MARKETING

Measurement: Proving the Value of Marketing   

After Eastern Maine Health Systems underwent a major rebranding in 2018, and became Northern Light Health, it was essential that the marketing team had meaningful measurement tools and data to gauge the effectiveness of its ongoing efforts to redefine the organization and connect it to the community it serves. In a recent SHSMD webinar, Northern Light Health’s associate vice president for communications and marketing, Tricia Denham, joined Ben Fuqua and Miranda Hickman from the health care marketing agency Revive to discuss how they worked together to effectively integrate and deploy measurement as a key component in their marketing strategy. 

“The rebrand moved us from a federation of loosely connected organizations to one brand, one mission, one patient experience,” Denham says. “It was pretty successful in terms of name recognition, ad recall and engagement, but then we thought: What’s next?” 

According to Denham, working with Revive on a market-research effort confirmed that after the COVID-19 pandemic, the typical hard-working, self-sufficient, modest Mainers who take great pride in their independence were also feeling at a loss for connectedness with their communities, families and friends, and care and service providers. 

“We saw an opportunity to define Northern Light Health as a driver of connection in our community, with a brand campaign focused around questions of health and wellness,” Denham explains. “We wanted to create a movement—not just a series of spots—in print, TV and digital spaces centered on the simple question: ‘How are you—really?’”  

The brand campaign movement was also leveraged as an overarching theme alongside a series of service-line campaigns, with the goal of introducing several of Northern Light Health’s service lines and encourage appointment scheduling. These campaigns were designed to focus on: communicating the “How Are You?” movement, newsletter sign-ups, primary care appointments, women’s health and pediatrics among others.  

To ensure the correct resources were allocated to the right areas, given financial and operational constraints post-pandemic, Northern Light Health commissioned a readiness assessment to prioritize its limited resources on the right combination of services and brand and focus more than ever on measurement, according to Denham. 

“The days of fluffy metrics are out the door,” she says. “We need to leverage data and analytics to make sure we’re not outspending our opportunities. Pre-pandemic, it might have been enough to say that our campaign was doing great based on reach, clicks and views. Now it’s important to be able to say that we targeted ‘x’ number of people with this campaign, and here’s the number of people who converted to patients, and the downstream revenue we were able to bring in. We have to make sure that every dollar is working hard to encourage patient engagement and ultimately drive people in.” 

Data and analytics offer the opportunity to elevate the role of marketing in health care organizations, Denham notes. “They allow us to move from reporting on how our campaigns are performing to using analytics to bring insights about patient behavior, preferences and demographics in a certain area, and highlight opportunities in the market for things like resource optimization and service line expansion.” 

Measurement needs to be incorporated early in the process when marketing campaigns are being planned. “Your measurement plan should include your business goals, the messaging pillars, your media channels, goals for how you will measure campaign success, and the types and sources of date you will need,” Fuqua adds. 

Each marketing objective/goal must be measurable and requires specific supporting strategies. “Once you have defined your goals—for example, a percentage increase in appointments or number of procedures, newsletter signups, earned media mentions, or followers on social media—then identify a specific channel and corresponding metrics to track those goals,” Hickman says. “You’ll need a list of both external data sources for owned, earned and paid media, as well as internal data sources such as appointments, procedures and financial information.” 

Getting to those internal data sources can sometimes be significantly more challenging than external sources, the panelists agree. “Information systems and compliance may not understand why we’re asking for the information we are, and I don’t always understand the answers they’re giving,” Denham notes. “I recommend always starting with the ‘why,’ sharing the potential opportunity that we are looking into and what we think might be of benefit to the organization going forward. You need to collect friends on this journey.” 

Once the data are gathered, it’s vital that you have a solid understanding of the intricacies of each data source. “Talk to the owners of the data within your organization, know what you’re getting access to and ensure that it’s what you want,” Hickman says. “Then the next step is to pull it all together into one location or tool that does most of the analytical work for you. At that point, you can build dashboards and reports that enable you to monitor, track and analyze performance, creating different views and tailoring reports to different audiences.” 

The next step? Act on what those data are telling you. “There is a plethora of things you can do to act on what you find,” Hickman says. “It might be something simple like adjusting ad copy or making a minor tweak to a website, or something more significant like adjusting your ad spend and channel mix, changing your target audience or focusing efforts on a different service line.” 

Using data and measurement, health systems like Northern Light Health are shifting from traditional, historical marketing communications advertising, Fuqua adds, noting, “These tools can get you to the kind of intentional marketing that really delivers a return on investment.”