Is Your Marketing Budget Too Wimpy to Be Competitive?
There’s a famous line in the movie Jaws that you might recall. When Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) first comes face-to-face with the killer shark they’re hunting, he realizes: “You’re going to need a bigger boat.”
It’s much like that in the real world when we hear about all the problems that doctors and hospitals have, particularly with the vicious competition they face in healthcare today. The shark is impossibly big…and their fishing boat is definitely too small.
Clearly, competition among medical providers and facilities is a large and troubling shark in the waters. And yet, when we ask about resources, we find the marketing budget is too wimpy to be competitive.
The most common explanation that we hear is that the numbers are “based on what they’ve always done.” Obviously, the appropriate resources needed in the past—when they got started, for example—are inappropriate for the real-world needs of today.
As unrealistic as it is, we’ve seen $100-million group practices that want to stay within their long-established $3,000 per month budget. The trouble is, they are fighting for their very survival against large, well-funded competitors who are eating their lunch.
At some level, they would prefer to spend nothing…let alone tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can imagine how that would play out. In fact, their past performance, and the current down-slide, is evidence that the distant past is irrelevant.
Is your marketing budget too wimpy to make a difference?
The question is: Do you want to be competitive, or not? The choice is yours.
If any of this sounds familiar, it would be helpful to read how we scientifically establish a marketing budget for hospitals, healthcare organizations and private practices. Or give us a call and we can talk. 800-656-0907
PS: In the end, Chief Brody barely managed to get the shark, but movies are fantasy. It’s good to remember that the boat was sunk and the captain was eaten alive.
