Running a successful healthcare marketing strategy is hard work. There’s no denying that. It’s a job that involves a constant cyclical process of analyzing, strategizing, and implementing. Luckily, having clear marketing objectives in your strategy can help you put the profitable strategies into motion and set you in the right direction. Setting goals in your marketing plan helps you analyze your approach. Whether the goals were met or not, you can look back at the actions you took and learn what worked (and what you should continue doing!).
The goals that you set should reflect your practice’s vision, mission and priorities. While different marketing campaigns can have different objectives (bring in new patients, increase engagement of current patients, increase awareness of a new procedure), these goals should consistently be working toward one endgame – adding value to the reputation, image and quality of your practice.
Let’s take a look at the steps that every healthcare marketer should take when setting goals for their strategies:
Identify Your Objectives
The first step is the most basic – identify what your objectives are. This is the WHY that will drive your goals. Why are you taking this strategy in the first place? What are you ultimately trying to accomplish with your campaign, event or content?
Examples of marketing objectives could include:
- Getting people to register for an event
- Getting people to sign up for an email list
- Selling a certain new product or procedure
- Increasing number of new patient consultations
Be sure to also identify how these short-term goals play into the long-term goals of your overall plan. You want your marketing strategy to be cohesive and fluid. Once you have identified your long-term and short-term objectives, it’s time to figure out how to get there.
Set SMART Goals
SMART goals in marketing (and in most industries) are:
- Specific: Be detailed and focused with your goal. Broad, vague goals accomplish nothing.
- Measurable: Put some numbers on this goal! Setting benchmark numbers will help you track the progress and success.
- Achievable: Working toward improvement is great but marketing needs to be done gradually (especially if you are a team of one!). Make sure the workload is manageable. Don’t take too much on your plate at once.
- Realistic: If you are a small practice in a rural area, you probably cannot expect the same patient turnout as in a large city. Take into account your location, your target audience and your specialty when setting your goals.
- Time-Bound: You MUST have a deadline. If you run a campaign for four week that does not return the results you wanted, do not extend the deadline and hope for the best. Go back to the drawing board, take another look and try again.
Keep your goals ambitious but achievable and stay within your deadline. Don’t forget to make sure that your goals add some value to the reputation, public image and quality of the practice.
Determine KPIs
Don’t forget about your KPIs! KPIs (key performance indicators) should be set in tandem with your goals. Throughout monitoring progress and overall performance, These metrics will help you determine whether your goals are putting your on the right track to achieve your main objectives.
Determining the right KPIs for your marketing campaigns can also help your practice:
- Identify the current performance levels of your staff.
- Track progress on achieving business goals.
- Drive accountability among employees.
Track and Analyze
Here comes arguably the most important part: tracking and analyzing. Without proper tracking and analyzing of your goals, you essentially have no strategy or objective for your campaign. Tracking progress and analyzing results is crucial for your practice to see improvement and benefit from marketing efforts. Careful analysis will show you what works, what doesn’t, areas in which you could improve and areas in which you are thriving. Take this information to heart and use it to make better-educated decisions in your next campaigns.
Looking for help with your practice’s marketing? Contact us here!