When preparing a new marketing strategy, it is crucial to determine the impact that it will have on a particular establishment. Due to the fact that St. Anthony’s Medical Center aims to revise its approach to the labor and delivery (L&D), it is necessary to review the financial resources that will be required for the alterations and benefits that those will bring. This paper aims to identify the new service line features for the L&D department, segment the market of consumers, and display the cost and benefit analysis table.
Revised Service Offering
St. Anthony Medical Center should include more options into its service line offering. Previous assessments of the consumer’s needs and expectations present an understanding that the following should be added to the existing L&D services – manicures and pedicures, and free of charge educational lessons for mothers.
Features of the beauty services would include an ability to receive manicure and pedicure before labor. The lessons on motherhood can be offered online through St. Anthony’s website or in the facility itself, twice a week.
Advantages of the courses include the ability to provide prospective mothers with information regarding specifics of the labor and care for infants presented by an accredited specialist that work at St. Anthony’s. The advantage of the beauty related services is the ability to distract mothers from anxiety before labor (“Manicures and pedicures,” 2017). The consumers would benefit from the manicures and pedicures because it would help them relax and feel more comfortable, while lessons would prepare them with for delivery and provide them with basic knowledge regarding caring for a baby. Areas of uncertainty include the actual demand for additional services such as manicures and pedicures.
Market Segments
Table 1. Market segments in the Minneapolis metropolitan area (create by the author).
Table 1 presents the analysis of the target population in the Minneapolis Metropolitan area and specific features that will be tailored towards a segment of individuals. The approach applied for this examination is demographic segmentation, because the primary aspects that are considered are gender, culture, and income. Firstly, the overall number of inhabitants in this area is 3,600,618, and approximately 50% of them are women (“Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington,” 2017).
The number of married couples exceeds 53%, however, St. Pual would target single individuals as well. According to Census Reporter, last year women aged 15 to 50 gave birth in this location; therefore, this age group is considered in the analysis (“Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington,” 2017). Additionally, the segmentation recognized the per capita and median household incomes, as those determine whether individuals would be interested in extra services or free features. The assumptions based on which the segmentation was performed are the factual data from the Census Bureau regarding the number of births and population in Minneapolis.
Action Plan
The primary idea of this marketing strategy is to adjust the existing service line of the L&D department to the consumer’s expectations and needs and communicate it properly. Firstly, according to Debra (2011), within the healthcare industry consumer needs are facilitated by their emotions. Therefore, although St. Anthony offers excellent services in terms of quality and health outcomes, it is necessary to add features that would be emotionally engaging for the patients. This will be facilitated through three main communication channels – social media, website, educational lessons.
Firstly, the administrative personnel of the L&D unit will have to set up social media accounts for the department using all significant platforms – Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. It is necessary to tailor the content for each platform, for instance, focus on photos for Instagram, and on short texts for Twitter to leverage each channel. The clinic can hire a photographer to have professional pictures taken and use its administrative staff to update regularly. Additionally, according to Gagon (2016), an appropriate marketing plan requires one to do the following – “plan, execute, measure, monitor, and improve” (p. 56).
Therefore, the L&D will have to evaluate the outcomes of the proposed strategy and make changes to the proposed plan along the way. The primary approach to identifying the effectiveness is comparing the number of patients before and after the implementation of new methods and revenue collected from additional services.
Costs and Benefits
Each channel of communication with the L&D consumers will require financial investment from the St. Anthony’s Medical Center, however, the entire budget should not exceed $10,000 per year. This limits the establishment’s ability to hire personnel for full-time work and requires freelance or part-time employees. A significant challenge with this cost and benefit analysis is the approach chosen for measuring the benefits of the intervention because these strategies are aimed at raising awareness regarding the services at L&D and do not necessarily result in sales.
In this case, the primary objective is to attract more patients to St. Paul and achieve a break-even. Therefore, the monetary value assigned to each benefit is based on the assumption that each new patient will bring additional revenue of $13,023.93 (“Paying for care,” n.d.). The expenses for manicures and pedicures including salary and payment for materials will be covered by an out of pocket payment from patients; therefore, it is not included in this analysis.
The administrative personnel that will be engaged in the social media promotion will have to dedicate 10 hours per week for assessing information and creating updates, and the payment for each hour is $17 based on an average salary, resulting in a fee of $2040 a year (“Office administrator salaries,” 2019). The minimum hourly rate for a freelance photographer in the area is $50, and it is anticipated that the hospital will hire this specialist once in two months for 5 hours each time, resulting in a $1500 payment.
Finally, an essential component of the analysis is free educational courses, which will be carried out in the St. Anthony’s hospital by the physicians. The establishment can have one lesson each month for an hour, which will cost approximately $1272 a year based on the $106 per hour rate for medical professionals (“Physician salaries,” 2019). Therefore, the overall costs that the L&D will have to invest are $5172. It is anticipated that this activity will bring at least ten new patients a month, resulting in a total benefit of $130,239. The appendix contains a table that calculates the overall benefits and costs over the five years.
Recommendations
The cost and benefit analysis presented in the Appendix displays the chosen marketing strategy and an understanding that St. Anthony’s L&D should invest in the initiative. Firstly, the total expenses do not exceed the total budget of $10,000 per year. Moreover, the L&D will be able to use the remaining $4828 for previously used communication channels. In order to prioritize each intervention St. Anthony would have to test each approach for several months and gather data from its patients to identify which channel is the most profitable. The rationale for the marketing plan can be evaluated based on the evidence for each assumption.
Conclusion
Overall, the action plan implies that St. Anthony can utilize the following three communication channels to attract more patients to its L&D unit – free of charge lessons, social media, and personal website. For the execution of this strategy, the establishment will have to invest $5172 in the selected activities. The analysis of benefits provides an understanding of the fact that the establishment should proceed with the plan.
References
Debra, C. (2011). Steps to growing your practice: What works and what doesn’t – marketing plan 2012. The Journal of Medical Practice Management, 27(3), 140-143.
Gagon, E. (2016). The marketer’s action plan (MAP): Six steps to developing effective marketing plans in B2B marketing programs. International Management Review, 12(2), 56-59.
Manicures and pedicures can be good for your health. (2017).
Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI metro area. (2017).
Office administrator salaries in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN area. (2019). Web.
Paying for care. (n.d.). Web.
Physician salaries in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN area. (2019). Web.
Appendix
Table 2. Cost and Benefit Analysis for five years (created by the author).