Personal and nonpersonal communication channels

Health Services Marketing

HSA 305

Designing and Managing Integrated Marketing Communications

Kotler, P., Shalowitz, J., & Stevens, R. J. (2008). Strategic marketing for health care organizations. San

Francisco: Jossey-Bass

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Welcome to Health Services Marketing. In this lesson, we will discuss Designing and Managing Integrated Marketing Communications.

Please go to the next slide.

Objectives

Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to:
Describe the health care system and the role of marketing
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Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to:

Describe the health care system and the role of marketing.

Please go to the next slide.

Marketing Communications Role

Represent the voice of the brand
The primary mechanisms implemented to establish a dialogue and build relationships with consumers
Demonstrate consumers how and why a product is implemented, by what kind of person, and where and when
Educate consumers regarding who makes the product and what the organization and brand represent
Can provide consumers an incentive or reward for trial or usage
Enable organizations to link their brands to other people, places, events, brands, experiences, feelings, and things
In this lesson, we will focus on how marketing communications work, what marketing communications can do for an organization, and how holistic marketers combine and integrate marketing communications. Specifically, we will examine the different forms of mass or personal communications such as advertising, sales promotion, events and experiences and public relations and publicity.

Marketing communications are the instruments organizations use to relate the benefits, positioning, and characters of their brands to consumers. In essence it:

Represent the voice of the brand;

Are the primary mechanisms implemented to establish a dialogue and build relationships with consumers;

Demonstrate consumer how and why a product is implemented, by what kind of person, and where and when;

Educate consumer regarding who makes the product and what the organization and brand represent;

Can provide consumers an incentive or reward for trial or usage;

And

Enable organizations to link their brands to other people, places, events, brands, experiences, feelings, and thing.

All of these are ways in which marketing communications can contribute to brand equity. By establishing the brand in memory and crafting a brand image is how these can contribute to brand equity.

Please go to the next slide.

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Marketing Communications and Brand Equity

Communication mix
Marketing activities
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Marketing communication mix has six major modes of communications:

Advertising. This is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.

Sales promotion. This is a variety of short-tem incentives to encourage trial or purchase of a product or service.

Events and experiences are organization-sponsored activities and programs designed to create daily or special brand-related interactions.

Public relations and publicity. These are a variety of programs designed to promote or protect an organization’s image or its individual products.

Personal selling. This is face to face interaction with one or more prospective purchasers for the purpose of making presentations, answering questions, and procuring orders.

And

Direct marketing. This is the use of mail, telephone, fax, email, or Internet to communicate directly with or solicit response or dialogue from specific customers and prospects.

Marketing communications transcends these platforms. The product’s packaging shape and color, the way the individuals delivering the service, the physical surroundings and décor, the organization’s stationery communicate something to the buyers. These types of brand contract provides an impression which can strengthen or weaken a customer’s perception of the organization.

Marketing communications activities contribute to brand equity. By creating awareness of the brand, linking the right associations to the brand image in consumer’ memory, eliciting positive brand judgments or feelings, and facilitating a stronger consumer brand connection are activities that contribute to brand equity. In general, all marketing communications activities must be integrated to provide a consistent message and achieve the strategic positioning. Brand awareness is a function of the number of brand related exposures and experiences that have been accumulated by the consumer; therefore, anything that causes the consumer to notice and pay attention to the brand can enhance brand awareness. The beginning of marketing communications is an audit of all possible interactions that consumers in the target market may have with the brand and the organization. Marketers need to examine the experiences and impressions that will have the most influence at each stage of the buying process. Hence, this will assist them in allocating communication funds more efficiently and design and implement adequate communications programs. After the marketers have acquired the insights of the consumer, marketing communications can be assessed according to their ability to build brand equity and drive brand sales. It is very important for marketers to evaluate all different possible communication options that are available according to effectiveness criteria to determine how well it works as well as efficiency considerations to determine how well it works given the cost.

Please go to the next slide.

Communications Process Models

Macro Model of the Communications Process
Nine elements
Micro Model of Consumer Responses
Macro and micro models are two models that provide helpful structures that assist marketers in understanding the basic elements of effective communication. Macro model of the Communications Process has nine elements:

Sender

Receiver

Message

Media

Message encoding

Decoding

Response

Feedback

Noise.

The sender and the receiver are the major parties of communication. Message and the media are used to send the message. Message encoding, decoding, response, and feedback are four elements that represent major communications functions. The last element is noise or random and competing messages that may interfere with the intended communication. The macro model focuses on the key factors in effective communication:

Senders must be familiar with what the audiences they want to reach as well as which responses they want to obtain;

Senders must encode their messages to that the target audience can decode them.

Senders must transmit the message through media that reach the target audience.

Senders must develop feedback channels to monitor the responses.

The more the send’s field of experience overlaps the receiver’s, the more effective the message is likely to be.

Selective attention, distortion, and retention process may be happening during communication. Selective attention is when people filter messages to avoid sensory overload. Selective distortion is when receivers of the messages will hear and process what fits into their belief systems. Selective retention is when people will retain in long-term memory only a small part of the message that reaches them.

Micro Model of Consumer Responses focuses on consumers’ specific responses to communications. AIDA, Hierarchy of Effects, Innovation Adoption, and Communication models are all classic response hierarchy models that assume that the buyer passes through cognitive, affective, and behavioral states in evaluating marketing communications messages. There are three potential sequences:

Learn-feel-do. This is sufficient when the audience has high involvement with a product category perceived to have high differentiation. This is evident in purchasing cosmetic surgery or an assisted living property.

Do-feel-learn. This is the second sequence when the audience has high involvement but perceives little or no differentiation with the product category. This is evident in purchasing hospital emergency services or cholesterol lowering medication.

Learn-do-feel. This is the third sequence when the audience has low involvement and perceives little differentiation within the product category. This is evident in purchasing travel vaccine or health insurance.

Please go to the next slide.

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Eight Steps in Effective Communications

Identify the target audience
Determine the objectives
Design the communications
Select the communications channels
Establish the budget
Choose the media mix
Measure results
Manage the integrated marketing communications process
There are eight steps in effective communications. The first one is identify the target audience. There must be a clear target audience that includes potential buyers of the organization’s products and services, current users, deciders or influencers, individuals, groups, certain publics, or general public. The target population is so essential and influential that the communicator makes decision regarding what to say, how to say it, when to say it, where to say it as well as to whom to say it.

The second step is determining communications objectives. In this step, four possible communications objectives can be identified;

Category need

Brand awareness

Brand attitude

And

Brand purchase intention.

Design the communications is the third step in which designing communications to meet the desired response requires solving the following three problems:

What to say or also know as the message strategy

How to say it or the creative strategy;

And

Who should say it or the message source.

The fourth step is selecting the communication channels. It is important to note that choosing efficient channels to carry the message becomes more difficult as channels of communication become more divided and chaotic. There are two different channels to choose from: personal communication channels and nonpersonal communication channels. Personal communication channels have two ore more people communicating directly with each other. It can be face to face, person to audience, over the telephone, or through email. Another vehicle is using instant messaging and independent sites to collect consumer reviews. The effectiveness of personal communications channels come from individualized presentation and feedback. Nonpersonal communication channels are communications meant for more than one person. These channels include media, sales promotions, events and experiences, and public relations.

The next step is establishing the budget which is one of the most difficult marketing decisions to make regarding how much to spend on promotion. There are four common methods for deciding on a budget:

Affordable method. This method ignores the role of promotion as an investment and the immediate impact of promotion on sales volume. This method is based on setting the promotion budget at what they organization thinks the company can afford. The caveat to this method is that it leads to an uncertain annual budget which makes long range planning difficult.

Percentage of sales method. This method is when a company set promotion expenditures at a specified percentage of sales or of the sales price. Advocates believe that this method links promotion expenditures to the movement of corporate sales over the business cycle which focuses on the interrelationship of promotion and selling price and unit profit and encourages stability when competing firms spend approximately the same percentage of their sales on promotion.

Competitive parity method

Objective and task method

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Advertising

Development and management of advertising program
Setting the advertising objectives
Deciding on the advertising budget
Developing the advertising campaign
Deciding on Media
Evaluating advertising effectiveness
Advertising is a form of paid nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by a sponsor. An ad can be the most cost effective way to get the message out. Many business and organizations use communication companies or advertising agencies to create advertising campaigns as well as select and buy media. Advertising is instrumental in establishing long term image for products and services as well as facilitating quick sales. It has the ability to reach geographically dispersed buyers.

Qualities of advertising:

Pervasiveness

Amplified expressiveness

Impersonality

Developing and managing an advertising program

Five major decisions of communications:

Mission

Money

Message

Media

Measurement

Setting the advertising objectives

Informative advertising

Persuasive advertising

Reminder advertising

Reinforcement advertising

Deciding on the advertising budget

Product life cycle stage

Market share and consumer base

Competition and clutter

Advertising frequency

Product substitutability

Developing an advertising campaign

Three steps to developing a message strategy:

One. Message generation and evaluation

Two. Creative development and execution.

And

Three. Social responsibility review.

Deciding on media.

Steps:

Deciding on desired reach, frequency, and impact

Choosing among major media types

Selecting specific media vehicles

Deciding on media timing

Evaluating effectiveness.

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Sales Promotion

Sales Promotion Tools
Major decisions
Pretesting, implementing, controlling, and evaluating the program
Sales promotion is a key ingredient n marketing campaigns which consists of a variety of incentive tools that are designed to get others to buy specific products or services. It provides an incentive to the consumer to purchase where advertising gives a reason to purchase. The tools for sales promotion for consumer promotion , trade promotion, and business and sales force promotion.

Free samples, free management advisory service, incentive type promotion are some tools that have specific objectives. Free samples seeks to get consumers to try out a product or as service whereas a free management advisory service seeks to obtain long term relationships with a retailer.

In making major sales promotion decisions, an organization must establish the following:

Objectives. The objectives come from broader promotion objectives which comes from more basic marketing objectives developed for the product or service. For consumers, the objectives are designed with the purpose of getting the consumers to purchase larger size units, building trials among nonusers, and attracting switchers away from competitors’ brands. On the wholesaler side, the purpose of the objectives is to persuade retailers to carry new items and higher levels of inventory, incentivizing off season buying, encouraging stocking of related items, offsetting competitive promotions, building brand loyalty, and gain entry into new retail outlets. For the sales force, the purpose of the objective is to encourage support of new products or services and to get them to do more prospecting and encouraging more off season sales.

Select tools. These tools can be consumer promotion or trade promotion tools.

Develop the program. In developing a program, marketers have to determine the size of the incentive, establish conditions for participation, decide on the duration of promotion, choose a distribution mechanism, establish timing of promotion, and determine the total sales promotion budget.

Pretest, implement, control, and evaluate the program. Pretests can help to determine if the tools used are appropriate. There are three methods of evaluations: sales data, consumer surveys, and experiments.

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Public Relations and Publicity

Marketing public relations
Major decisions in marketing public relations
Public relations is a traditional promotional tool in health care.

Appeal based on three distinctive qualities:

High credibility

Ability to catch buyers off guard

Dramatization

Public relations (PR)

Functions of PR:

Press relations. Provides positive news and information regarding the organization

Product publicity. Publicizes sponsoring efforts regarding specific products.

Corporate communication. Provides understanding of the organization through internal and external communications.

Lobbying. Working with legislators and government officials to promote or defeat legislation and regulation.

Counseling. Advising management regarding public issues and organization positions and image during good and bad times.

Market Public Relations supports corporate or product promotion and image making. They engage in the following tasks.

Assisting in the launch of new products

Assisting in repositioning a mature product

Building interest in a product category

Influencing specific target groups

Defending products that have encountered public problems

Building the corporate image in a way that reflect s favorably on its products.

Major Marketing Public Relations Decisions in determining when and how to use market public relations. They are as follows:

Establishing the marketing objectives

Choosing messages and vehicles

Implementing and evaluating the plan

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Events and Experiences

Events objectives
Major decisions with events
There are reasons why marketers indicate they sponsor events. They are as follows:

Identifying with a particular target market or life style

Increasing awareness of company or product name

Creating or reinforcing consumer perceptions of key brand image associations

Enhancing corporate image dimensions

Creating experiences and evoking feelings

Express commitment to the community or on social issues

Entertain key clients or reward key employees

and

Permit merchandising or promotional opportunities.

In developing successful sponsored events, the following is involved:

Choosing the appropriate events,

Designing the optimal sponsorship program for the event

and

Measuring the effects of events

Please go to the next slide.

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Factors in Setting Marketing Communications Mix

Type of product market
Consumer readiness to purchase
Stage in product life cycle
Organization’s market position
Cost effectiveness of the promotional tools
Advertising and publicity
In order for an organization to develop its communication mix, the following must be considered:

Type of product market

Consumer readiness to make a purchase

Stage in the product life cycle.

Organization’s market position

Cost effectiveness of the promotional tools.

And

Advertising and publicity

Please go to the next slide.

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Managing integrated marketing communications process

Coordinating media
Implementation of integrated marketing communication
Coverage
Contribution
Commonality
Complementary
Versatility
Cost
Integrated marketing communication is the management of all organizational communications that builds positive relationships with potential customers and stakeholders including employees, legislators, the media, the financial community, and other segments of the public.

A combination of personal and nonpersonal communication channels help to achieve a maximum impact. Multiple media within a well defined time frame contributes to more targets being reached and impacted.

Coverage. This is the proportion of the audience reached by each communication option used as well as how much overlap there is among communication options.

Contribution. This is regarding the inherent capacity of marketing communication effort to design the desired response from consumers in the absence of exposure to any other contract option.

Commonality. This is the extent to which common relations are reinforced across communication options.

Complementary. This is the extent to which different relationships and linkages are emphasized across communication options.

Versatility. This is the extent to which a marketing communications option is rich and works for various groups of consumers.

Cost. This is the evaluations of marketing communications on all of the above criteria. They must be weighed against their cost to arrive at the most effective and efficient program.

Please go to the next slide.

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Summary

Successful communication elements
Developing effective marketing communications steps
Determining the best communication mix
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We have now reached the end of this lesson. Let’s take a look at what we’ve covered.

First we looked at the importance of health organizations having communications skills. Successful communications include the following elements:

Sender;

Encoding;

Message;

Media;

Decoding;

Receiver;

Response;

Noise; and

Feedback.

Then we looked at developing effective marketing communications. There are eight steps:

Identify the target audience;

Determine communication objectives;

Design the communications;

Select the communication channels;

Estimate the total marketing communications budget;

Decide on the media mix;

Measure the results; and

Manage integrated communications.

All of these steps have different activities and tools.

Finally, each health care organization has to determine the best mix to make the communications tools of the following:

Advertising;

Sales promotion;

Public relations and publicity;

Events and experiences;

Personal selling; and

Direct marketing.

This concludes this lecture.

*

Welcome to Health Services Marketing. In this lesson, we will discuss Designing and Managing Integrated Marketing Communications.

Please go to the next slide.

*

Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to:

Describe the health care system and the role of marketing.

Please go to the next slide.

In this lesson, we will focus on how marketing communications work, what marketing communications can do for an organization, and how holistic marketers combine and integrate marketing communications. Specifically, we will examine the different forms of mass or personal communications such as advertising, sales promotion, events and experiences and public relations and publicity.

Marketing communications are the instruments organizations use to relate the benefits, positioning, and characters of their brands to consumers. In essence it:

Represent the voice of the brand;

Are the primary mechanisms implemented to establish a dialogue and build relationships with consumers;

Demonstrate consumer how and why a product is implemented, by what kind of person, and where and when;

Educate consumer regarding who makes the product and what the organization and brand represent;

Can provide consumers an incentive or reward for trial or usage;

And

Enable organizations to link their brands to other people, places, events, brands, experiences, feelings, and thing.

All of these are ways in which marketing communications can contribute to brand equity. By establishing the brand in memory and crafting a brand image is how these can contribute to brand equity.

Please go to the next slide.

*

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Marketing communication mix has six major modes of communications:

Advertising. This is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.

Sales promotion. This is a variety of short-tem incentives to encourage trial or purchase of a product or service.

Events and experiences are organization-sponsored activities and programs designed to create daily or special brand-related interactions.

Public relations and publicity. These are a variety of programs designed to promote or protect an organization’s image or its individual products.

Personal selling. This is face to face interaction with one or more prospective purchasers for the purpose of making presentations, answering questions, and procuring orders.

And

Direct marketing. This is the use of mail, telephone, fax, email, or Internet to communicate directly with or solicit response or dialogue from specific customers and prospects.

Marketing communications transcends these platforms. The product’s packaging shape and color, the way the individuals delivering the service, the physical surroundings and décor, the organization’s stationery communicate something to the buyers. These types of brand contract provides an impression which can strengthen or weaken a customer’s perception of the organization.

Marketing communications activities contribute to brand equity. By creating awareness of the brand, linking the right associations to the brand image in consumer’ memory, eliciting positive brand judgments or feelings, and facilitating a stronger consumer brand connection are activities that contribute to brand equity. In general, all marketing communications activities must be integrated to provide a consistent message and achieve the strategic positioning. Brand awareness is a function of the number of brand related exposures and experiences that have been accumulated by the consumer; therefore, anything that causes the consumer to notice and pay attention to the brand can enhance brand awareness. The beginning of marketing communications is an audit of all possible interactions that consumers in the target market may have with the brand and the organization. Marketers need to examine the experiences and impressions that will have the most influence at each stage of the buying process. Hence, this will assist them in allocating communication funds more efficiently and design and implement adequate communications programs. After the marketers have acquired the insights of the consumer, marketing communications can be assessed according to their ability to build brand equity and drive brand sales. It is very important for marketers to evaluate all different possible communication options that are available according to effectiveness criteria to determine how well it works as well as efficiency considerations to determine how well it works given the cost.

Please go to the next slide.

Macro and micro models are two models that provide helpful structures that assist marketers in understanding the basic elements of effective communication. Macro model of the Communications Process has nine elements:

Sender

Receiver

Message

Media

Message encoding

Decoding

Response

Feedback

Noise.

The sender and the receiver are the major parties of communication. Message and the media are used to send the message. Message encoding, decoding, response, and feedback are four elements that represent major communications functions. The last element is noise or random and competing messages that may interfere with the intended communication. The macro model focuses on the key factors in effective communication:

Senders must be familiar with what the audiences they want to reach as well as which responses they want to obtain;

Senders must encode their messages to that the target audience can decode them.

Senders must transmit the message through media that reach the target audience.

Senders must develop feedback channels to monitor the responses.

The more the send’s field of experience overlaps the receiver’s, the more effective the message is likely to be.