Marketing Communications in Health Services
Your M1 Practitioner Application will require devoted inquiry, assimilation, reflection, and refinement in order to achieve the highest possible score. Specifically, you are to take the scenario listed below, address it in full, and submit your work in accordance with the instructions contained herein. Importantly, this is an independent assignment to be completed by you and you alone. Sharing work with fellow students, supplying advice to your student peers, gaining assistance from outside parties, and similar actions will constitute violations of the academic code of conduct and will carry significant penalties in accordance with University policy.
The Challenge
Your M1 readings included five articles profiling the components of the marketing communications mix: advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing. Healthcare marketers must be very familiar with each category in order to make prudent selections when devising communicative plans for their given establishments. To aid in developing your ability to make good marketing communications choices, this Practitioner Application centers on the selection of components from the marketing communications mix.
Specifically, you are to place yourself in the role of Marketing Director for a soon-to-be-established chiropractic clinic based in the city of your choice. (An actual city must be selected as this assignment calls for formal market research.) The entity will be known as Eagle Chiropractic and it will offer the usual and customary array of offerings provided by chiropractic clinics. (If you aren’t familiar with this modality of care, conduct Internet research or visit a local clinic to gain a proper understanding.) Noting the competitive nature of the market, the clinic’s owner has expressed desires to proficiently reach clients in order to attract their patronage and he has requested a report containing your marketing communications recommendations. (As the owner indicates that the clinic is in a competitive market, the city you select must mirror this attribute. Smaller municipalities likely will not qualify. As such, moderately-sized or larger municipalities should be selected.)
Think deeply about the particular product offering (i.e., chiropractic services), the city in which the services will be offered, and the various communicative options available for reaching clients (i.e., advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing). After careful background research and reflection, prepare a report indicating the components of the marketing communications mix you would use to market the given clinic.
For each component of the marketing communications mix, you must indicate whether you do or do not recommend its use and supply detailed justifications for your associated decision. Additionally, for recommended components, you must supply details regarding how you plan to put these into practice. Note that general portrayals will be penalized harshly; specificity is required. For example, if you recommend advertising, you must indicate type(s) recommended and the name(s) of media providers selected; if you recommend personal selling, you must communicate your methods of deployment; and so on.
Note: Advocating the use of an advertising agency or similar marketing communications firm IS NOT permitted. If the owner wanted to delegate this task to an ad agency, he most likely wouldn’t have hired you! You must research options and make decisions based on your own findings.
The end result of your efforts should yield a basic marketing communications plan. In the real world, of course, much more is required, but as student learners, the parameters of the assignment are, by necessity, scaled back. As for the associated budget, simply assume that the organization possesses resources sufficient for funding a comprehensive marketing communications campaign.