Mayberry General A Guide for Effective Rural Healthcare Marketing

Requirement 3: Alignment of Stakeholders

The third component necessary to market is the alignment of the keystakeholders.

Just because Mayberry General wants to build and market a new center or service does not mean that all keystakeholders are on board. As the marketing officer you have to have an understanding of all the providers involved in the delivery of the service, and perhaps what their key motivators are. For example sometimes the physicians are comfortable with their current level of work in servicing their patient base and are not keen on adding new customers. Mayberry General may see an opportunity to grow business by developing a new center – but if the physicians who need to service those patients are not in alignment that they want new work – the effort will fail.

Case in point – A hospital developed a treatment center with state-of-the art technology. After the partnership was made with the device manufactuer, the hospital, and a passionate physician – I was asked to market the center. No matter what we did, we could not seem to drive up the volume for the new center. Our call to action demonstrated that inquiries were coming in from potential patients, so our marketing efforts were working. Upon further investigation, we found that the passionate physician’s peers were invested in another competitive treatment technology within their own practice, and if they referred patients to our center for treatment – they were being reimbursed less for our procedure. As a result, the referrals were going to the physician office where the patients stayed. Since their was a misalignment between the hospital and the physicians, the center failed and the marketing resources were wasted. This was a costly lesson all around.

I know many hospital systems and physician practices that work from “big ideas” without keystakeholder alignment. Without the direct alignment of keystakeholders the marketing effort may succeed but the long term outcome might be wasted resources and frustrated customers. Your best bet is to make sure all agree to grow business and are invested in sucess of the proposed service/program before you take to market.

Next time we will discuss the fourth componet to success – marketing resources.

Requirement 2: Capacity

As the marketing officer for Mayberry General it is essential that you represent the interest of consumers responding to any marketing effort. Therefore, the second requirement for effective marketing is capacity to respond to and serve the customer base in a reasonable time frame. Believe it or not I have been in marketing request meetings where the doc, or the service line leader has said to me, “We need to market our family practice services” – but most of the practices are not accepting new patients. What prompted the urgent marketing need – a competitor ad of course! In this case, if you marketed this service are you being genuine? How would you feel as the customer trying to get in? Are you enhancing or hurting your brand by marketing a service with limited capacity?

I know it irks me to no end to respond to a Sunday ad to find the store had a very limited quantity of the item I traveled in to purchase. From a healthcare perspective consumers expect to receive a timely appointment with the physician or specialty treatment. An appointment 4 weeks out can be much too long for a primary care appointment; however, it may be perfectly acceptable for a specialty surgical consult. For this reason it is important to understand what the expectations of “reasonable timeframes” are for the customer of the proposed service to be marketed.

Whatever you do – never over promise and under deliver! Consumers will likely not trust you moving forward the next time they see an ad for Mayberry General. I always advise never to market a product or service with limited capacity.

Next time we will discuss – alignment.

Requirement 1: Understanding Your Market

So the doc has called and said we need more marketing for his service. As the steward of the marketing resouces for Mayberry General- What do you do now? I recommend considering the organizational requirements for marketing. The first being to gain an understnding of your market and your customer.

At minimum, I like to check the following:
Does marketing the service align with Mayberry General’s mission and vision? Will marketing the service assist in building your brand? Is there pressure in your market to meet and unmet demand (needs and wants) of a cutomer group? Who is that customer group? Is there a competitive service near Mayberry that takes part of this business, or do you have all or nearly all of the market share already? Is the service profitable and if so for who? How is the service delivered? Where is the proposed service delivered?

To truly understand your market, you will want to conduct a arket assessment as part of a strategic marketing plan. We will discuss that process in a later blog series. However, it is important to obtain a basic understanding of the dynamics and current pressure within your market driving the needs to market a service.

Next time we will discuss the second requirement – Capacity.

As the marketing director, or chief marketing officer for Mayberry General (our fictitious hospital name) it’s probably not uncommon that you may receive a phone call from a doctor or service leader who believes “We need to be doing more marketing for my service.”

In my career this has been a discussion that is frequent and sometimes challenging, especially with those passionate key stakeholders. I have used the following Basic Requirements as a litmus test to determine if the request was valid and worth further dialogue and investigation.

The Basic Requirements for Marketing are:
1. An understanding of your market
2. Capacity of the service
3. Alignment of the keystakeholders
4. The organization’s resouces and capability to support new marketing initatives

In order for you to grow business for Mayberry General you need to have an understanding of all of these elements.

My next few postings will explain each of the elements in more depth and illustrate how the absence of one element could lead you into the marketing abyss.