Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

hi mcerrito,

try having a look at this google search i did of the marketingprofs website, you should find some answers here.

https://www.google.com/search?as_q=measure+advertising+effectiveness&num=10...

also please dont close the question too early and allow everyone to have a chance to answer. remember KHE is a global community.

well now i am off to bed, i have university on 5 hours.

have a nice day

Carl Crawford

Dear mcerrito,

Your question refers to a common problem: how do we measure effectiveness when we can not do controlled experimentation (the golden standard in many fields).

In your case, controlled experimentation would amount to exposing only part of your area (or randomly assigned people) to the advertising. If both the control and the treatment group are subject to the same conditions eg flu epidemic, the difference in patients can be credited to the advertising. Unfortunately, such controlled experimentation may be infeasible (because of spill-over), expensive and/or deemed unethical (why withhold information advertising to the control group, which should also come see you?). What then?

In that case, it is very important to examine historical patterns to come up with a 'baseline' of patients, accounting for seasonality, external factors such as a flu epidemic, time trend, etc. Next, you investigate how advertising changes this baseline, allowing for wear-in (it may take a while before potential patients act on it and come to your hospital), wear-out (often, the ad effect decays over time), and potential long-term or 'permanent' effects (the baseline remains higher for a long time after the ad campaign).

For more information on this discussion and how to estimate short-term and long-term effects of marketing, see the presentations on my website at
https://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/faculty/koen.pauwels/leadership.html

Cheers,
Koen

Not sure if it helps, but I have an effectiveness model here: [inactive link removed]

I would appreciate any comments/suggestions.

[Moderator: Inactive link removed from post. 2/22/2011]

Hear hear Koen!

Before you start attempting to analyse effectiveness you need to establish a database as far back as makes sense and with annotations of every marketing program, major medical "event" or any other issue that may have impacted admissions and medical/clinical revenues from the hospital.

From this you will be able to develop a baseline business level, departure from which may be attributable to past marketing and advertising campaigns as well as other controllable and uncontrollable events. (Epidemics, mining disasters, negative PR about silicon implants gone wrong, etc)

Maybe it would be simpler to target a particular kind of new business you are trying to attract?

For example, laser eye correction is a burgeoning field of discretionary medical expenditure. People are choosing laser surgery rather than glasses or contacts.

Think about what types of service you are offering that might be advertised specifically.

Just suggesting "if you're ill - come to our hospital" has no real value to the 99.9% of readers who aren't ill...

Hope this helps

ChrisB