Why is healthcare marketing stuck in a rut?
Hospitals and health systems have only recently had to leverage marketing and branding. Up until the 1980’s, the need for competitive strategies – and thus marketing – wasn’t often required. That means the industry as a whole is still low on the learning curve when it comes to these disciplines. The result is a class of leadership that is, in general, behind when it comes to marketing. In so many cases, marketing and branding are simply not understood – or worse, not valued – by those who lead our organizations. No matter how smart or creative the marketing department is, how sophisticated the strategy, how clever the campaign, if the CEO or the head surgeon doesn’t get it, it won’t fly. In their defense, many of these leaders don’t have formal marketing education or experience. But in its absence, instead of trusting their marketing leaders, they fall back on what they’ve seen before or what they see out in the healthcare market. Because both of these sources typically reflect bad or
