Comprehensive Guide to Creating a Healthy Healthcare Marketing Budget

It’s that time of the year when savvy healthcare marketing minds are thinking about budgets.

Prudent fiscal management sets budgets annually, but reviews and adjusts monthly. If you’ve been faithful to that routine, you have a head start on planning and shaping your hospital or doctor marketing budget for the year ahead.

It’s that time of the year when savvy healthcare marketing minds are thinking about budgets.

Prudent fiscal management sets budgets annually, but reviews and adjusts monthly. If you’ve been faithful to that routine, you have a head start on planning and shaping your hospital or doctor marketing budget for the year ahead.

But it’s not always a perfect world…and budgeting is rarely smooth or simple. There are bumps in the road. Goals change. Priorities shift. Competition stiffens. People move. Technology emerges. Available resources are stretched. Media options change. (To say nothing about the internal politics and pressures.)

Doctor marketing budgets – even in turbulent markets, the financial planning steps are sometimes neglected or viewed as a tiresome expense. The “same as last year” method is faulty, and the “pay-as-you-go” approach isn’t really a budget.

Medical groups – where change is often a critical consideration, discover their budget planning has not kept pace and is no longer connected to reality.

Hospital marketing budgets – are constantly challenged to do more with less, and as always, respond to the needs and interests of various individuals, departments, audiences and service lines.

Five Comprehensive and Truly Helpful Articles…

Helping healthcare organizations through bumpy roads—budgeting and otherwise—is what we do. And we’re glad to provide independent guidance and unbiased advice as you assess your needs, push your areas of success, and, where necessary, redesign or eliminate underperformers.

Of course, you’re welcome to call and we can talk specifics. And to get started, here’s a roundup of insightful reference library articles to guide your healthcare marketing budget planning:

Budget Basics: Big Enough to Matter

Realistic goals always link to realistic budgets. You can’t raise your goals without adjusting resources needed to achieve them. Conversely, too-little backing not only fails to produce, it’s a waste of resources. Here’s how to “right-size” your budget.

Has Your Practice Outgrown Your Marketing Budget?

Dynamic shifts in the marketing landscape have reshaped practices, pushing some to new levels of service. When growth outpaces new business acquisition, group practices can get stuck in difficult terrain.

Is Your Marketing Budget Too Wimpy to Be Competitive?  

What was “good enough” in the past simply isn’t working in the new and intensely competitive world of “healthcare reform.” Here’s how to adjust your planning for current—and real-world—needs.

Doing More with Less: Creating a Lean and Mean Healthcare Marketing Budget

Competing priorities and elevated expectations can strain the best of budgets. The challenge is to reduce risk, be cost effective, and capture the best Return-on-Investment (ROI).

How We Scientifically Establish Healthcare Marketing Budgets For Hospitals, Healthcare Organizations and Private Practices

Marketing is an investment and not an expense. Here’s how to build an efficient program and tight budget. Great marketing produces strong ROI, but poor planning and budgeting produces zero (while squandering resources.)

Let’s talk specifics…

This is the season to look back and to plan ahead. If you’d like independent and unbiased help with your budget planning, give us a call at 800-656-0907. Or connect with us here, for a confidential marketing assessment. It’s free, and we’d be happy to help.

Stewart Gandolf, MBA

Author information

Stewart Gandolf

Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at Healthcare Success Strategies

Stewart Gandolf, MBA, is CEO of Healthcare Success, a medical marketing and health care advertising agency. He is also a frequent writer and speaker. Most importantly, he is happily married and a “rock-n-roll daddy” to two wonderful girls.

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