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Strategic Marketing Plans Aligned with Goals
Healthcare Organization and Management · Chapter 16: Healthcare Marketing: Customer Relations and Ethical ConsiderationsSection 16.2 · lesson 95 of 1059 min · free with a free account
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In this lesson
Writing a marketing plan that serves hospital goals and fits capacity.
- List the nine sections of a workable marketing plan
- Apply the two-part alignment test to a marketing objective
- Perform a capacity check before launching promotion
- Compare percentage-of-revenue, competitive parity, and objective-and-task budgeting
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Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,133 words). Read along, or search it.
Opening Case
If This Plan Works, What Breaks
Colleen Lawson is writing next year's marketing plan for Larkfield's sleep center. The goal: grow referrals so the center runs nineteen studies a week instead of fourteen. Helen Wu, the chief executive, reads the draft and asks one question. If this plan works, what breaks? It sounds like a strange question. In health care, it's often the most important one a plan has to answer.
Purpose
A Plan Commits More Than It Predicts
A marketing plan states what the hospital intends to achieve in its markets over a set period, how, with what resources, and how it will know whether it worked. Its job is less to predict than to commit. It forces the sequence in order: situation, objective, segment, position, mix, measure, all written down. That makes later review possible. And it stops marketing from becoming a string of reactions to whichever internal request arrived last.
Plan Structure
Nine Sections of a Workable Plan
Nine sections carry a workable plan. The situation analysis: the market, Larkfield's position in it, and the changes underway. Objectives, measurable and dated. Target segments: who will be served, and so who won't. Positioning, against a named alternative. Mix decisions for every element of the mix. A budget that puts money on each element. And a timeline that sequences the work. Measures: what will be tracked, and what result is expected. Finally the review cycle: when the plan gets examined, and what would trigger revising it sooner.
Alignment Test
Serving an Adopted Objective
A marketing objective should be specific, measurable and dated, and attached to an objective the hospital has adopted. Attachment is what separates a plan from a wish list. The alignment test has two parts, and both must pass. First, does the plan serve an objective the hospital actually adopted, or one marketing simply assumed? Second, would the hospital want the result if the plan succeeds? That's a different question. A plan can serve a stated goal, in a way leaders would reject if the consequence were spelled out.
Capacity Check
When a Plan Fails by Working
The most common way a health care marketing plan fails is by working. Demand outruns the service, waits grow, existing patients suffer, staff carry the strain, and the budget has bought a reputational cost. So the capacity check belongs inside the plan. One: how much extra volume will the plan create if it meets its objective? For Colleen, five more studies a week, from fourteen to nineteen. Two: can the service absorb it at current staffing? Four beds, five nights, is twenty studies. Nineteen fits, barely. But a sleep technologist post is vacant, so only four nights run: sixteen. Three: if not, what must be in place before the first external message, and who owns it? Here, a technologist hired, owned by the center's manager. Without part three, the plan isn't finished.
Budget Methods
Three Ways to Set a Budget
Then the budget. Three methods are common, and they're not equal. Percentage of revenue takes last year's revenue times a chosen percent. It imposes almost no discipline. Its failure: spending rises when revenue rises and falls when revenue falls, the opposite of what a position under pressure needs. Competitive parity spends what comparable hospitals spend. It borrows someone else's judgment, assumes their goals and capacity match yours, and the estimate is usually unreliable. Objective and task names the objective, lists the tasks needed, and costs each one. It takes management time, and the total may exceed what's available. That discomfort is the method working. It turns a hidden decision about which objective goes short into an explicit one. It's the only method where the money follows the goal.
Quick Check
Matching a Rival's Ad Spending
Quick check. A board member proposes a budget for next year's sleep center ads: whatever Northgate Medical Center spent promoting its sleep lab. Which method is that? Pause, and decide. Competitive parity. The number comes from a rival, not from Larkfield's own objective. Objective and task can sound close, because it's also a specific figure. But nobody listed the tasks the plan needs, or what they'd cost.
Timeline and Owners
Capacity Work Comes First
Sequencing matters more in health care than most marketing texts admit, because capacity takes a long time to build. Filling a vacant post, adding a clinic session, changing a roster, configuring a booking pathway in the record system: each takes longer than making ads, and each must be done before demand arrives. So a credible timeline works backward from launch, and puts the capacity work first. Ownership is the other requirement. Almost every line depends on a function marketing doesn't run: operations for capacity, finance for prices, informatics for booking, human resources for staffing, clinical leaders for the service itself. Each dependency needs a named owner who has agreed to it. A plan that lists dependencies without owners is a list of assumptions.
Recurring Risks
Four Risks Including the Wrong Segment
Four risks recur. Capacity risk: succeeding beyond what can be served. Reputational risk: a promise made and not kept, which is worse than silence. Regulatory risk: claims that can't be backed up, privacy rules on using data for targeting, and rules on how prices and services are described. And the easiest to miss: succeeding in the wrong segment. Volume the service can handle arrives, but it crowds out the people the service was built for. Every measure looks healthy while that happens. You catch it only by measuring who the volume is, not just how much.
Quick Check
Full Classes With the Wrong Patients
Quick check. Larkfield's new diabetes education program was set up for uninsured adults on the east side. After a strong campaign, classes are full, mostly with well-insured patients from across town. Which risk is that? Pause, and decide. Wrong-segment risk: succeeding with the wrong people. The volume is real, but it crowds out the people the program exists for. Capacity is tempting, since classes are full. But the program is coping fine. The problem is who fills the seats, and only a measure of who attends would show it.
Review Triggers
Set Revision Triggers in Advance
Last, review. A plan gets examined at a set interval against the measures it named. It should also say in advance what would reopen it mid-cycle: a wait time above a threshold, a conversion rate below a level, a change in capacity. Setting the trigger ahead of time settles whether things are serious enough. Otherwise, that question gets answered by how much has already been spent.
Resolution
A Slower Plan That Won't Damage Service
Back to Helen's question. Colleen's revised plan answers it. No promotion goes out until the technologist is hired. Capacity becomes a standing section, rechecked at every review, not just once at the start. And a trigger is written in: if the wait for a first study passes three weeks, promotion pauses automatically. It's a slower plan. But it won't damage the service every time it works.
Key Takeaways
Commit, Check Capacity, Set Triggers
To recap. A plan commits, in nine sections. It must serve an adopted objective, with a result the hospital wants. Check capacity before the first message, and name who fixes it. Objective and task is the only budget method that starts from the goal. And set the revision trigger before you spend.
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Healthcare Organization and Management (Health 302) is a self-paced online course of 105 video lessons in 18 chapters, from health systems and the law to ethics, leadership, teams, strategy, informatics, finance, quality, human resources, marketing and evidence-based practice. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.
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