Research on Healthcare IT Marketing Budgets: More Investments or More Challenges?

In our latest research report, Healthcare IT Marketing Priorities: 2019 Insights, we have some good news. Namely, spending on healthcare IT marketing is generally remaining the same or otherwise earning increased investment. Healthcare IT marketers are being given the same or more money to make their marketing magic happen. Who doesn’t love a steady stream of investment?

Is it all good news though?

Just the Facts on Healthcare IT Marketing Spend

Specifically, 33% of respondents cited unchanged marketing budgets, and 51% reported increased marketing budgets at their organizations. That means only 16% of healthcare IT marketers are experiencing budget cuts. Momentum seems to be behind marketing in this space.

What’s the Implication?

However, this steady to increased spend places health IT marketers in an environment where expectations are to see consistent or higher returns from the same level of investment, or even bigger returns from bigger investments. It’s a state of stable trust in marketing, but increased pressure to deliver.  Any instances of underperformance or unfulfilled expectations will likely be more apparent in this stable or steadily increasing spending trend. Along with this budgetary atmosphere, pressures like prioritizing the right investments to maximize marketing dollars and measuring/demonstrating ROI from marketing campaigns become all the more critical.

In short, it’s a state of go big, or go back to the drawing board. It’s unlikely to be a full-on bubble, but if expectations aren’t met, patience is likely to wear thin. This is why making every marketing effort in healthcare IT count is so critical.

A Point of Caution on Data-Driven Marketing Capabilities

Perhaps most sobering around the state of healthcare IT marketing spend is the state of marketers’ data-driven marketing capabilities. Making every effort count is perhaps the most valuable outcome of data-driven marketing. Data allows effective marketing efforts to be quantified and duplicated. It’s why 60% of our survey respondents believe that their organizations have an effective and sustainable data-driven marketing strategy. It’s believed because it needs to be – if there’s uncertainty about marketing data, it’s uncertainty about marketing overall.

Despite a majority of marketers believing they have reliable data-driven marketing strategies, though, only 30% report actually being highly effective at bringing a data-driven strategy to market. That is, only around a third of healthcare IT marketers have seen the fruits of their data-driven efforts in practice. It’s the difference between believing one can do something, and knowing, from experience that it can be done.

With the increasing pressure that comes with increasing spend, knowing how to get healthcare IT marketing right, on a data-driven, quantifiable level, is key to continuing this positive cycle of marketing investment. This is a marketing budget inflection point – either marketers will identify what works in their data, and earn predictable, reliable results, and even further investment, or, the fair weather will fall away, and marketing will have to work harder to earn its keep…

For more on these and other marketing best practices, read the full report today!