- Evaluating how they work with current vendors (7%)
Here are four ways healthcare systems are working to understand the nuts and bolts of their marketing and brand operations with an eye to maximizing speed to market, brand consistency, and resource efficiency.
Read the rest of this post on here on HITMC.com.
