Effective Marketing Plan for Healthcare Facilities: ABC Hospital Case Analysis

This paper pertains to the marketing of Health Care Services and provides the steps and history of marketing in health care and the effects of marketing on the health care delivery system from 1950 to 1990. It introduces the health care consumers and their role in the marketing process as well as the factors that influence consumer behavior. These factors influence the success of marketing in health care. It also provides the requirements for successful marketing and current techniques and strategies used by health care organizations.

Increasing competition in the healthcare industry have challenge healthcare administrators and other stakeholders to use marketing principles to market their healthcare services. Among the many marketing techniques, focusing on patient experience, grassroot marketing, word-of-mouth and using employee as marketers are proven to be the most effective due to the nature of the business. A study conducted by Sharp HealthCare suggests that “ focusing first on improving the healthcare experience for patients, physicians, and employees can provide the impetus for a vital marketing strategy that can lead to increase market share and net revenue” (Lofgren, D.G. et al., 2006).

This paper is to explain some of the role in the Pricing Strategies and the Marketing Channels

Marketing plays the most important role for the success of a business. In this chapter, the business’ marketing objectives are laid out together with the plans or actions that will be needed to achieve these objectives. Furthermore, this chapter includes the profile of the respondents which aided the researchers to create this part of the feasibility study.

Effective planning is essential for any marketing activity to ensure that an organisation realises its marketing objectives. Without planning, marketing activity can be inappropriate and waste resources and opportunities. This unit introduces learners to different ways of auditing, to looking at how internal and external factors

In past few decades, the nature of marketing in the health care industry has changed significantly because of the recent developments that have contributed to the need to develop innovative marketing techniques and trends. These developments witnessed the adoption of marketing techniques from other industries and the creation of marketing approaches that are healthcare-specific. Some of the new marketing approaches include business-to-business marketing, customer relationship marketing, and service-line marketing. The other reason attributed to the development of new marketing techniques in health care is that the industry has different procedures and outcomes.

On the other hand, the managing marketing implementation is the process that helps customers to keep in mind the strengths of the company. In order to accomplish this, three stages are required to be followed such as an analysis of the markets and trading environment, determination of core markets and brand positioning and last, but not least, setting up flexible programmes for implementation. Controlling the marketing plan should include the flexibility of objectives, empowerment for environmental changes and monitoring, in order to allow new opportunities for the business.

A successful marketing strategy plan is fit with the appropriate context, whether it is measured successfully is depends on the companies. Strategies have two essential characteristics, they are made in advance of the action to which they apply, and they are

sent to all individuals in the organization who must implement the plan or who will be affected by it. If the plan is directed to an external audience, such as friends, banks, venture capitalists, or potential investors, for the purpose of raising capital, it has the additional function of being an important sales document. In this case, it contains elements such as the strategic plan/focus, organization, structure, and biographies of key personnel that would rarely appear in an internal marketing plan. Also, the financial information is far more detailed when the plan is used to raise outside capital. The elements of a marketing plan for each of these two audiences are compared in Figure A–1. The

Marketing planning is a systematic process involving the assessment of marketing opportunities and resources, the determination of marketing objectives and the development of a plan for implementation and control.’ Dibb and Simkin, Marketing: Concepts and Strategies, 2001

The other main elements of marketing plan that cannot be ignored are tactical plan, budget, and marketing controlling. As it is known, tactical plan will promote your products in a short time. Marketing budget consists of advertising and promotional plan, costs allocated for advertising and promotions, advertising and promotional materials and list of advertising media to be used and an estimate of cost for each medium. How to control market? The managers make rules to help maintain the marketing environment when there are certain problems happened in the market. The rules that the managers made before will play a crucial role in such cases. With such an experience of dealing with the urgent cases, managers as well as the corporations will be able to realize the importance of making rules as it is in dispensable in marketing plan. This is always used to control and master the rate of progress. It will also allow the senior manager to review the effects of implement so that they might find some products didn 't reach their expected goals.

The marketing plan habitually comprises time limits, budgets and allocations of staff and this can help the business identifying the definite marketing activities and specifications for the budget, setting and achieving marketing goals, bringing a marketing strategy in the company for life (Mcdonald et al, 2011)

“What is a marketing audit? Quite simply, it is a detailed analysis of the elements that constitute or influence a company’s efforts to profitably market its products- today and in future when both market and products may undergo radical change” ( John, Alexander, & Theodore, 1969). The marketing audit helps to understand the fundamentals of a company’s marketing planning process. Auditing is not only conducted not only at the planning stage and also conducted during various stages until the implementation of the marketing plan.

Westwood, J., 2002, The Marketing Plan: A step-by-step Guide. 3rd ed., London, Kogan Page Limited, p

4. Managing the marketing effort. In this step (discussed later in this chapter), marketers organize the firm’s marketing resources to implement and control the marketing plan. Because of surprises and disappointments as marketing plans are implemented, the company also needs feedback and control. Figure 1-9 presents a grand summary of the marketing process and the factors that shape the company’s marketing strategy.