Not too long ago, I worked in an in-house marketing department for non-profit hospital—the traditional healthcare environment of too many priorities and too few resources. In many organizations, healthcare or otherwise, we’d have been responsible for doing everything for everyone. Sound familiar?

However, in this organization we used our brand promise as a tool for decision-making. Whenever a program was earmarked for marketing dollars, we’d run it through a rigorous interview process (all stakeholders in a room together) to determine if the program could deliver an optimal patient experience—from first contact to after care.

Using the brand promise as a filter accomplished several things: 1) we allocated marketing dollars to programs that could reasonably deliver the experience that we promised, 2) we tied the concept of the patient experience with marketing support and created actionable steps to help programs deliver the brand promise, and 3) we influenced the way the organization determined its priorities. If a program wasn’t structured to handle the patient volume that marketing was likely to entice, it wouldn’t have been responsible to commit funding. Conversely, our market-ready process helped some under-funded programs gain exposure and approval for new equipment and technology.

Do you have examples of how you’ve used your brand to influence your organization’s culture and business strategies?

-Katherine Hall