'Tis the Season
For Reflection
By Brenda Beukelman, MBA
We all know about April 15, the official conclusion of tax season. But do you know about the “Marketing Reflection Season?" Now, I would advocate one being a whole lot more fun than the other, but both benefit from an annual review to avoid unpleasant situations in the future.
Integrated Marketing Campaigns and Social Media – Is This The Year?
Using last year’s marketing programs as a base line, begin the transformation from traditional marketing to the emerging. Start small, test it out, and see how the results compare to last year’s. Instead of a direct mailer and/or print ad for a seminar, try Facebook with an on-line registration component. Think baby steps; it’s doable.
Reuse, Reduce, and Maximize
Reflect on your most successful integrated campaign and evaluate how to re-purpose the concepts to another service line or program. The heavy-lifting has been done with the initial launch and you have learned a few things along the way. Modified repetition can give you some economies of scale and additional value from your initial investment. Branding is built on consistency, so modified repetition is good for awareness building and budget management.
Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
Warren Buffett
Shift Your Budget
Not all budgets are created equally. As politically difficult as that statement is, it happens to be true. Not all programs or service lines require equal human and financial resources. Reflect on your high return projects. What made them successful? Do the other service areas requesting marketing resources have a desirable service offering, physician involvement, and good clinical leadership? If not, marketing efforts to grow their programs may not be wise investments. Marketing Reflection Season is a good to time to have some frank discussions and decisions about resource allocation.
Build Some Bridges
Did you inadvertently build a fence or two? Time to take it down and construct a bridge. It happens to the best of us – relationships that once were solid have been strained. Projects, objectives, and egos have a way of getting in between teams that are meant to work together. Spend a few minutes to send an email expressing your intent for a good year, talk about your vision for the new year over coffee, or some other gesture of goodwill.
Get Organized
It’s not glamorous, but organization can be a beautiful thing, especially when on deadline. Last year, did you and your team spend more time than you care to admit looking for the right photos or satisfied customer quotes for your articles or publications? Make it your mission to create a photo library and/or quote gallery to efficiently store and locate when you need them fast. (Isn’t that always?) Make this a team project, having everyone contribute the photos they have stored on their computers to a shared file, creating folders for categories. Quotes from customer service surveys, grateful patients, or other words of wisdom can also be stored and saved for the day you need one for the annual report or newsletter.
May your reflection season be a good one!
