In order to implement a good, comprehensive marketing in a healthcare provider, you should start with a proper planning as well as choosing the right strategy. Planning will allow for a precise distribution of activities, while the strategy will help you to choose how to implement the intended plan of all objectives and tasks. Without a good and well thought out plan, you cannot create and implement a good marketing.
The goal and mission of the company
Marketing planning should start with the identification of the company’s goal and mission. Any organization planning to use marketing should take this step. You should first answer the question: why does this organization exist? The answer to this question defines the reason for the existence of the company on the market and its goals (e.g. providing medical services). The next step is to identify the company’s mission. In this case it’s worth using Peter Drucker’s auxiliary questions: “What do we do? Who is our client? What values are valuable to our client? What will we deal with? What should we do? ” Thanks to the answers to the above questions, the mission of the subject of therapeutic activity can be created without any problem. These questions are an excellent auxiliary tool in defining the missions of an entity, for example a clinic; they should be taken into account.
Strategic planning – defining the company
Strategic planning consists of many elements that should be considered as priorities. The first one is defining a company that consists of the following components:
- history of goals, policies and achievements;
- current preferences of owners and management board (it is extremely important to establish a common position regarding the vision of the subject of therapeutic activity with the participation of all persons who make managerial decisions);
- market environment;
- resources: material, immaterial;
- competences (which distinguish the individual from the others, something that achieves a competitive advantage).
Customer identification
The next step should be to identify customers. It involves determining certain characteristics of consumers, that is who they are, where they are and what characterizes them. The described activity will allow adjusting the organization’s activities to clients and their needs, which is very important. After all, someone has to use the services offered by the company, in addition, customers are the most important link in the organization.
Determination of the value of services offered
It is also important to determine the value of the services offered. In order to estimate the value of services, one should take into account the costs incurred in providing the service (including those related to, among others, materials supply, operation, technology, logistics, service, infrastructure), its quality and location. The analysis of these three elements will allow to create a preliminary vision of the performed service’s value, adapted to the market and clients.
Setting goals
Another issue in strategic planning is setting goals by the organization. The organization should know what it is aiming at, what it wants to achieve, what its purpose is.
Summary
After going through all the above-described stages, we have chosen marketing strategy as well as a summary of all the above analyzes in the marketing plan, that is in the document in which the analysis and intended actions will be described and presented. The figure below presents the necessary elements of the marketing plan. It is also worth mentioning that the marketing plan itself is included in the development cycle, the scheme of which is outlined in the figure below.
SOURCES:
- Nowotarska-Romaniak B., 2002. Marketing usług zdrowotnych. Kraków: Kantor Wydawniczy Zakamycze
- Drobnik J., Kollbek P., Witczak I., Nowicki P., Jadach R., 2008. Funkcja analityczna marketingu. W: Drobnik J. (red.), Nowicki P. (red.), 2008. Wybrane zagadnienia zdrowia publicznego. T.3: Marketing i negocjacje na rynku usług medycznych. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Continuo