Are You Kidding Department: Can’t Do Marketing Until the Website is Done?
Instead of pulling out our hair, we thought it would be more productive and helpful to write about the important lesson in leadership and healthcare marketing hidden in our recent flash of frustration.
Our story begins with an innocent but revealing comment…
Working with professional practices around the country, time and again we’re told: “Oh, we aren’t quite ready to begin our marketing yet. We are still in the process of getting our website done (or redone).”
Arrrggh! Are you kidding me? Your website IS marketing.
Can you relate to this moment of aggravation? Perhaps you’ve known similar disappointment within an organization. Perhaps you’ve been frustrated when presenting an urgently needed, problem-solving answer.
In our example—one we’ve heard all too often—the individual making the comment has a myopic perspective, or is unaware that there are six, and only six, ways to market any healthcare organization.
Not only is a website part of your medical practice marketing plan, it’s the very HEART of healthcare marketing these days.
A useful lesson in this situation is, as Walt Whitman observed, “To have great poets, there must be great audiences.” On one level, the individual who is “not quite ready to begin” is unaware that they have already begun. Their website is not independent or unrelated to their marketing.
What’s more, the importance and value of a website—or acceptance of a key idea that you are presenting to others—is best understood in the context of the bigger picture.
We’d like to hear from you on this one. Have you had a similar experience? What frustrating comments (or objections) have stood in the way of sound healthcare marketing decisions?
