How To *Actually* Do More With Less

Are you feeling this squeeze, too?

“Doing more with less” is nothing new for hospital marketers, but the pressure has reached a breaking point. Layoffs, hiring freezes, and budget cuts are taking this expectation to unprecedented levels — and hospital marketing teams across the country are struggling to stay above water.

We’re hearing the same story from all angles. One of our clients is being held to the same KPIs after losing 25% of their marketing department in a layoff. Another org’s team is tackling new strategic initiatives on top of their regular work in the midst of a hiring freeze.

If your workload is growing, your team and budget are shrinking, and you’re wondering, “How in the world are other hospital marketing departments keeping up right now?” we’re here to share what’s working for your peers.

Diagnosing the true problem

First, let’s get the surface-level advice out of the way. You don’t need to “just” prioritize more effectively, repurpose more content, or get better at saying no. It isn’t that simple.

We’re seeing repeatedly that this isn’t a time management problem; it’s a systems problem.

Does any of this sound familiar?

• You get content requests from all over the place (email, Teams, the hallway …).
• Projects slip through the cracks or get “lost” in handoffs.
• Content review cycles seem to take forever.
• Final assets don’t consistently meet expectations.
• Random requests from stakeholders often push strategic content to the back burner.
• “Survival mode” has lasted more than a couple of weeks.

These are signals that your workflows aren’t set up to fit your team’s reality. Meaningful efficiency gains will only come from fixing the broken systems and internal silos that are slowing you down.

How our clients are building more efficient workflows

Recently, Aha Media Group redesigned marketing workflows for 3 of our healthcare clients.

These teams were feeling overwhelmed and burnt out:

• Client A had 25 open projects and no standard way to track the status of each one.
• Client B’s team was spinning their wheels, shipping 40+ pieces of content per quarter without an editorial calendar or content brief process.
• Client C knew they were dealing with bottlenecks — but lacked the data to justify to leadership why everything seemed to “take so long.”

After an in-depth discovery process that included auditing their workflows and speaking with multiple (sometimes 20+) team members, we helped these teams uncover which systems were broken — or missing altogether. Then, we redesigned the workflows and built the tools and frameworks to support implementation.

Examples of healthcare marketing workflow tools

We delivered exactly what our clients needed to reduce wasted time, break down silos across teams, and align marketing with business priorities.

This included:

• Tiered workflows based on project complexity
• Standardized intake forms
• Documentation around roles and responsibilities, as well as SOPs
• Templates for briefs and shared editorial calendars
• Automation strategies (steps to automate and how to do it)
• AI-assisted workflow tools (like custom GPTs)
• Content ownership matrices or “swimlanes,” like the example below

Could redesigning your marketing workflows help your situation?

Marketing teams need deliberate systems to consistently do their best work. You may have some SOPs in place, but others may be missing — or your workflows may have been built for a time when you had more people and different objectives.

To spot your marketing workflow gaps, ask yourself:

• Do content requests come in through one centralized place?
• Who decides what gets done — and in what order?
• Do you have a repeatable process for different types of projects?
• Do your content creators and publishers know exactly what’s expected (and by when)?
• Do different teams (for service lines, channels, or marketing functions) follow the same processes?
• Is the content review process efficient for SMEs?
• Can you explain to leadership how each piece of content ties to business goals?

If the answers are foggy — or there are some clear “no’s” — there may be a lot to gain from standardizing and documenting your processes.

What if you don’t have time for this kind of project?

If you’re thinking, “This makes sense, but we don’t have the time for a workflow initiative — that’s the whole problem,” you’re not wrong. Most of the teams we worked with felt the same way at the start.

[Puts on healthcare marketing big sister hat.] Here’s what we’ll say:

Nothing changes if nothing changes. That lack of time is a direct symptom of broken workflows, not a reason to avoid fixing them. Without troubleshooting and rebuilding what isn’t working, the same challenges will keep burning you out.

Strong workflows aren’t a luxury for lean healthcare marketing teams — they’re a lifeline. The sooner you start this work, the sooner your team can stop treading water.

Ditch “survival mode”

Replace chaos with clarity and the confidence that your team has what they need to succeed.

Rebuild your workflows