Hardball Questions to Ask BEFORE Selecting a Marketing Partner

The confusion is common…and somewhat understandable.

Just as patients cannot easily evaluate and compare surgeons, it can be difficult for provider management to understand the differences among marketing companies.

The confusion is common…and somewhat understandable.

Just as patients cannot easily evaluate and compare surgeons, it can be difficult for provider management to understand the differences among marketing companies.

From a distance, a health care marketing consultant, a medical marketing company, a healthcare advertising agency (and a bunch of similar labels) can all appear to be much the same animal. The trouble is, they are often quite different. And you gotta ask some hardball questions to find out who’s right for your team.

When a medical group or hospital is ready to bolster their marketing resources with an outside firm, distinguishing among professional skill sets—and selecting the right marketing company—puts a lot at stake. At risk is the expense itself, plus the cost of lost opportunity, misdirected resources and failing to meet meaningful goals.

So, exactly how can you determine the important differences? And with the right choice, which company will best enhance your marketing team, bringing the right experience, capabilities and cultural fit that meets your business objectives?

As a guide to working through this challenging selection process, we’ve compiled a checklist of 17 questions for any organization that’s considering an outside company to handle your marketing efforts. (The complete White Paper is free; more about that in a moment.) As a starting point, one of the core considerations is the heart of Question #10.

Ask: Do they track the success of their programs, including the Return-on-Investment of your marketing efforts?

Some firms excel at selling themselves…so much so that the razzle-dazzle presentation has more showmanship than substance. The fact is that true business goals are quantifiable and measurable, and so are results. The true measure of healthcare marketing success is Return-on-Investment (ROI). So the question to ask isn’t: “What did you do?” The real question is, “What did tangible results did you actually produce?”

As our special report advises: “Does the marketing team you’re considering set ROI goals for your marketing campaign? Or do they shrink away from any discussion of (quantifiable) success measurement? Be forewarned, the vast majority of ad agencies and marketing firms prefer to talk about fuzzy metrics like ‘number of exposures’ or ‘awareness.’”

Being “active” is not the same as being “productive.” And for meaningful and specific results, the right marketing partner will utilize methods that track specific results in relation to marketing expenditures. Goals and performance are measured with concrete metrics such as the number of new patients or actual revenue performance. Ask about that.