“Volumes are down, we need to increase market share – CALL MARKETING!”

We have all been here: When volumes drop, be it in the emergency department, the cardiovascular department or in Otolaryngology, many times the first call is to the Marketing Director. “What are you going to do to raise market share?”

This is where, in my opinion, we uncover true strategic marketers. If your first response to this call is, “We will look at beefing-up our TV buy, and adding some radio spots featuring our doctors telling everyone what a great job they do…” I would attest this is communications, not marketing.

As a Healthcare Marketer for over twenty years, I have seen many campaigns and gimmicks try and grow market share and increase volumes. Some were successful, most were not.

Marketing is understanding the voice of the customer and measuring the ability of your organization to satisfy/exceed the needs and desires of that customer – minimizing the gap between these two things is strategic marketing.

When looking at areas that can impact growth in a hospital, marketing/advertising may be the area that can have the greatest reach, but also may have the smallest impact. Unless you develop strategies to allow consumers to have more control over the healthcare buying agenda.

Developing marketing strategies that allow consumers to have direct access to diagnostic tests or preventative care opportunities can be a great way to increase volume and to demonstrate substantial downstream revenue growth for your health system.

At St. Claire Group, our approach is simple…. which clinical disciplines can we drive business through direct-to-consumer strategies that will result in volume growth? Once we have identified what these areas are, we can work directly with the intake process and operations personnel to develop programs that can quickly and significantly impact volumes.