Now is the time to begin planning your budget for the next fiscal year. In planning, one of the most overlooked elements is tracking to show how successful your marketing has been.

At the annual NACCHO conference in New Orleans last summer, many health departments stopped by for a copy of my book, Selling Public Health and to ask for help with marketing. For many years I have dedicated my career to implementing turn-key solutions for public health departments and as such, I was used to speaking to this group. In addition to request for help from health department administrators and directors, I was also approached by several state-level groups that were interested not so much in marketing to their communities but seeking help in conveying the value of their agencies to stakeholders and elected officials. They needed help justifying their budgets increases to use those dollars for staff and more marketing.

As many already know, it is vital to paint a clear picture of why you need a budget increase and you do this by tracking data that outlines an increase in productivity and results throughout the last 12 months.

In addition to helping you stop wasting money on ineffective marketing that does little to grow your agency, tracking will show how your health department is allocating those dollars and time. The good news is implementing tracking systems into your marketing is easy once you know how to use the tools available. It also helps to highlight outreach goals such as the number of new contacts you are making, the number of clinical visits you had, how grant dollars are spent and more.

It is difficult to show your results at the end of the year if you haven’t adopted tracking as a cornerstone of your business practices. Through tracking you be able to tell a more complete story when you are standing in the budget line at the end of the year. Conveying the value of your health department to everyone concerned is what having a marketing system is all about.

In my book I outline the integral steps in creating a marketing system for a public health department. Key is the step called tracking!