Management of Health Care Organizations

Chapter 4: Marketing Health

Objectives

• Be familiar with traditional concepts of marketing

• Understand frames and branding

• Know about marketing challenges and opportunities that impact organizations that provide health care services and public health agencies

• Be able to integrate social media Web sites into organizational marketing programs

Outline

• Traditional Marketing Concepts

• Marketing Tools and Techniques

• Challenges and Opportunities

• Marketing Principles

• Social Media

• Systems Thinking

Traditional Marketing Concepts

• Marketing – An organized effort to plan, price, promote, and distribute products and services designed to satisfy the needs and desires of consumers

• Marketing Strategy – A plan which addresses the question of how to communicate and promote an organization’s services within its environment

Traditional Marketing Concepts

• Successful marketing efforts always remain focused on consumers with the goal of promoting products and services

– Potential Market

– Community Health Assessment

– Product mix

– Product line

Traditional Marketing Concepts

• The use of a community health assessment will help a public health organization define its potential market and ultimately determine its product mix and the product lines (which should reflect the 10 essential services of public health identified by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention)

Linking Consumers with Services

• Marketing Channels (or delivery systems) are used to deliver products or services to consumers who want or need them.

Example: Print ads, internet, and television

• Promotional Campaigns inform, persuade, or influence consumer decisions concerning products or services

Promotional Campaign

4 Steps:

1) Get the consumer’s attention

2) Engage interest

3) Convince potential consumers that they want or need the product or services being promoted

4) Allow for the acquisition of a product or service

Marketing Techniques

• Understand the resources, techniques and tools for effective marketing

 Framing

 Branding

Framing

• Framing – A method for packaging and positioning an issue in order to convey a particular meaning (equivalent to a political or journalistic ‘spin’)

– Framing leverages personal beliefs and principles

– Framing can be used to assign responsibility, credit, or blame

Branding

• Branding – Is a trade name or other symbol given to a product or service which tend to be visual reminders associated with that product or service

Example: American Red Cross logo

– Branding can be strengthened when programs and services are consistently of high quality and excellent customer service

Marketing Challenges

• Limited resources (funding) • Delayed benefits of community

health programs • Consumers may not want or have

access to health services • Competition has intensified for health

services providers • Public scrutiny has increased

Marketing Principles

• Principle #1 – Needs and wants of the target audience must be defined

– Could utilize community health assessment

• Principle #2 – Goals and objectives for the marketing campaign are established

– Goals are broad and general, while Objectives are specific and measurable

Marketing Principles

• Principle #3 – Develop programs that address objectives

– Must be sensitive to cultural practices and preferences

• Principle #4 – New promotions are tested

– Test marketing is performed on a small sample population to identify need to revisions or termination

Marketing Principles

• Principle #5 – Full-scale or widespread promotion begins

– Promotions are rolled out to the entire intended audience

• Principle #6 - Continual monitoring and periodic evaluation of messages

– Data is collected and used to measure progress towards objectives

Marketing Principles

• Principle #7 – Make decisions about the future of the marketing program

– Based on the extent to which the marketing campaign achieved its objectives and goals the program undergoes either:

Extension

Termination (retirement)

Health Care Marketing Opportunities

• Health care providers face competition

• Professional canons of behavior usually limit individual health care professionals to providing information to consumers

Public Health Marketing Opportunities

• Public health has few competitors. This lessens background noise that can obscure positive marketing messages that are intended to inform individuals about ways to improve their health

• Not locked into a single type or form of message

• The challenge for public health managers is to increase the demand for programs and services

Social Media

• Internet websites that allow for virtual yet real-time multi-directional interaction with various community members

• Sites were developed to provide channel of communication for social interaction

• Examples: – Facebook

– Twitter

– YouTube

Social Media Demographics

• Users of social media sites are more likely to…

1) be young (less than 25 years old)

2) be female

3) earn less than $30,000 per year

4) not have graduated from high school

5) live in urban areas

Social Media Policy

• Health organizations that plan to utilize social media sites to promote or advertise their services and programs should make sure to account for the following items in their social media policy:

– Who will coordinate the program?

– What web sites will be included?

– Who will monitor the site?

– Who will respond to postings?

Social Media Policy (continued)

– The creation of a statement of purpose, goals, and objectives

– Language guidelines (for those who post and respond)

– Acknowledgements of resources needed to maintain social media site for effective and timely interactions

Systems Thinking

• Applying ‘systems thinking’ to marketing programs is accomplished by logically integrating the marketing program’s components with each other

– Reduces time needed to troubleshoot and difficulty of troubleshooting

– Reduces time needed to frame or reframe an issue

– Enforced through the use of branding