Evaluation Of A Marketing Plan For A Healthcare Organization (Research Paper Sample)

EVALUATION OF A MARKETING PLAN FOR A HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATION
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Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Executive Summary PAGEREF _Toc483340336 \h 3Evaluation of a Marketing Plan for a Healthcare Organization PAGEREF _Toc483340337 \h 4Organisation Background PAGEREF _Toc483340338 \h 4Organization’s Mission and Objectives PAGEREF _Toc483340339 \h 5Marketing and Customer/Patient Services PAGEREF _Toc483340340 \h 6Situational Analysis PAGEREF _Toc483340341 \h 8Evaluation of the Existing Marketing Strategy Initiatives PAGEREF _Toc483340342 \h 9Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc483340343 \h 12Reference PAGEREF _Toc483340344 \h 14
Executive Summary
This paper has conducted an evaluation of a marketing plan for the Mayo Clinic and suggested recommendations that would enhance the marketing campaign of the clinic. As it was noted, the success of a business relies on a number of sales made. This, in turn, depends on the marketing efforts. Successful marketing leads to widened market and therefore more customers.
Mayo Clinic, which started in 1889, has applied digital marketing strategies. Over the years, the hospital grew from a single hospital to over seventy clinics across the country. The hospital bought a business domain in 1997. Throughout the years, the hospital has continually engaged in innovations such as the use of mobile apps and social media marketing. These strategies have significantly boosted the customer attraction. Currently, the hospital serves more than one million patients across the world. The hospital has attracted a qualified pool of staff, and hence the services offered are of high quality. The hospital has featured on the lists of the best hospitals in the United States and the world. Also, the hospital has several medical education schools.
The study has recommended various ways on how to improve the marketing strategy. Besides the internet and social media marketing, the clinic should incorporate electronic mail to send health materials to customers rather than using the posts. Also, to boost word of mouth marketing the hospital should find ways to encourage the customers to spread the word such as giving leaflets or printed cards to give them out to friends and family. Referral bonuses may also work where a client is awarded cost reduction for the referrals made.
Evaluation of a Marketing Plan for a Healthcare Organization
The market performance of any business depends on the awareness created by the organization. Organizations need to communicate about their products to the people to turn the people into customers (Armstrong et al., 2014: 6). Marketing plan in health care industry acts as the blueprints for the health care providers' marketing strategy. The plan lay out the major details that need to be taken into account in the future to suit the market demand and requirements. A good marketing plan enables the healthcare providers to prepare, assess and anticipate the market trends and needs to satisfy the healthcare requirements of the patients. It, therefore, gives an organization a way of improving the services offered so as to improve the chances for marketing success. A marketing plan is developed and implemented, but it usually requires constant evaluation and adjusting to ensure that it is in line with the current trends in the industry (Baker, 2014: 16). Marketing plan evaluation on whether it is delivering as expected or not is a vital process that could save an institution money and time. A good marketing plan that is good evaluation is that of Mayo Clinic. This paper conducts a detailed critical evaluation of a marketing plan for the organization and suggests promotional recommendations that would enhance the marketing campaign of the clinic.
Organisation Background
This clinic was started in 1889 by William Worrall Mayo. Mayo Clinic was first situated in Rochester, Minnesota, United States (Berry and Seltman, 2014: 144). Over the years, the clinic has grown under the stewardship of Mayo siblings. Currently, the hospital is referred as one of the top healthcare facilities, both in the Unites States and across the globe. Although it had a humble beginning, the clinic has developed to offer its services to the international platform.
William Worrall Mayo was a renowned surgeon who settled in Minnesota as part of military appointment during the American Civil War (Colón-Otero, 2014: 585). After the war, he opened the clinic. His two sons also joined the practice after their medical training. The hospital realised tremendous developments in the early 1990s. Advanced medical equipment and tools were incorporated into the clinic building structures. The advancement in technology enhanced service delivery in the hospital and its market share increased (Brown et al., 2015:385). The clinic developed medical training schools such as Mayo Medical School and Mayo School of Health Sciences. The Mayo Clinic now operates more than 70 hospitals and clinics across the country and serves more than one million patients from different parts of the world. The hospital has been ranked among the best hospitals in the United States for over twenty years (Harder, 2015: 2). According to Fortune Magazine (2016), the clinic has featured on the list of the ‘100 best companies to work for’ for fourteen years. The clinic focusses on three areas, that is, patient care, education, and research. The clinic is committed to delivering quality health care services as a way of marketing its name (Colón-Otero, 2014: 585). This has been useful over the years as word of mouth is one the greatest way of promotion. Through education research, the clinic maintains the innovations in the health care sector by investigating the best clinical practices and diseases understanding (Rutten et al., 2014:179).
Organisation’s Mission and Objectives
Through its strong mission and vision statement, the organisation has a strong base for future developments. The mission of Mayo Clinic is to inspire hope, and better the health of people through the provision of the best care to all patients using integrated clinical practice, education and research (Ellsworth et al., 2016: e95). This indicates that the core of the clinic as seen from its logo is based on these three parts. Also, the clinic aims to be an example of diversity and inclusion to patients, employees and other institutions. The vision of the organisation is to develop to the most trusted health care partner by the provision of unparalleled experiences. The customer satisfaction is the core value in the clinic. The patients always come first.
In delivering on the mission, the clinic aims to fulfill several aims. One of the goals is caring with awareness (Frederiksen, Solomon, and Brehony, 2013: 17). In this case, the clinic offers high-quality medical care to patients from all cultures and backgrounds in a welcoming environment. The clinic also reflects on the community by continued research on diseases to improve the treatment and in reducing health disparities. The clinic is open to all people across the world. The organisation aims to be a welcoming institution to all individuals. The other aim of the organisation is to develop talents. This is the reason why the clinic runs medical schools to nurture and mentor young people with the potential of delivering as medical practitioners.
Marketing and Customer/Patient Services
As it was noted earlier, the success of any business organisation is largely influenced the marketing strategy. All organisations depend on making sales to generate income to fund their activities (Berry and Berry, 2016: 4). The higher the sales, the greater the revenues which imply a successful business enterprise. However, the ability to acquire customers is not as easy as it seems. That is the reason why organisations develop marketing plans. In essence, marketing indicates a process by which a product or a service for the case of health care industry is introduced and made known to potential customers (Armstrong et al., 2014: 6). This makes people know about the existence of the services and therefore acquire them when in need. The following are the ways in which marketing affect customer services.
To make sure that the customers are fully satisfied, the marketing department in a health organisation need to set the level of which the customers, needs will be satisfied. This makes sure that the services offered by the hospitals are as the advertised by the marketers thus avoiding over expectations or under expectations situations (Baker, 2014: 19). This is an important role of marketing as it leaves the patients satisfied and does not exert unnecessary pressure on the providers. Therefore, successful marketing ensures customer satisfaction which in turn creates a positive feedback and a good business name (Berkowitz, 2016: 27). This is important as it prevents losses or disappointments from the customers. It also equips the clients with the necessary knowledge they might need to know about the medical products or a service offered (Chernev, 2015: 15). If it meets the needs of the patient, then the person will find it easy to purchase.
Marketing in a medical organisation is important in maintaining the standards of the services offered (Berkowitz, 2016: 27). This implies that the institution will be on the lookout for ways to improve the competitive advantage of the institution’s product in the market. One way of doing so is by maintaining the quality of the services to beat any other provider in the market. Through marketing, the company can develop its product’s quality to levels above those of the competitors. In doing so, the quality of services provided to customers is greatly raised (Hult and Lukas, 2015: 208). Also, through marketing, a health facility can keep up with the stand...