The Big Story: Does the Chief Marketing Officer Role Need an Update?
“A new title—or multiple specialized ones—can signal updated strategic priorities and approaches, also addressing marketing’s marketing problem: It’s often not well understood internally and can appear like a black box.”
Time to Transform the Role of the Healthcare Chief Marketer
3-minute read
Shortly after I was named chief marketing officer of an academic medical center in 2017, Harvard Business Review published “Why CMOs Never Last.” The article appeared with a picture of a dead goldfish and the subhead claiming the average tenure of a CMO was 4.2 years, shorter than the lifespan of the common goldfish.
To me, it said: Congratulations on achieving this penultimate career goal! Let the countdown to your untimely demise begin.
I was lucky enough to beat those odds. Spin forward, and HBR recently revisited the changing nature of the CMO role, which remains the shortest-tenured position in the C-Suite, now clocking out at 4.1 years. It asks whether the job title “Chief Marketing Officer” is itself part of the problem, with so many meanings and functions depending on the organization as to be less-than-helpful in understanding what the job actually does.
CMOs, wannabe CMOs and the CEOs who hire them will recognize the challenges outlined in the HBR article. Unclear or unrealistic expectations. A belief that marketing is a mysterious cache into which investments flow without quantifiable results. Confusion and overlap with other C-suite roles.
Straddling four healthcare trends
For the healthcare CMO, the role is changing even more dramatically – bringing both risk and opportunity. This individual sits at the intersection of four big trends in healthcare today:
- From digital transformation to PX. Digital and performance marketing have completely changed how patients and families learn about their options for healthcare and ultimately choose where to get care. But for the health system, it goes so much further than digital marketing and ties directly to overall experience. The CMO, who owns some of the consumer technology stack but not all of it, is now also at the center of a patient experience strategy.
- Customer focus. In the past, health systems were organized around internal needs, especially those of its most specialized physicians and of its heavily regulated and complex operations. Today, smart health systems and hospitals are working doggedly to reengineer their systems to be more friendly and responsive to customers, patients and families. The healthcare CMO – with access to market research and expertise in the voice of the customer – seems like a natural place to drive the cultural and operational changes needed to become a customer-focused organization.
- Need for growth – but what about wait times? As health systems scale up, either organically or through partnership, growth becomes even more of a financial imperative. But while topline growth is an expectation, capacity is deeply uneven in healthcare, with many patients facing long wait times to see a specialist – and critical workforce needs go unfilled because of staff and physician shortages. The organization looks to the CMO, the keeper of key strategies to attract and retain both patients and workforce, to create a matrix that matches supply and demand. The CMO must answer with niche, data-driven marketing strategies across an array of services.
- Loss of trust in institutions, including hospitals and health systems. You’ve heard this before from us. Since Jarrard began measuring health system trust in 2021, we’ve tracked the plummeting public opinion of hospitals and health systems. That means organizations are leaning heavily on some of the traditionally most encompassing aspects of the CMO role – strategic communication, brand strategy and reputation management. It doesn’t get easier.
Alphabet soup, anyone?
What is a healthcare CMO supposed to do, to focus on, to be? Adopt a new title of “Chief Marketing Digital Growth Communications Experience Officer” (the CMDGCXO)?
That’s not realistic. And there’s no point in tweaking titles unless it helps our leaders and colleagues understand the roles better. So here are three no-fail ideas for healthcare CMOs to succeed in this changing world offering them challenges and opportunities:
- Build coalitions and a supporting cast. No matter its definition, marketing is a team sport. The CMO’s ability to bring together diverse stakeholders in an organization is second to none. The role can be the bridge between IT and Strategy, between Innovation and Operations, between Finance and Business Development. Serving that role for the C-Suite will help align priorities and projects. As a (Deloitte-sponsored) piece in the Wall Street Journal last year said, “The most successful CMOs often orient their priorities and capabilities around business challenges, earning the trust of the CEO, CFO, and the entire leadership team.” CMOs must remember that you need a supporting cast – you cannot, as one individual, be all things to all people. Developing your team as trusted experts in the many facets of marketing will always be your #1 job.
- Align with strategy and demonstrate ROI. Deeply understand the strategy and long/short-term goals of your organization and the other members of the C-suite. Every health system may have its own unique needs for marketing expertise – make sure that your organization is unified in those goals. As marketers, we’ve gotten much better at proving ROI. But across the four major trends in healthcare – digital transformation, growth, customer focus and rebuilding trust – there is much more that can be done to show value. Learn how to do it.
- Lead with purpose. Ground your leadership in a profound sense of purpose and mission. Healthcare is human work, and marketing – whether it focuses on growth, experience or brand – is one of the ways the C-suite can best understand the human motivations inside the healthcare operating model.
Contributors: Emme Nelson Baxter, David Shifrin
Image Credit: Savannah Ray
