Stepping into a top marketing role at a hospital or health system is both exciting and daunting. As a newly hired Vice President of Marketing, you’re expected to grasp the organization’s inner workings quickly, deliver results, and set a strategic vision, all while learning a complex healthcare environment.  

The first six months are pivotal. Go in with a clear game plan that balances quick wins with long-term strategy.  

This guide, drawing on insights from seasoned healthcare marketers, plus best practices, will help you navigate your early days with confidence and purpose. 

1. Build Relationships & Understand the Culture

Your very first priority should be people. Take time to meet and listen to everyone who matters, from senior business and physician leaders to your marketing team and frontline staff. Building trust and understanding the organizational culture will set the foundation for everything else.  

Anne Ballentine, a veteran healthcare marketing executive, emphasizes putting relationships first: 

“Getting a strong start in a new role begins with building great relationships. Getting to know and understanding the strengths and opportunities of your direct reports, being clear about your boss’s strategic priorities and expectations, and identifying and meeting with other key people in the organization you will be working with will give you the foundation you need to be successful.”  

Invest early in getting to know your colleagues and how things get done in your hospital or system. Importantly, be a listener, not just a talker, in these initial conversations. Aim to understand each person’s goals, pain points, and communication style. As Ballentine cautions, failing to grasp the culture and charging ahead like “a bull in the china shop” is a major mistake.  

To build that trust, show your new colleagues that you respect their knowledge and are there to support them, not overturn everything. Avoid criticizing existing efforts until you’ve understood their context. 

Above all, focus on trust. Prove yourself reliable by consistently following through on commitments. If people see you as a genuine partner, they’ll be more receptive when you eventually propose changes.  

2. Learn the Business: Mission, Services, and Strategic Goals

Hand-in-hand with relationship-building is the need to understand your organization’s business and strategy thoroughly. Marketing leaders can’t afford to be generic; they must grasp the mission, services, and unique value of their hospital or health system.  

“Understand the nuances of the product and service lines,” advises Laurel DiBrog, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. 

Get to know each clinical service your organization offers, from primary care to specialized programs, and what makes them distinct. Invest time early on to learn these nuances.  

Meet with service line leaders, physicians, and satisfied patients to hear how they describe your offerings and challenges. The more you know about your services, the more credible and effective your marketing plans will be. 

Immersing yourself in the organization’s mission and values is equally crucial. Healthcare is a mission-driven field; as DiBrog says, “It’s mission-driven. Not a job, but a calling.” 

What is your organization’s overarching mission and vision? Perhaps it’s “to improve the health of our community” or “to be a regional leader in patient-centered care.”  

Aligning marketing strategy to reinforce that mission will earn goodwill with leadership and clinicians. It also helps you inspire your team as people rally around a meaningful purpose.  

Next, get your hands on the strategic plan (if one exists) and any performance dashboards. Many hospitals have a five-year strategic plan or annual priorities set by the CEO and board. Don’t let it gather dust on a shelf. Study it: 

• What growth goals or quality initiatives are top priorities?
• Is the system trying to increase outpatient volume, improve patient satisfaction scores, or expand into new markets?  

Sometimes a formal plan is outdated, so verify current priorities with your leadership team. For example, if the CEO prioritizes growth, you might be expected to drive service line volume or physician referrals; if it’s about reputation, you might focus on brand and patient experience metrics.  

Knowing the metrics that matter will help you prioritize your efforts and quickly prove value.  

One common strategic aim in recent years is improving internal engagement and brand alignment UVA Health’s chief marketing officer, Lisa Badeau, focused on rebuilding internal and executive communications to boost team member engagement and establish thought leadership, which helped elevate the system’s brand preference to a five-year high.  

Take note of organizational pain points or opportunities in your own setting. If employee engagement is low, internal marketing may need attention; if patient volumes are lagging, that might become a marketing focus. Aligning your early marketing initiatives with the health system’s strategic needs shows that you’re a team player who “gets it.”  

By the end of your second month, you should be familiar with the business realities of your health system, including its core services, customer segments (such as patients and referring providers), and strategic imperatives. 

3. Leverage Data and Patient Insights from Day One

Data is your friend. That’s especially true in healthcare marketing, where decisions should be driven by evidence of what patients and stakeholders need and want.  

Early in your new role, dig into every source of data and research available. This includes marketing analytics (digital metrics, campaign results) and, importantly, patient experience feedback. “Getting your hands on any kind of recent research… any kind of data” is one of Ballentine’s top recommendations for new marketing leaders.  

If your organization has conducted market research or has access to patient satisfaction surveys, set aside time to review them closely.  

What patients say can be gold for a marketer. Pay attention to recurring themes: 

• Do patients consistently complain about communication or wait times?  
• Are there glowing praises you can highlight in marketing materials? 

---

Listen to our episode of “Did I Say That Out Loud?” with Lindsey Viscomi, Vice President of Brand Strategy and Marketing at Healthgrades, where we unpack the evolving role of physician reviews, the hurdles to collecting authentic feedback, and how AI is shaping the future of patient trust. Tune in now 🎧

---

These insights reveal where the organization excels (stories to amplify) and where it struggles (problems to address). Marketing leaders often serve as the “voice of the customer” internally, helping drive improvements in any touchpoint that affects brand perception.  

Establish yourself as a data-informed advisor:  

• Share salient patient feedback with your executive team and operational leaders. 
• Use data as a credibility tool because it’s hard to argue with facts, and it shows you’re prioritizing what the audience cares about. 

Remember to evaluate your hospital’s website, social media, and search presence as if you were a prospective patient. Check the basics:

• Is your website up-to-date, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate?
• Do you have content that answers common patient questions?
• Is your location information correct on Google?

Go beyond the basics. See how real patients experience your site in our live demo. Watch now. 

These may seem tactical, but they’re foundational to your success and can be quick to fix if deficient. Becoming a data-driven marketer means:  

• Absorbing all existing research (patient surveys, brand studies, market reports),
• Auditing current marketing performance, and
• Setting up proper measurement going forward.

 Healthcare executives are often very metrics-focused. In the first six months, make it a habit to bring data to your discussions. Whether you’re proposing a new campaign or making a case for more resources, back it up with evidence and boost your credibility.

4. Deliver Quick Wins to Build Momentum

Healthcare often moves slowly, but that doesn’t mean you can’t notch some quick wins to prove your value in the first few months. Most executives expect a new leader to show some immediate impact or positive changes early on. The key is to identify low-hanging fruit and act on them swiftly. 

Start by tapping all that listening you did in your initial stakeholder meetings. You likely heard recurring complaints or simple requests. Perhaps physicians said they receive too many marketing emails, or department heads stated they never see the marketing team rounding in their area.  

“Within those first two to four weeks, you are going to hear concerns that may have easy fixes, and you should act on those to show that you’re a person of action—if they are quick and not too complex,” advises Ballentine.  

For example, one of her stakeholders said they received 11 separate marketing emails a day from various staff; the quick win was consolidating the messages so people didn’t feel spammed.  

Another common issue might be slow response times. Maybe an executive says, “I always have to chase your team for an answer.” Addressing that could be as simple as setting up a protocol that all internal inquiries get an acknowledgment within 24 hours. 

These kinds of operational or communication tweaks cost little and can often be implemented immediately by clarifying expectations with your team. 

Quick wins can also be early deliverables. For instance, produce a concise audit report of current marketing and share it with the executive team, along with your initial ideas.  

Another quick win is to repurpose or repackage existing content more effectively. An organization may have great patient testimonials buried on YouTube. You could compile them into a heartwarming montage to share at a leadership meeting or on social channels in a short-form video format. 

Want more ideas like this? Check out our post on uncovering hidden content gems and turning them into powerful marketing assets: Hidden Gems: How to Unearth & Repurpose Your Content Assets. 

While pursuing quick wins, don’t be shy about letting others know something has improved due to your team’s effort. Give credit to your team if they implemented the change to showcase your group’s responsiveness, which builds confidence in the whole department. 

It’s worth noting that these quick wins often stem from improving communication and service, rather than just promotions. A “win” could be implementing an on-call system so that media inquiries or urgent issues always reach someone in marketing promptly.  

Another approach could be to initiate a weekly huddle between marketing and the patient experience team to coordinate messaging, something that could immediately tighten alignment.  

Identify a handful of attainable improvements, execute them swiftly, and make sure people notice. Quick wins build your credibility, showing you’re not only listening but also delivering. Once leadership and staff see positive change happening, they’ll be more likely to trust you with bigger initiatives.

5. Plan for Long-Term Success and Avoid Common Pitfalls

With relationships established, knowledge of the organization under your belt, data gathered, and a few quick wins in your pocket, you’ll be in a great position by month six to chart bolder moves. This is the time to craft your longer-term marketing strategy and implementation roadmap.  

However, as you shift from learning mode to action mode, remain vigilant about common pitfalls that can derail new leaders. Many have learned the hard way that missteps in the early going can undermine even the best strategic vision. 

Avoid the Urge to Restructure Too Soon

First, resist any lingering temptation to “reorganize everything” too soon. It can be enticing to restructure your team or overhaul agency relationships in an effort to put your stamp on the department.

But unless there’s a truly dire need, it’s wise to defer major reorgs until you’ve been in place long enough (a year or so) to see how all parts are working. Sweeping changes without sufficient understanding can breed fear and pushback.

“People get scared if leaders come in saying, ‘we’re going to do a reorg,’” Ballentine notes, describing how new leaders can “destroy trust from the start” by acting too aggressively.

If reorganization is necessary, plan it carefully and communicate transparently, making clear you value the team and what’s working.

Lead with Collaboration, Not Directives

Next, maintain a collaborative and listening approach even as you start implementing larger initiatives. You built goodwill by listening to people, so don’t lose it by charging ahead unilaterally now. Continue involving key stakeholders in planning.  

If you’re developing a new marketing campaign or investing in a CRM system, create cross-functional task forces or advisory groups. Engaging others not only improves your solutions but also creates champions across the organization. It’s essential to have physician buy-in for marketing efforts, so keep your medical staff informed and leverage your early relationships.

Set Priorities and Manage Resources Wisely

Another pitfall to avoid is failing to set clear priorities and trying to do everything at once. Within your first six months, you will undoubtedly uncover dozens of projects that could be undertaken. It’s impossible to tackle them all immediately.  

If you spread yourself and your team too thin, nothing will get done well.  

Instead, use the insights you’ve gained to identify 2–3 strategic priorities for the next year and center your plan around those.  

Financial acumen is another key strength to develop and showcase. As you plan long-term, propose a realistic marketing budget and be prepared to justify investments.  

Use the data from your audits to support your arguments for what you need.  

If digital marketing is underfunded compared to industry benchmarks, make the case for increased spend by showing potential ROI. Conversely, identify any current expenditures that are not justified by results and be prepared to reallocate or reduce them. This demonstrates that you’re a good steward of resources.  

Importantly, continue to nurture your team throughout this transition. By six months, your team will have a sense of your style and expectations. Continue building their trust as you did with peers.

Keep an External Perspective to Stay Innovative

One more common mistake to guard against is losing the external perspective. Once you’re deep in the organization’s day-to-day, it’s easy to develop tunnel vision.  

Make it a habit to stay connected to external best practices and fresh ideas in healthcare marketing. Network with peers at other hospitals, stay informed about industry news, and support your team’s professional development.  

Continue scanning the horizon for innovations that align with your strategy. Patients now expect convenience and transparency. Marketing can lead the charge in meeting those expectations by promoting online scheduling, telehealth options, and cost information.

Always tie back new ideas to the core question: Does this help our patients or strengthen our position?  

If yes, it’s worth considering; if not, it might be a distracting shiny object.

Setting the Stage for Impact

Your first six months as a healthcare marketing VP are all about laying a strong foundation. By focusing on relationships, learning your organization’s strategy and services, embracing data, delivering some early wins, and avoiding rash moves, you build the credibility and momentum a marketing leader needs.  

Healthcare is a team sport. When you show colleagues that you’re a listener, a collaborator, and a strategic thinker, you foster the trust that makes big accomplishments possible. Use what you’ve learned to champion forward-thinking strategies that align with the organization’s mission and today’s healthcare consumer expectations. 

Being a healthcare marketing leader today is both challenging and rewarding. The stakes are high, but your marketing efforts can have a direct impact on community health outcomes and patient lives.  

Lead with empathy, strategy, and data, and you will earn the confidence of the C-suite and your colleagues. Remember these core principles:  

1. Listen and build trust first
2. Align marketing with what the organization and patients truly need
3. Measure what matters
4. Deliver value early
5. Plot your course thoughtfully 

Your first half-year is the prologue to what will hopefully be a long, successful chapter of advancing your healthcare organization’s mission through marketing excellence. Good luck and enjoy the journey of making healthcare better through great marketing!