Career Path and Challenges of Healthcare Marketers
The current assignment discusses the concept of healthcare marketing. Healthcare marketing is a very dynamic field which requires both knowledge and adequate marketing skills. One of the most interesting challenges which are faced by a healthcare marketer over here is possessing adequate knowledge regarding the benefits produced by a health care product along with the contra-indications. The contraindications are mostly subjective in nature as they are dependent upon the physical health status of the patient (Kemp et al., 2017). The current assignment discusses the various challenges which are faced in the area of healthcare marketing and the different steps which could be taken in dealing with the same.
The health care marketing managers’ career path includes all the struggles and the challenges of creating the market for the health products that are newly launched medical products. All the health care professionals start their career path as the sales coordinator.
Sales coordinator: A sales coordinator works on the behalf of the sales organisation. A health care sales coordinator helps in the creating of the group
The marketing planning is a gradual process and requires the involvement of different team or partners. The teams could be divided into internal and external partners who together plan the marketing and promotion of the healthcare products. The internal team could be divided into the research and development personnel or the pharmacists. The external team comprises of the sales and the accounts team who are responsible for pitching the product to the right channels. The interests calculated from the sale of each product could give an idea regarding the market value of the products (Kumar et al., 2014). As mentioned by Grover (2014), multidisciplinary teams are involved in healthcare market planning and promotion. The external partners include the consumer advocates and the larger audiences to whom the healthcare organization is catering to.
For instance, the Johnson and Johnson have a highly skilled and professionally trained research and development team with years of experience which goes into making the products. As mentioned by Fortenberry & McGoldrick (2016), the research and development team forms the backbone of an organization as they are the ones responsible for making the product, which need to suit the requirements of the end customers. One of the major criteria which have to be satisfied by the R&D team before releasing a product is testing the contra-indication as they help in analysing and estimating the success level of the product (Malvey et al., 2015). In this respect, the clinical knowledge possessed by the pharmacists is used in pitching the products accordingly.
A number of marketing strategies could be used to reach out the intended customer for selling and promoting a healthcare product. Some of the strategies which have been employed by Johnson and Johnson in this regard are conducting online as well as field surveys. As reported by Cellucci et al. (2014), the online and the field surveys help in understanding the customer preferences and the likeability of the customer for buying a certain product. Additionally, some of the marketing strategies which could be employed over here are using consumer education regarding the benefits and contra-indications produced by a particular drug. It ensures that the right medicine is taken by the right individual at the right time. The intended channels which are used by the marketing team of Johnson and Johnson for reaching out to the customers are though the physicians who are the first point of contact for the patients (Sari & Yanginlar, 2015). Secondly, use of various social media channels for the knowledge promotion and sales of medicine have been found to be beneficial over here (Shafei et al., 2015).
Internal and External Teams in Marketing Planning
The marketing planning of a health care marketing campaign involves a systematic approach in order to achieve the target goals. The steps for the process involves
- Situation analysis
- Setting of the objectives
- Strategy formulation
- Development of the action plan
- Implementation and control
- Review and evaluation
The marketing manager uses many tools to establish the desired response from their target market. These tools are combined called the Marketing mix. The marketing mix collaborates all the tools that are available for the pursue the marketing objectives of a company. According to McCarthy these tools are classified into four broad groups that are called as the 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, place and promotion.
Product- It can tangible and as well as intangible service. The main objective of any company is to differentiate the product from the products of its competitors.
Price: The success rate of achieving the target market is mainly depends on the customers and the customers are attracted to the prices. The business can increase and decrease the price according to the market needs.
Place: Place is the location where the marketing of the product occurs. It can include the physical store as well as the virtual store of the internet.
Promotion: Promotion means all the advertisement and the communications strategies which are used for the sales and marketing of a product.
The external data collections are used to analyze the wider business environment that can affect the business from externally. The Internal research helps to analyze the internal factors that are affecting the business internally like the strengths and the weaknesses. This type of external and internal analysis can be done by the usage of the SWOT analysis, PESTLE analysis and the Porters five elements. Analyzing all the internal and the external factors can help the marketing manager to decide the complete picture of the internal and external factors that is affecting the company in positive and negative ways (Platis & Zoulias, 2017).
PESTLE:
The PESTLE analysis helps to identify the primary external threats and opportunities for the company in the market.
- P stands for the Political changes that can affect the company such as the trade agreements between the countries.
- E stands for the Economic factors such as the interest rates, exchanging rates and the other taxes that are need for the company.
- S stands for the Social factors such as aging, changing attitudes and the consumer lifestyle, which is important to analyze for the market analysis.
- T stands for the Technological factors such as the materials and the technological uses for the betterment of the company.
- E stands for the Environmental factors such as laws that are to prevent the harmful impacts on the environment.
- L stands for the legal factors such as the legislations that exist.
Fig: The PESTLE analysis for the Johnson and Johnson
Source:
The SWOT analysis combines all the external and internal data analysis to explore all the internal and external factors such as the strengths, weakness, opportunity and the threat of the company that can affect the company in positive or the negative way. The SWOT analysis is the abbreviation for the Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat.
- Strength is the positive internal factors of the company that can help the company to grow such as the product or the employees.
- Weaknesses are the internal factors that can be harmful for the company that can be the limited finance and the target customers.
- Opportunity is the external factor that can help in the growth of the company. That can be the potential customers and the interested investors.
- Threats are the external negative factors that can make a great loss for the company, like competition from the existing established business with bigger budget.
Fig: The SWOT analysis for Johnson and Johnson
Source:
Data collection can be used as the foundation for making any strategy related to the health marketing campaign. The collected data includes all the relevant researches that is needed for any strategy related to the health market campaign. There are two different types of the data, which are the quantitative data and the qualitative data. Qualitative data is mainly used to understand the problems. It is no statistical in nature. It is mainly used to explain and give description about the problem. Quantitative data helps in the statistical knowledge of the qualitative data. There are two different categories of the data that are identified in the data collection:
- Primary data:Primary data are collected directly from the source. The researcher collects the data first hand.
- Secondary data:This type of data is directly collected from the other existed data that is readily available. This type of data does not require much effort and much expense as it is readily available. This kind of data is extremely useful when there is lack of time for collecting any first hand data.
Marketing Strategies for Healthcare Products
There are some type of methods by which data collection can be done, such as
- The telephonic Interviews
- Online surveys
- Face to face interviews
All the health care marketing needs six elements of surprise, such as:
- The target:The most important of any health care marketing promotion is deciding the target customers.
- The list:The next important point for the health care marketing is the making the contacts and list of every important points that is needed to be acknowledged.
- The value proposition:Valued propositions important to attract the targeted consumers with proper advertising skills.
- The offer:Offers are something that is important to achieve the interest of the consumers.
- The delivery method: There are different platform for the deliverance of the product.
- The follow up:Follow up is important for after delivering the product as it shapes the customer and the company relationship.
The health care organizations have many opportunity that to gain the targeted customer centric achievements. All other sectors like Amazon and Flipkart can make tremendous business if they get a chance to market the health care service and products as their customers are widely spread (Abbasi et al., 2017). However, if the healthcare sector makes the customer platform like this than they can make a huge profit from the opportunity (Molloy & Johnson, 2016).
Strategic alignment is important to ensure the clear understanding of a strategy. It is very important to confirm that all the employees are on the same page with each other (Dogramatzis, 2015). The strategies are made to achieve the entire business target and the goals. The strategic alignment is designed to indicate the direction of the achieving the target (Johnson, 2017). Absence of the clear understandings the strategy can be wasted. There are mainly three type of marketing alignment available for business strategy, such as:
Vertical alignment:
Vertical alignment is an alignment that ensures that the strategy will directly lead to the business goals. Mainly the goal oriented strategies are formed on the basis of the question” How”. How the company can achieve their target. All the strategies’ should be kept aligned to ensure all the usage of these strategies effectively. This is important to achieve success.
Horizontal alignment:
The horizontal alignment ensures that all the resources that are need for the achievement of the goal, are working together and not in direct competition with each other (Dyer et al., 2018). This type of alignment is used for the marketing strategy of a health organization. In hospital marketing strategy, there are two strategies like “decrease length of hospital stays” and “reduce the number of hospital readmission” are competitive to each other.
Operational alignment:
This type of strategic alignment ensures the success rate of the strategy. This alignment focuses on the effective use of all the resources. Operational alignment is the state which decides about who will execute the strategy in the team and the resources that are needed for the execution of the plan (Oztekin, 2017).
Conclusion:
The current study focuses upon the marketing plan of Johnson and Johnson. The organization is seen to cater to the basic day to day health requirements of individuals. However, designing an effective marketing plan plays a pivotal role over here which are based upon end results of the market surveys conducted along with the customer feedback. In this respect, some of the factors which play a critical role over here are the role played by a team and individuals in the sale and promotion of a product. The division of labour along with sufficient market research could help in pitching the product in a right and effective manner.
References
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