It’s interesting how many major healthcare systems participate in the annual Healthcare Marketing Communications Benchmarking Study conducted by Gelb Consulting and Cleveland Clinic. Recently, I took a look at this trove of rich, industry-specific data on annual marketing budgets, spending, and staffing levels. I’m seriously impressed by how much healthcare marketers manage to accomplish despite their resource constraints.
Healthcare marketing executives increasingly rely on this annual benchmarking study to guide decisions on resource allocation. They use this data to optimize budget allocations for digital advertising, sponsorships, patient education, and other categories. And they rely on these benchmarks to support requests for additional resources based on apples-to-apples comparisons with peer healthcare systems.
It’s not too late for healthcare systems to get in on the action. The 2018 Healthcare Marketing Communications Benchmarking Study is still open. Healthcare marketers who provide their data will get access to industry information that will help them make decisions on marketing investments, improve branded touchpoints and patient experience, and compare results over time with their peers.
Yet, finding benchmarking data for marketing efforts that fall outside the routine annual expenses covered by this study is a challenge. Take rebranding implementation, for example. That’s BrandActive’s sole focus. We know rebrands aren’t implemented at every healthcare brand every year and that rebrand implementation costs may not show in the marketing budget.
The good news is that you can access benchmark data for rebrand implementation. BrandActive’s staff—senior consultants, financial analysts, and branded asset specialists—have spent two decades estimating costs and helping healthcare systems manage the logistics and expense of rebrand implementation. Over that time, we’ve collected data and developed rebrand implementation benchmarks. This data reveals how much it typically costs a healthcare system of your size in your region(s) to rebrand.
Our data is granular, enabling clients to develop strategies to optimize specific branded assets such as fleet vehicles, signage, IT systems, and more. And like the benchmarks developed by Gelb Consulting and Cleveland Clinic, BrandActive’s benchmarks enables executives to make better decisions and improve overall ROI.
With so many top healthcare systems already contributing to the Gelb/Cleveland Clinic benchmarking effort and more companies tapping BrandActive for help, I’m expecting an upward trend in marketing ROI across the industry – and with that, this ends my tip of the hat to smarter, better healthcare marketing through use of reliable benchmark data. I’d love to hear more about your experiences.
