“Health is a priceless wealth. Invest while you can,” says American poet and activist, Bryant McGill. Growing old without a sufficient healthcare plan is perhaps one of the major problems that today’s society faces. Being unable to pay for clinical consultations, hospitalization, emergency services, and/or the services of a healthcare provider can become a dilemma. These are the concerns being addressed by healthcare organizations as the list of needs for healthcare services begins to greatly increase. As a healthcare organization, their main goal is to get the word out and create that open communication that their organization exists to provide those services and needs found on that growing list. This could be achieved through the use of a good Healthcare Marketing Plan.
Healthcare is the preservation, development, or improvement of an individual’s health through diagnosis, managing, prevention, and proper treatment of a sickness, illness, injury, disease, and any other forms of impairment in the individual’s overall well-being. Healthcare is being delivered by licensed health professionals, or a healthcare provider, through primary, secondary, and tertiary care, in public and private health sectors. A health insurance is a contract agreement, headed by a private or public health insurance company or healthcare organization, that provides healthcare benefits by requiring an individual, client, patient, or insurer to pay a specified cost for a premium health package periodically.
Needless to say, there are many healthcare companies out there in the US, including in the US territories. With the boom in the healthcare industry, it would take a lot of careful and strategic planning for one healthcare organization to stand out against its competitors. This is where diligent and meticulous healthcare marketing planning comes in. A healthcare marketing plan is a blueprint that drives the accomplishment of business goals of a healthcare organization, or a health insurance company, over a given timeline. It includes the mission and vision, and the tactics and strategies used to achieve its goals and deliver the desired performance outcome of the organization. A good healthcare marketing plan is important because it gives that opportunity to provide specific benefits to a certain group of patient population, and seeks to establish long-term relationships with its clientele.
Establishing or identifying the target market or target customer helps the organization effectively plan its communication tactics and strategies. In the case of a healthcare marketing plan, it creates that focus and consistency in developing healthcare benefits. One way in identifying the target market is to group them according to categories. One category is demographics. Demographics is the gender, age, education, occupation, family size, and income of your clients. Another is by geographics. This is the location and the area size, climate, weather conditions where your clients are. Behavior and lifestyle is another category. These are the type of personalities your clients have, their lifestyle, and their overall characteristics.
Now that you have the knowledge on what are the essential elements that make up an effective healthcare marketing plan, let’s go ahead and create one. A healthcare marketing plan is similar to most business marketing plan’s format. Aside from incorporating the essential elements into the making of the plan, what defines a healthcare marketing plan are the steps taken that are focused on a specific goal and a target market, which is the healthcare industry. Below are the common steps taken when creating a healthcare marketing plan.
A mission statement describes the company’s overall business approach and its objectives. A vision statement explains what is the company’s targeted future outcome or goals. The healthcare marketing plan’s mission and vision statement should be written down in a way that explains the healthcare organization as a whole, what its values are as an organization or as a company, and what it hopes to achieve down the road with its objectives. In the healthcare industry, a mission statement could be something like explaining how the organization, in an overall statement, provides its healthcare services. A sample statement could be, “Healthcare A Organization is here to provide you a dedicated, effective, fast and holistic healthcare service geared towards your specific healthcare needs.” A vision statement could be, “To make Healthcare A Organization the number one choice in healthcare services, and to be a leader in the healthcare industry in providing healthcare services with the use of the latest technology at an affordable price.” The mission and vision statement is significant in setting the tone to your clients at the first instance to give them an impression of what the whole healthcare organization is all about and how they could possibly benefit from its services.
List down the names of the groups, the teams, or the individuals that are part of the organizational structure. You don’t have to write down the names of all the members, the name of the group or the department will suffice. This should look like an organizational chart. This will serve as a guide as to who is reporting to whom during the marketing plans implementation later on. Each group or department’s roles and responsibilities are outlined and defined. The purpose of having an organizational chart is for transparency, that the team is aware of all the different groups who can potentially support them in their operation and provide the resources that they need. Also, it makes it easy to identify which group needs more support during the marketing plan’s operation. The chart flow should start from the top level, the c-suite or the executive level, down to those involved in the field work.
This is the part where you apply the classification of the target market you have identified. Once you have identified the area where the healthcare organization will be servicing, start doing the market segmentation by creating classifications according to demographics, geographics, and behavioral and lifestyle. Gather some statistical data based off of these segmentation variables. You can create a table or a graph that shows each segment. The graph is helpful in determining which of the groups is the biggest in the area. For example, based on the demographics of the City of A, there are more people between the ages of 30-50 living in the area than people within the age range of 50-70. City of A is smaller than the city of San Francisco, and has a fairly sunny climate throughout the year. People in City of A are considered generally laid back people, love to sit and talk and drink coffee, and there are not that many night clubs located around the city. You can then create later on marketing campaign strategies based on these statistics.
Establish the SMART Goals and do the SWOT analysis. Remember that your marketing strategy should be realistic and achievable within a given timeframe. Keep in mind your target market in the healthcare industry. Using the market segmentation data, determine what kind of healthcare needs they will be likely to avail. If there are more people living in the area within the age range of 30-50, probably what they would need is access to unlimited medical and dental consultation. If their lifestyle is laid back, determine what might be the potential illness or disease that they might incur. Start making individual plans, and even group package plans for bigger savings. Plan out how you will get the word out through advertising campaigns. Identify who are the advertising agencies within the area, and what is the most effective way of advertising in that location. Throughout all this planning, make sure that your budget plan is already determined and laid out since your plans need to be working alongside the budget. The budget should be sufficient enough to cover the cost of the whole marketing plan, and should be enough to cover for the whole specified period duration.
Monitor the whole healthcare marketing plan operation by making a progress chart. It should show the start of the implementation and the ongoing work in progress. This would tell you how far you are in achieving the organization’s overall objectives and allows you to make some adjustments in the plans as necessary. Check as well the expenses already incurred against the budget to make sure that you are still within the budget’s limits. This can give you the opportunity to ask for more support for resources or for more budget, if necessary, in order to achieve the end-goal.
It is a marketing approach by the healthcare industry, or healthcare organization, in addressing the healthcare needs identified as the target market by providing services of licensed healthcare providers.
Some of the marketing strategies that can be utilized in a healthcare marketing plan are digital signage, printed flyers distribution, social media advertising, use of social media influencers to promote the marketing plans, and even doing community seminars or conferences.
It could be through an increased number of clients, or patients, availing the healthcare organization’s services. It could be the high amount of return of investment from the budget spent on the marketing campaigns. Or it could even be the long-term running of a particular offer or services due to the high volume of clients who availed that particular service.
As Bryant McGill said, “Health is a priceless wealth. Invest while you can.” There’s nothing worse than losing sleep over how you can afford your future medical expenses, therefore, it is best to invest in healthcare services while you still have the capacity to do so. This is what a healthcare organization hopes to communicate to their clients, that they are offering solutions to their healthcare needs. And they are assisted in this process with the use of a good and effective healthcare marketing plan. Our website has downloadable templates on healthcare marketing plans that are easy and convenient to use. Download one now, and see how easy it is to reach out and establish an effective healthcare relationship with your potential clients!
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