1. Marketing Strategy in Health Care / Wellness services
The role of formulating a proper marketing strategy and its effective
implementation is important for a healthcare facility (be it for-profit, trust or
public), than a bank, hotel or telecom services provider.
Revenue growth is important for a wellness service / health care facility to
meet the rising costs and for delivering higher profitability.
Marketing starts with a sound product strategy, sustainable differentiation,
and a pricing strategy that accounts for the competitive landscape, cost
structure, the core target audience and the product’s unique selling
proposition.
It is equally important to arrive at the appropriate location strategy – how
accessible is the health care service.
The increasing penetration of health insurance is also contributing to
growth of health care services.
Marketing communication in Health care services is invariably limited to
talking about ‘state-of-the-art technology’ and ‘world-class ambience’, and
that too in a language patients are usually not likely to relate to.
A good marketing plan takes an integrated view of the entire spectrum
ranging from a unique brand identity and appropriate pricing strategy to
patient-centric communication and usage of various interactive media.
Health services needs to build up significant experience in critical facets
such as advertising, interactive marketing and CRM.
Market Segmentation, Positioning & Branding
In a rapidly evolving market, patient-centricity must be at the core of what
we do. Discovering meaningful and reliable customer insights is vital for
arriving at an appropriate market segmentation strategy – be it buying
behaviour or current consumption pattern.
2. It also helps in arriving at a product strategy with sustainable differentiation.
A well-articulated positioning strategy can then guide nomenclature and
creation of suitable brand architecture and brand identity.
Services need to be repositioned and rebranded to maintain a continuous
dialog with customer in line with the changing customer profile and
competitive landscape.
It is vital to gather customer insights to identify unique market opportunities
and create a number of successful healthcare innovations.
An effective Product Management Strategy ensures that there is constant
focus on developing new products or services, which are aligned to the
Company’s core services. Such augmented products can help achieve
significantly higher levels of revenue by attracting a new set of customers
or offering better values to existing customers.
For marketing communication to deliver results, it must identify and
understand the target audience, their psyche and current behaviour. Then,
an appropriate communication strategy is developed, keeping in view the
desired objectives, the unique selling proposition offered by the
product/service and the competitive landscape.
Proper pricing strategy is also very important.
Using social media networks to reach out to the customers is an important
strategy too. It is not enough to have a website, the health care service
providers need to coordinate such social media programmes through
implementation of CRM.
Organizing events, conferences, blood donation drives, free health check
up camps – these are some of the methods to create greater visibility.
Given increasing costs and complexity of health care services,
performance of sales team has to be maximized. Smarter segmentation,
customized and credible communication, leveraging technology
intelligently, closer integration between sales and marketing are all
3. important strategies for health care services. Public Relations can be an
effective tool to build credibility and a desired image for a health care
organization. As masses are sensitive when it comes to health care, it is
important to engage media on a pro active basis.
