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Measuring Marketing for Impact

By The SHSMD Team posted 12-03-2019 02:02 PM

  
A person is holding a tablet that shows elements of a dashboard.

Marketing Measurement for Impact

The marketing department at UC health in Cincinnati developed a process and dashboard that defines and displays its impact metrics. “This has drastically changed the conversation for us,” said Allison Neikirk, consumer insights and marketing manager for UC Health. “Leaders are realizing that marketing does not just ‘do billboards’ or make things ‘look pretty’.”

While the dashboard is almost self-explanatory, the journey to that simplicity wasn’t always a smooth one. UC Health collaborated with Cincinnati-based health care marketing expert Mimi Rasor to implement a seven-step process for developing a dashboard:

  1. Take an inventory of your metrics. This includes measuring response to advertising, direct mail and e-mail campaigns; tracking call center volume and website and social media statistics; and more. It also includes monitoring metrics that gauge a health system’s overall success, such as key performance indicators, market share and patient experience.
  2. Identify and connect with subject matter experts. Find those who own and oversee these key sources of data across the enterprise and get them actively involved. At UC Health, this included hosting a workshop for such experts to kick off the reporting of the data, establishing roles and expectations and updating important stakeholders on the progress.  
  3. Develop a data collection process. Neikirk said this step included assigning responsibilities, with many pieces of data coming from already existing sources. Those involved determined how information would be shared internally and by whom.
  4. Start the data collection process. Allow team members ample time to gather the first wave of information, going back at least two quarters if not one year. Neikirk suggested holding check-in calls at least every other week for 15 to 30 minutes, and settling on a standardized reporting format.
  5. Analyze the data and add context. Now begins the harder work of understanding what all of this information means. For UC Health, Rasor said the team dug into the data by calculating cost per impression for campaigns, evaluating and interpreting trends and forming hypotheses about why certain tactics were failing to produce desired results.
  6. Report and optimize the strategy. Determine whether marketing efforts are matching the key performance indicators you’ve established. Is a shift in strategy required? If so, Rasor and Neikirk advised testing another approach while being careful not to pull too many levers at once because it can be difficult to tell what’s working.
  7. Integrate throughout the organization. Now that the heavy lifting is done, you need to confirm that executives and staff are actually using the dashboard, ensure that marketing measurement is becoming engrained in the organizational culture and look for further opportunities to integrate it into routine processes and meetings.

During the early stages, UC Health also emphasized building organizational buy-in, including from the C-suite and the subject matter experts. Less than a year after launching UC Health’s marketing dashboard, Neikirk noted the marketing department is already reaping benefits, in terms of an improved ability to gauge the success of promotional efforts and monitor progress toward achieving overall organizational objectives. She also said it has helped to elevate the department’s perception within the organization.

 This blog post is based on an article in the November-December 2019 issue of Spectrum, SHSMD’s bimonthly publication for health care strategists.

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