CHAPTER 25
Marketing Overview
Megan Lamy
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MARKETING IS NOT JUST a matter of fulfilling a checklist of activities but is rather a process that requires much thought, analysis, creativity, implementation, and evaluation. The science of marketing is complex in that you are formulating and integrating a strategy across multiple delivery channels, an array of services and products, multiple business units, a large number of customers, and frequently varying customer goals—all of this within an ever-changing, competitive environment. Yet by applying the right marketing tools and processes, you’ll be on your way to executing an effective marketing strategy to further your urgent care company. The order in which you approach this marketing process is important. Follow the sequence described in this chapter.
An effective marketing strategy springs from a foundation of strong marketing analysis, including analyses of your customers, competition, and company. To determine how you are going to reach new customers, you must first determine who your targeted customers are, what the competition is offering, how they are targeting customers, and how your company should position itself in the marketplace.
Defining your target customers is one of the first steps in identifying your marketing strategy, which in turn will determine the marketing messages, campaigns, and channels you use. The urgent care industry is fortunate in that its services apply to a broad audience (adults, seniors, children and babies, professionals, families, and so forth). The challenge is that your marketing messages should be targeted and tailored specifically toward each of the various audiences. By segmenting your target market—that is, dividing it into subsets of customers with common needs or characteristics—you can better reach these various audiences with more targeted messages that match your company’s benefits with their specific needs. Segmenting options to consider are segmenting by age, sex, geography, job function, industry, seniority, economic status (for discount programs), insurance plan type (such as Medicare), or customer life cycle. Market segmentation should be carefully considered for each individual urgent care clinic because the demographics, trends, and opportunities within each clinic’s market can vary. So how do you determine who your targeted audiences are?