Dashboards: If You Can Move It, You Can Measure It

Healthcare organizations have always struggled with measuring return on marketing investment (ROMI), mostly because of multiple systems of data collection that don’t speak to one another. But with the advent of new “tools,” that challenge is getting easier — if you have the building blocks in place.

Here are some examples of how leading organizations are tracking ROMI for their branding, marketing and communications activities.

Brand. The questions healthcare marketers should seek to answer include: “How strong is our brand vis-a-vis our competitors, what are we known for and how likely are you to recommend us to others?”

Progressive organizations use a disciplined research process that identifies not only their Brand Strength Score (BSS), but the Brand Strength Scores of their competitors. By tracking and calculating their brand strength and Net Promoter Score (NPS), they can quantify how effective they have been in articulating their brand promise as well as the value consumers place on their brand.

Marketing. It is all about driving business to the organization.

To accurately measure ROMI, you must create strong calls to action for all marketing efforts and track them through your system — from call-center inquiry to procedure, from attending an event to making an appointment. The goal is not activity but transactions — fill out a form, call for an appointment, schedule online and ask for more information. You want to engage your patients rather than being a passive information source.

More refined ROMI can consider the following:

• Number of new vs. existing patients to a service
• Number of newly referring physicians to a specialty service
• Number of patients from a new service area after opening a new site
• How quickly a new physician’s schedule is filled, such as 40 percent filled within 90 days

Public Relations. Many professionals track activities within their PR shop. Leading organizations track how their PR and social media efforts support their annual marketing slate, brand promise and organizational reputation.

Track only pitched stories. Score such stories based on positive, negative or neutral tone, and use a scoring system to track progress by quarter and year. For social media, use the same benchmarks of tone, reputation and marketing priorities in assessing your efforts. In addition, gauge your relationship with the media in terms of the number of news sources you are working with and their feedback. For crisis communications, assess how well you preserved your organization’s reputation — internally and externally.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather some of the best practices we see across the country. Every healthcare marketer should create dashboards that work for their organization. What data you track is driven by the priorities of your organization, but you must show a commitment to accountability and results. And any effective ROMI tracking includes feedback, evaluation and possible course correction.

At AB&C, we have a great deal of experience developing dashboards for our clients and ourselves. We want to partner with you in demonstrating the value your efforts bring to the organization, and how you advance your branding, marketing and organizational priorities. Your success is our success, so call us and let’s begin a discussion about how to take your marketing program to the next level.