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Transcript
Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
Marketing to Meet
Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
BigEye Creative
bigeyecreative.com
1.800.994.3844
1
Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
Introduction
In the current fast-paced landscape of digital technologies and communication at
breakneck speeds, marketers around the world face challenges that reflect 21st century
living. Whereas once marketing leaders had clarity in their goal and vision, today’s marketers
find themselves charged with heavy workloads and competing interests in a constant and,
in many cases, fruitless, balancing act. In no such marketing segment is such difficulty more
prevalent than in hospital marketing.
Services that hospital marketers took for granted in previous decades are now unstable, such
as reimbursement and operating budgets. These items are often in flux within the hospital
environment, as hospitals sometimes struggle with cash flow issues and complex initiatives.
When combined with a highly competitive environment in which hospital marketers must
constantly work to stay ahead, as well as potentially understaffed marketing teams where
hiring is slow or may have ceased completely, this may be a recipe for frustration and anxiety.
The frustration can then seep into all areas of marketing, which can create a challenging
environment in which to run a successful marketing program.
Hospital marketers face uncertainty and instability in various aspects of their jobs.
These challenges are unique to an industry where marketers aim to balance the desires of
each level of the organizational hierarchy, many of whom have differing job functions and
therefore different ideas as to the role of the marketing team. These two most fundamental
basic hospital marketing objectives are: 1) marketing to meet hospital business objectives
and 2) keeping physicians happy throughout the process. These objectives can sometimes
come into conflict with one another, causing stress and tensions between the hospital
marketers and the doctors they mean to serve.
This paper presents a strategy for running parallel tracks in the marketing department to
meet both needs through an integrated strategy of balancing personnel and budgets and
maximizing resources to help accomplish objectives on all fronts. The dual-line strategies
should serve as a guide to help make hospital marketing more efficient and effective. While
each hospital has its own marketing team composition, making a universal set of systems
virtually impossible, the ideas delineated in this paper serve to help guide hospital marketers
in their daily mission to meet the hospital staff’s needs.
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
Situation Analysis
Hospital marketers often face the challenges of limited staff and increasing demands.
Hospital systems generated business objectives which require substantial marketing support,
while physicians in service lines face daily challenges of driving business, increasing patient
satisfaction and managing outcomes.
An overview of the current landscape may initially seem bleak, but the efforts of marketers
are not in vain. A breakdown of some common problems that plague hospital
marketers includes:
Current landscape makes reimbursement and marketing budgets unstable:
Because successful marketing tactics do not always lead to immediate return on investment,
the marketing department is one of the first to be slashed when budget cuts are in order.
This requires marketers to then undertake difficult marketing tasks on a limited budget. Such
endeavors may lead to heavy workloads and high stress levels.
Competition is always present:
Because of the number of hospitals and the types of services they provide, there is always a
hospital (or, in some cases, many hospitals) competing to get the business of people in the
local community. Such a highly competitive environment may lead to difficulties trying to
manage tasks and workloads to stay ahead of the competition.
Hiring is slow or has stopped:
Due to a lack of funding and budget cuts, the hiring process in some hospital marketing
departments may have slowed or stopped completely. In hospital marketing divisions that
are experiencing these sorts of staffing setbacks, this can place a tremendous burden on the
people who must stretch their own workloads to compensate for the loss
Departments are understaffed:
Regardless of whether there is a hiring freeze, or that workloads have simply outgrown
the marketing staff, many hospitals suffer from understaffing in the marketing department.
In times when parties are unable to complete their work in a normal 8-hour day, hospital
marketers may find themselves working harder and less efficiently to accomplish difficult tasks.
The purpose of this white paper is to drive home the point that in spite of these challenges,
hospital marketers can revamp their current systems to address the fundamental difficulties
of managing business objectives while also keeping physicians happy by implementing a dual
track system that addresses both concerns. By offering some ways in which hospitals can
rectify a fragmented process, they can strive to make effective systems that offer success
in all fronts.
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
The following marketing scenarios commonly occur within the hospital
marketing setting.
Executive team creates strategic plan or business objectives related to the entire system:
The leadership team is focused on the strategic plan for the organization, taking a 3, 5 or 10year look at direction. Brand, awareness, perception and preference are generally critical to
the success of the plan, and therefore the plan requires marketing support. Additionally, the
strategic plan drives annual business objectives, which drive marketing campaign direction.
Rarely are organizational objectives focused on a singular service line or physician group:
Organizational objectives tackle big picture issues for the hospital system, and don’t usually
focus on a single service line. This is an appropriate strategy for a hospital system as it sets
a long-term plan for the future. However, individual service lines, physician groups or
practices need marketing support at the same time that hospital organizational objectives
are being supported.
Physicians can feel ignored, left behind, and frustrated:
If the marketing department focuses solely on the organizational objectives, physicians can
feel neglected. The marketing department can become so focused on the big picture, that it
fails to meet the day-to-day needs of physician groups.
Marketing team has limited budget and resources to deal with both the organizational business plan
and the individual physician requests:
This complicated issue is often at the heart of many marketing department challenges.
However, in today’s digital space, there are ways to efficiently and effectively address this issue.
The system has far more physicians than marketing personnel:
Sometimes, the marketing team ends up short on the organizational goals and short on
fulfilling physicians’ expectations, and it feels like a lose-lose for all parties involved.
Marketing teams must find a way to run parallel tracks in order to help them all succeed. In
finding parallel tracks, each marketing team is able to work its own strengths and develop
effective marketing initiatives. When managed well, a hospital marketing team can balance
the need to market the hospital’s business objectives while addressing physician-focused
marketing needs.
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
Addressing the Business Objectives
The first step in alleviating some of these issues is to work toward addressing business objectives.
The following is a three-step process to help ensure long-term hospital marketing success.
Step One: Identify Organizational Business Objectives
While the executive leadership team draws the strategic plan, they should also be creating
business objectives. If the plan does not include business objectives, marketing leadership
should meet with the executive team to discuss them. A hospital marketing team is set up for
failure without present, defined business objectives. Business objectives at a hospital aren’t
specific to marketing, rather they’re goals for the hospital over a set period of time.
For instance:
• Increase patient load in cardiovascular unit
“Concrete,
measurable
goals offer a
straightforward
approach,
leaving no
confusion as
to the desired
outcome of the
year’s annual
strategic
marketing
initiatives.”
• Increase market share by 2%
• Feature research and intellectual capital of physician team
A Strategic Plan Agreed Upon by Senior Leadership
While the hospital marketing team will ultimately be responsible for creation and execution
of the plan, it should be agreed upon by senior leadership. This helps to ensure that the
leadership team points the direction for the marketing team which should allow them to
support marketing initiatives through the year.
Business Objective Goals Should be Measurable Over the Course of a Year.
Goals help drive the hospital’s marketing efforts. Concrete, measurable goals offer a
straightforward approach, leaving no confusion as to the desired outcome of the year’s
annual strategic marketing initiatives. After understanding the business objectives, the
marketing team can get to work creating a plan to support them.
Step Two: Create a Marketing Plan for Business Objectives
Marketing plan development is the most important step in executing a solid hospital
marketing initiative. After receiving business objectives, the marketing team should create
a plan to address the objectives. If the business objective is to increase market share by 2%,
the marketing plan would include budget, initial measurement, research, campaign strategy,
measureable campaign performance indicators, media schedule, creative strategy and
projected outcomes.
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
Budget:
In a landscape with limited resources, it is important to properly estimate the amount of
funds to be designated to each project. Underestimating the financial and resource cost may
create problems or, in some cases, may jeopardize the initiative. When allocating resources,
planners must remember to take into account aspects such as personnel, project costs,
technological considerations (web hosting platforms, project management systems) and
designing and printing fees.
Performance indicators:
Choosing the correct performance indicators is contingent upon knowing what is important
to the hospital or service line. If the goal is to increase awareness of a new medical unit,
increasing the hospital’s email list is not necessarily the best performance
indicator; better metrics may include the number of new customers acquired, or data
measured by patient questionnaires. Delineating these as part of the marketing plan will help
hospitals keep relevant data sets, which can be useful in evaluating campaign success, in
future marketing efforts or in budgeting.
Media schedule:
A media schedule will help a company keep track of assets, project launch dates, costs and
hours worked. The media schedule should be careful to take into consideration both digital
and print media schedules, as well as social media pages and the resources required to keep
them up-to-date.
Creative strategy:
The creative strategy needn’t encompass every piece of creative work expected throughout
the course of the year; rather, it should focus on only the baseline message, assets
and resources. The creative strategy should help copywriters and art directors see the bigger
picture of the marketing plan and can help the creative team adhere to these guidelines
throughout the year.
Projected outcomes:
Predictions help solidify goals. If, for example, performance indicators show that the hospital
marketing team is coming up short of desired outcomes, this offers leeway for the team to
amend the project, conduct a post-mortem and to determine the cause of the shortcomings.
Over time, a collection of such data can help the team to stay on course to help ensure
growth and stability within the hospital.
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
Present the Marketing Plan to Leadership Team:
Once the plan is in place, it is important to determine whether it is fully in line with the
desires of the leadership team. A marketing team can accomplish this by taking the time
to review the document with the leadership team, ideally in the form of a presentation or
working meeting where the marketing team members are available to answer questions.
Leaders offer valuable insights and feedback, particularly pertaining to the overall goals
and strategies of the organization, and how marketing efforts might affect those goals and
strategies. Though a feedback loop can take time, it is necessary to allow the leadership team
to offer insights into the marketing plan in its entirety. Once the leadership team buys into
“Marketers
should
develop
timelines
in order to
review the
results of
marketing
efforts.”
the marketing plan; marketers can move confidently toward executing the plan.
Step Three: Measure, Analyze and Report
Upon executing the plan, hospital marketers should take care to monitor the efforts of the
plan. Too often, the data analysis aspects of marketing are overlooked, especially within
teams with limited resources. However, campaign analytics tell the success stories of the
campaign, and point to issues that arose or still require attention. These insights will be used
in future marketing efforts.
Marketers should develop timelines in order to review the results of marketing efforts.
Different metrics may be measurable within different increments, so it is important to set
these parameters in advance and to keep up to date with data input in order to help the team
recognize patterns in growth and development. The data sets should tie in with business
objectives in order to keep the campaign on track. Most importantly, the data that’s acquired
should be used to inform hospital leadership of the status of the campaign. These reports
should be concise, focused on organizational objectives and delivered on a regular basis.
Favorable results can be published in an internal memo, to keep the hospital staff abreast of
marketing efforts and successes. If supplied on a regular basis, these internal communications
help to keep the staff apprised of system-wide objectives and successes. This helps let the
medical staff know that the marketing team is working diligently with the leadership team to
pursue new marketing avenues, which also helps keep physician and staff interest and morale
up as the groups continue to see payoffs due to strategic marketing efforts.
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
Addressing Physician Needs
Once hospital marketers establish business objectives and work to determine how to
best meet those objectives, they can then begin on the second line of efforts: addressing
physicians’ needs.
As experts in their fields, physicians have a duty to care about their patients and provide
them the best services possible. Doctors often hold vast knowledge and deep understanding
of difficult and sometimes complex medical conditions, and in some cases may even be
renowned experts in their chosen profession. Therefore, it is imperative hospital marketers
take the needs of physicians seriously, in order to make hospital marketing efforts as
effective as possible.
However, doctors themselves are not marketers, and therefore they often do not fully
understand the challenges that the hospital marketing department must face on a daily basis.
This is why it is important to have an open line of dialogue between the marketers and the
physicians, to ensure there is plenty of communication as to hospital marketing objectives,
physicians’ needs, and marketers’ role within the dual lines of service. What follows are
some common physician requests, followed by a strategy that hospital marketers can use to
understand the physicians’ needs and develop a plan to help meet those needs.
Part One: Common Requests from Service Line Physicians
The following are some common requests hospital marketers may hear from service line physicians.
More visibility:
In the vast world of healthcare, some physicians often may feel that they’ve been lost in
the shuffle. Often this leads to physicians telling marketers that they want specific media
channels – like billboards, or custom websites. At the heart of the issue, it’s likely that the
physician is feeling ignored and buried in other hospital messages.
More patients:
As more patients translate to more economic gain, this is a common physician request with
measurable goals. Smart marketers know how many referrals specialists need to make a
campaign worthwhile, and can craft a budget around the expected return.
Better materials (online and print):
In the digital age, physicians expect that their marketing will be rounded out with print,
digital and social media materials. In some cases, this may involve investing more resources
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
in providing a steady stream of content by way of a blog or other content initiative, which
typically requires both financial and human resources to develop and maintain.
“One of the
best things
a hospital
marketer can do
is show genuine
knowledge of
and respect
for physicians’
duties and
responsibilities
by learning
about the
service line.”
Events:
Events may vary in scope, but are undoubtedly prime opportunities for marketing efforts.
Events may encompass anything from large-scale conferences to small seminars and meetand-greets with referring physicians. They are an excellent way to help the community stay
informed of recent updates and additions to hospital practices, and provide networking
opportunities. Events can also offer content-creation opportunities for blogs, newsletters
and social media channels.
Often times, physicians who come forward with these issues offer solutions, but neglect to
identify the underlying problems. This is problematic in that many times, the medical staffs
lacks sufficient understanding of larger marketing objectives, budgetary constraints and other
factors that may impede the ability of the hospital to, for example, host an event highlighting
a recent staff achievement. While such an event may sound like an effective use of company
resources, it must be balanced with other considerations to determine whether it is as
effective when pitted against marketing agenda items with measurable results, such as an
email campaign or social media push, both of which also cost additional time and resources.
In these situations, the marketing staff must help the physician focus on the fundamental
business problem, and then ask for some time to craft a marketing plan to address the
business problem.
Part Two: Knowing and Understanding the Service Line
One of the best things a hospital marketer can do is show genuine knowledge of and respect
for physicians’ duties and responsibilities by learning about the service line. This shows
a demonstrated commitment to service, and will allow the marketing team to adequately
address physician’s concerns with competence. When the marketing team meets with
physicians, they should conduct this meeting with the answers to the following questions and
concepts in mind.
What is the ROI?
Understanding the return on investment helps to single out projects and initiatives that have
the greatest chances of success as poised against the desired marketing objectives. Offering
estimates as to return on investment helps the parties determine where to best allocate the
hospital’s limited marketing resources, and can help the marketing team to adjust the overall
plan where needed.
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
Who is the decision maker? Who refers?
Each specialty has a unique referral pattern, and marketers need to understand the pattern.
In some cases, there is a small group of physicians who would even be able to refer a
patient – so highly targeted, personal messages are needed. In other instances, patients can
self refer. When that’s the case, a wider more mass media approach may be appropriate.
Marketers absolutely cannot develop appropriate marketing tactics for a specialist without
understanding the referral pattern.
What is the service line?
It is important for marketers to take stock of daily activities of the physicians to whom they
purport to represent. This demonstrates knowledge and respect toward the practicing
physicians an other medical staff.
Typical questions may include:
• What do they do?
• What procedures are most common?
• Who’s on staff?
• What type of schedules do they keep?
• What diseases or health issues do
they commonly treat?
• Where are they located?
Ask the Right Questions
Since the marketers have done their homework, a marketing strategy meeting with the
physicians should be a highly productive experience. In order to keep the meeting on track,
and to keep the end goals in mind, the marketing team should come prepared to ask the
following questions:
What’s the business problem?
As mentioned previously, physicians often come forward with the solutions, without ever
addressing the actual problem. If the physicians are unable to properly articulate the
underlying issues, follow a rule of thumb and ask them why they think such solutions will be
effective. The physicians’ responses may offer some insights into the true underlying issues,
which will help the teams in their efforts to work together to create the most practical solutions.
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
What’s our point of difference? Why choose us?
A common problem in marketing settings is that companies attempt to appeal to the masses,
rather than targeting specific niches that may be specifically interested in the business’s
services or offerings. In identifying the specialists’ differentiators, the physicians and
marketing team are able to begin to create a selling focus. These differentiators provide
specific incentives for individuals in the community to elect this particular hospital, as
opposed to others in the community. If there are numerous differentiators, it is important to
target and tout those where success makes the most financial sense, such as a practice area
expertise or a new state-of-the-art facility.
What’s standing in the way of success?
By defining impediments to success, the teams are able to work through them in order to
determine practical and efficient solutions. If there are barriers that need to be addressed,
defining them can help the teams prioritize them and offer solutions for combating these
roadblocks. Sometimes specialists have operational issues that are standing in the way.
For instance, their office doesn’t have appropriate scheduling software, or their office
location is hard to find. These are operational issues that come to surface when marketing
discussions begin.
What’s worked before?
Many businesses rely on data sets because they offer insight into what’s worked in previous
marketing initiatives. Focusing on the positive, rather than the negative, allows the hospitals
to achieve repeated success in marketing efforts by replicating successful past projects.
Physicians may be able to relay stories of past successes that can lead decision-making.
Remember, many physicians think of their practice as their own business, and can take a lot
of pride of ownership in it. Their historical perspective is relevant.
Part Three: Make and Execute the Plan
Once the marketing team hears the physicians’ concerns and has talked through the
pertinent questions with the physician, it’s time to formulate a marketing plan.
Listening to the physicians:
Many times, physicians simply want their voices heard, as they are experts in a given field and
want to be respected and represented as such. Incorporating their feedback will help reduce
tensions between the physicians and the marketing team, as well as adding value to the plan.
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
Mutually define the goal, and make it measurable and finite:
Having concrete goals gives the parties something to work toward. If the parties are in
agreement as to the final goals of any marketing objective or initiative, they are then able
to work together to comprehensively analyze any results, which they can again use as a
basis when working together on future marketing projects. The goals should relate to the
business problem – if the problem is low patient volume, then the goal should be a specific,
“Marketers
are in the
unique
position of
typically
having
to adhere
to strict
deadlines
in order
to ensure
project
success.”
measurable increase over a defined period of time.
Formalize a marketing plan:
Marketers should be as transparent as possible concerning the marketing plan, but at any
point should be willing and able to stand by their decisions as to marketing strategy. In some
cases, it is simply not feasible to bend toward every one of the hospital teams’ desires, so
instead the marketers can focus on the primary objectives in order to focus on the marketing
initiatives that have the potential for the highest returns.
Present plan and agree on a timeline:
Marketers are in the unique position of typically having to adhere to strict deadlines in
order to ensure project success. Often, they will need input from the physicians in order to
move these projects forward, and due to busy schedules the physicians may be unable to
accommodate such timelines without sufficient notice. Getting both teams to
commit to a timeline offers accountability when either team fails to hold up their end of the
marketing plan. It also helps to offer sufficient time to create, develop and run a marketing
campaign or project.
Execute, measure and present results:
Once the plan is in place and the marketing team is working diligently to meet such goals, it
is important to parlay the results of those initiatives via internal memorandums, meetings
or presentations. Such findings can help the physicians stay engaged and active in the
marketing process, which makes it easier for the teams to continue to work together and to
have an open dialogue concerning marketing initiatives.
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
While Keeping Physicians Happy
Thriving in the Balance:
Tips for Maintaining Success
Marketing hospital business objectives as well as physician needs is a tricky balance, and like
any business challenge – requires ongoing attention. The guidelines below should set up a
hospital marketing team to best manage the shuffle of these two parallel tracks.
Structure your team to be flexible enough to work on either track, when needed, and flex personnel
focus to deal with demand:
Doing this can help save marketers an enormous amount of headache when they experience
push back from the physician group, or when marketing initiative execution seems
overwhelming. Training and equipping the marketing team to work on both tracks increases
efficiency and encourages flexibility.
Structure your budget to anticipate physician requests, and encourage the hospitals to do the same:
Allocating enough resources in the budget offers freedom and flexibility to accommodate
physician requests. For example, if a physician unexpectedly receives a notable award
pertaining to medical achievement, it is important to integrate any related marketing push
into the marking timeline to help tout the achievement and to help maximize its significance.
Even simple changes, such as updating the physician’s bio on websites and marketing
materials, can take time and require additional resources. Individual hospitals should
consider budgeting some dollars toward physician marketing requests as well. Paying for
unplanned marketing efforts should be a collaboration between the physician office, the
managing hospital and the marketing team.
Foster a working environment where marketing team members understand both tracks of marketing, and
the value both tracks bring to the organization:
Some marketing team members will enjoy the more strategic, long term nature of addressing
hospital business objectives. Others will thrive on the short-term, clutch nature of handling
physician requests. While the perfect world would allow for two well-staffed teams with
singular focus, the current healthcare landscape is far from perfect. Marketing leadership
needs to educate the team on the value of both hospital marketing and physician specific
marketing, and encourage their teams to expect to work on both sides.
Make friends in patient accounting and finance who can help determine ROI and measure revenue in ways
that are meaningful to marketing:
Hospital accounting teams have their own challenges and, in many cases, may be forced to
deal with finances by looking to archaic systems and methodologies. However, proving to
them that hospital marketing has a demonstrable effect on revenue will encourage them
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
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to prioritize the marketing team’s need for financial metrics. Success in this aspect helps
encourage the proper allocation of resources when it comes time to review budgets and
returns. Track everything: In today’s world, data reaps an extremely high value. The ability to
analyze behavior allows marketers to pinpoint where items may have gotten off track, and
how to resolve those issues going forward. Project information should be tracked internally
and externally, with the help of an efficient project manager who can keep track of multiple
projects at a given time. Additionally, project successes should be tracked as they relate to
business objectives, which the marketing team can then report upon going forward.
Have a toolkit:
With respect to service line physician marketing, it is essential to have an arsenal of protocols
to which the marketers can refer when approached with physician marketing requests.
The toolkit needn’t cover every possible avenue of possible physician requests, but should
provide an outline of how marketers should deal with such inquiries as they occur. The plans
should be designed with minimal feedback loops in mind, as marketing practices tend to
require more and more agility in the digital age.
What’s in Your Toolkit?
• A quality database for marketing leads
• Team members who understand and can quickly execute search engine advertising
• A flexible website that allows for quick content updates and optimization
• Social media marketing opportunities
• Short-run video production plans
• Maintenance of marketing platforms that provide quality audience and allow for quick execution, such as Facebook pages, blogs, newsletters, in-hospital signage areas and more
• A schedule of costs and turnaround times for each marketing platform
• Other preparations that ensure your team can act quickly
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Marketing to Meet Hospital Business Objectives
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Conclusion:
Ensuring Satisfaction for All Involved
Balancing hospital business objectives with rapid-fire physician requests is an issue that all hospital
marketing teams face. The balance boils down to solid leadership, open communications,
flexibility and smart marketing. With planning and focus, a hospital marketing team can find
a balance.
While it is easy to get off course, particularly in today’s era of high-speed digital technologies,
a flexible approach such as the one listed above allows hospital marketers to tackle changes
in the marketing landscape while ensuring top service to the hospital physicians they
represent. While creating an environment that can support both initiatives may require
restructure and change, the landscape mandates that hospital marketing teams find
maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
About the Author:
BigEye Creative is a Florida Advertising Agency based
in Orlando. Visit our website at bigeyecreative.com
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