Marketing of services has become a vital component in the operation of healthcare industry. And with increasing competition healthcare market is undergoing a transition from service providers dominance to service seekers preference.

While service seekers’ are presented with many more options – trends are shifting to bloodless surgery, day care centres and home care. Patients and relatives are now showing a tendency of “Window shopping” as awareness for health related issues has increased because of information available in magazines, health talk shows and Internet.

It has become imperative for hospitals to adopt a completely pro-active approach to market and as well as react to changing conditions in market place. Hospitals can adopt three strategies:

Cost containment methods to enhance cost benefit ratio

Retain existing patient base

Expand patient base and increase patient turnover.

All the three strategies can be implemented when hospitals adopt the most vibrant tool of marketing – Marketing Plan.

“Marketing Plan is an integrated approach to deal with present condition and anticipate future taking into consideration the resources available, prevailing market conditions and changing consumer-buying behaviours with an objective of serving target market place with optimum efficiency and capacity utilisation.”

Marketing plan gives a differential advantage to a hospital. Differential factor most commonly known as USP (Unique selling preposition) sets a hospital apart from other hospitals providing same service. A Market Plan has to be developed for a particular service, for instance, radiodiagnosis and pathology cannot have same marketing plan. A market plan helps a Hospital to better position its services to Market and increase utilisation as all promotional efforts are directed to achieve set targets.

A market plan development can involve few steps

SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis is analysing the strengths, weakness opportunities and threats for service offered.
In case of diagnostic services, hospitals strengths could be referral patterns, cost efficiency, stature and qualification of medical staff, state-of-art technology available, variety of diagnosis carried out, availability of resources to procure recent developments in medical field, quick delivery of services and reliability of diagnostic reports.
Weakness could include a range of deficiencies such as shortage of capital, outdated physical plant and equipment, hostile labour environment, poor reputation.
Opportunities lie in reacting to service seeker preference. A classic example of opportunity is encashment of requirement for home care. Many hospitals and companies are coming up with concepts of home care in form of mobile vans.
Threats can range from major to minor. A particular aggressive hospital would be a threat to a smaller hospital in same community.

Market trends and attractiveness

Market trends and attractiveness can be assessed by analysing the primary data available with the hospital and secondary data collected from Medical Journals, Research Papers, WHO website and NGOs. Analysis of this data can project the disease prevalent rates in the community and also disease for which services can be provided to marketplace. Affordability decides the purchasing power of services. To launch a mobile healthcare unit it is utmost important to know the income patterns nd purchasing power of target market.

Environmental analysis

An assessment of environment involves assessment of regulations, technology and competitor’s position. Before providing organ transplant facility to community a hospital should clearly understand Organ Transplant Act and mandatory rules an regulation to be followed. A new technology can change the method of service delivery as evident in case of endoscopic gastro-intestinal services. Competitor’s position is of utmost importance because a hospital can acquire best of tehnology, best of medical and paramedical professionals but still it cannot change the perception of service seeker relating to a particular Hospital.

Action programme

Action programme has a list of activities, which are to be carried out to achieve set targets by application of strategy selected. This activities can include organising camps, CME, visit to corporate clients, secondary care hospitals, small nursing homes, publication of news letters, brochures and leaflets. All this activity can be then qualified for each month so that a complete action program is available for each month in current financial year.

Budgetary considerations

After development of an elaborate action plan, marketing department and finance department can work in co-ordination for budgetary consideration for action program. For each activity marketing department can make a proposal so that accordingly Finance department can make provisions of expenditure in budget.

Control of plan

Once the plan is developed and executed it is very important to control this plan. At the end of each month a thorough assessment of targets achieved as against targets set should be carried out. Also a strict monitoring of expenses incurred should also be done so that expenditure is within set budget.

Market Plan is a very complex structure and needs a lot of careful assessment before development. If hospital is really committed to growth in terms of volumetric turnover as well as brand equity then it is very important that they should utilise their resources to maximum output. Market Plan is a write up of aetiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of problems which hospitals often encounter in developing, providing and turning a service offered to market in profitable venture.