Healthcare marketing teams are constantly under pressure to move fast. A newly hired provider needs their schedule filled. A regional director flags underperformance at a key location. A new payor contract goes live and leadership wants to see volume immediately.
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But when marketing moves faster than the rest of the organization, it creates bigger problems: dropped calls, confused staff, no available appointments, and frustrated patients.
At HMPS 2025, Molly Luton, Chief Strategic Communications Officer at Ballad Health, shared a story about a patient who saw a compelling billboard ad and called to schedule care. After sitting on hold, they were told they couldn’t be seen for four months.
“Why did that system ask for the business if they weren’t ready to receive the business?”
That disconnect damages brand trust—and it puts marketing in the hot seat for something that wasn’t their fault.
In this article, we’ll walk through a simple marketing readiness framework that ensures your campaigns are aligned with business goals, operationally supported, and internally coordinated across the marketing function before you launch.
Strategic Readiness: Are You Focused on the Right Goals?
Before launching any campaign, marketing should step back and ask: Why are we doing this?
This is the first—and most overlooked—step in campaign readiness. A provider might request more marketing. A service line leader might flag a revenue shortfall. But just because someone asks you to run ads or send a direct mailer doesn’t mean it aligns with the broader business goals or capacity.
Every campaign should serve a strategic purpose. It should tie back to top-line goals, whether that’s driving revenue in a high-margin service line, expanding market share in a key region, or supporting volume in under-capacity locations. When marketing is spread thin or chasing isolated requests, performance suffers.
You also have to consider opportunity cost. If you say yes to one initiative, what might you be underfunding elsewhere? Do you have the budget, people, and systems to support this campaign—without sacrificing results in other areas?
Don’t start with tactics. Start with goals.
Strategy Alignment Checklist
- Does this campaign support a business-level goal or KPI?
- Have you confirmed operational capacity at the targeted locations?
- Are you prioritizing service lines or regions that can drive growth?
- Are you clear on what success looks like, and how it’ll be measured?
- Do you have the resources to support this campaign and maintain other initiatives?
Operational Readiness: Is the Frontline Set Up for Success?
Every campaign is a promise. If the business can’t deliver, marketing shouldn’t promote it.
Operational readiness means more than just saying “we’re open.” It means ensuring every touchpoint is prepared, from the people answering the phones to the scheduling system behind the scenes.
When marketing moves faster than operations, you risk delivering a broken experience. Patients call and wait on hold. They’re told there are no appointments available. Or worse, the front office isn’t prepared to answer questions about the services. The result? Frustration, drop-off, and wasted budget.
This step can’t be skipped.
Operational Readiness Checklist
- Confirm that the front office and call center are briefed and trained
- Verify appointment types and slots are configured and available
- Test the phone number and scheduling experience as a patient would
- Make sure the correct locations, services, and providers are ready to receive volume
- Identify how campaign-related bookings will be tracked in the EHR—does staff know how to flag these visits or leads?
- Share FAQs and talking points with frontline staff
- Set up a feedback loop to capture issues after launch
Marketing Team Readiness: Is Everyone on the Same Page?
In larger healthcare organizations, marketing teams often operate in silos—brand, digital, analytics, and content all running parallel tracks. That fragmentation can lead to dropped balls and misaligned goals. For any campaign to succeed, the full marketing team must align on goals, measurement, execution, and timing.
Strategic alignment isn’t just for leadership; it needs to extend across the marketing org. Every team member should be clear on:
- What is the goal of this campaign?
- How does it tie back to business priorities?
- What are the lead and booked appointment targets?
- What’s the timeline, and are there competing initiatives that could cause confusion?
Then get tactical. Alignment isn’t just philosophical; it’s operational. Every part of the marketing machine must work in sync.
What This Looks Like in Practice:
- The analytics team is looped in early to advise on UTM structures, tagging strategy, dashboard updates, and QA.
- Media and creative teams collaborate on funnel design, ad creative, and message sequencing before launch.
- Conversion tracking and call routing is tested in advance, not retrofitted after launch.
- CRM and automation teams confirm triggers, email flows, and re-engagement logic are in place for every campaign.
- Internal documentation and task tracking help keep everyone accountable and coordinated.
If one piece is off (say the form doesn’t tag leads correctly or the ad links to an outdated landing page), your campaign loses impact and the feedback loop breaks down.
Quick Checklist for Marketing Team Readiness:
- Are all marketing sub-teams aware of the campaign and their role in it?
- Have measurement goals been defined and agreed upon?
- Are tags, UTMs, and event tracking QA’d (and HIPAA-compliant)?
- Has the user experience—from ad to conversion—been tested on mobile and desktop?
- Is there alignment on launch timing with other departmental pushes?
Related: Launching a New Location?
Opening a new clinic or de novo site requires even tighter marketing alignment. From timeline planning to asset delivery and platform setup, these campaigns demand precision. Read our 5 De Novo Marketing Strategies to Build Demand Immediately to avoid missteps and set your new location up for success.
Why Marketing Readiness Matters
Every time you go to market, you’re making a promise. The ad says, “We’re ready.” If that’s not true—if the digital experience is broken, the phones don’t get answered, or the service line isn’t staffed, you’re better off waiting.
Marketing should be the signal that the business is ready for growth. Not a distraction from the fact that it’s not.
