Marketing Goals, Strategies, Objectives, And Tactics

Benefits of Marketing Goals, Strategies, Objectives, and Tactics The importance of marketing within the healthcare industry has grown over the past few years and will continue to grow. Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as “an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders” (Kotler, Shalowitz, & Stevens, 2008). It is obvious we are exposed to marketing daily. From a physician trying to attract new patients, hospitals with a new state-of-the-art treatment facility, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention running a campaign to increase annual flu …show more content…
Knowing why the medical facility was formed, what it has accomplished, or what it is trying to accomplish is a good place to start when determining the goals, strategies, objectives, and tactics of how to market to the public (Kotler, et al., 2008). Goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable, and tangible (Gandolf, 2014). Goals also need to be tied to the mission statement of the medical facility (Kotler, et al., 2008). A plan to achieve those goals is considered a strategy. Strategic planning occurs at four levels: corporate, division, strategic business unit, and product or services (Kotler, et al., 2008). Objectives are measurable steps taken to achieve a strategy (Gandolf, 2014). Tactics are tools used to pursue the objectives that are associated with a strategy (Gandolf, 2014). “For organizations, managers, and employees to be successful more emphasis needs to be placed on making sure every employee and every manager knows what he or she needs to accomplish in the present and future” (Feliciano, 2008). “To ensure its success, each service level within a business unit must contribute to developing the overall marketing plan for the organization” (Kotler, et al., …show more content…
“There are four types of benchmarking: internal, competitive, functional, and generic” (Benson, 1994). Collecting data based on these categories will help identify an organization’s standards and it will help determine whether or not the organizational goals are being met. In the event of internal disagreements, data that has been collected should be reviewed to help show how the original marketing strategy is or is not working. If these disagreements or conflicts cannot be solved, surveying the customers to see how they feel about how the organization is performing, can be a useful tool (Cushman, 2016). When it comes to patient satisfaction, collected data can be useful and should be used to keep their patients coming back when a need arises (Fullerton & McCullough, 2014). Organizations and physicians need to make the retention of patients, which is a basic tenet of marketing, one of their main focuses (Fullerton & McCullough,