Tanner Health System Uses Micro-Targeted Data to Strengthen Its Marketing Efforts
// By Lisa D. Ellis //
When its market share began dwindling recently, Tanner Health System turned to micro-targeted data to step up its marketing efforts and make them more efficient.
Using Data to Hone Marketing Efforts
As a nonprofit health system serving nine counties in rural west Georgia and east Alabama, Tanner has more than 350 physicians representing 34 unique medical specialties, and runs Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton, a 201-bed acute care facility; Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica, a 40-bed acute care center; Higgins General Hospital in Bremen, a 25-bed critical access center; and Willowbrooke at Tanner in Villa Rica, an 82-bed behavioral health facility.
With such a large system to manage, Tanner’s C-suite and marketing department recognize the importance of using key data findings to guide their marketing efforts. Yet until recently, the system’s main sources of information were limited to the basics such as electronic medical records, census bureau results, and general facts about the service area.
Kelly Meigs, director of marketing and public relations at Tanner Health System
“We also had data from the Georgia Hospital Association, but it wasn’t accessible visually, in the form of maps, graphs, or charts,” says Kelly Meigs, director of marketing and public relations at Tanner. She says this meant her team was challenged in being able to show trends and targets, and in making sure Tanner’s marketing approach was aligned properly for the realities of the region and the people it served. With shrinking budgets and dwindling market share over the past few years to contend with, the organization really needed stronger information to be more strategic in positioning itself in the marketplace and making sure every dollar invested in marketing led to some form of payoff in the end.
Expanding Cardiology Services
Tanner decided to focus on expanding its cardiology service line, and wanted to be very calculated in determining where to invest its advertising/marketing dollars for maximum return on investment (ROI).