Marketing Elements

Marketing Elements

Mayo Clinic is a non-profit healthcare organization whose headquarters are in Jacksonville in Florida. The healthcare organization offers comprehensive medical programs and facilities about patient care, health education, and research. The organization provides treatment for different kinds of diseases, including chronic infections, Infectious diseases, tumors, gender health, among others (Olsen & Dacy, 2014).

The organization is built on principles of inspiring and contributing to wellbeing through the provision of best medical care to all patients. The healthcare organization vision is to become the most trusted healthcare partner by providing an incomparable experience through prioritizing patients’ needs (Olsen & Dacy, 2014). In analyzing the market performance, this paper provides a SWOT analysis of the organization and a market strategy to ensure maximum penetration.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

Mayo Clinic has a comprehensive collection of healthcare services, an aspect that allows it to grow its customer base, thus being in a position to offset losses from one category of products with benefits obtained from another product. Additionally, the healthcare organization has developed a robust online presence on different social networking platforms as well as ensuring effective management of its social media. The move is meant to improve the impact of positive Electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM) as well as ensure a robust bond with the customers (Wald et al., 2018).

Mayo Clinic has an efficient and well-established IT infrastructure which enhances its operational efficiency and grow knowledge of the trends in the current market. Moreover, the healthcare organization has an extensive geographic presence that plays a crucial role in ensuring easy accessibility and a broad reach of the target market.

Weaknesses

Mayo clinic has experienced too much time in healthcare decision making, an aspect that results in expensive delays, especially in matters pertaining to the introduction of new market products (Ginter et al., 2018). The healthcare organization also has experienced weaknesses in its organizational culture, which fails to match its business objectives. An example of this case is where the business objective is launching innovative and new products, but the organizational culture is built on an opposed risk attitude. Such weakness has discouraged the employees from creative thinking (Wald et al., 2018).

Another weakness in the Mayo clinic concern the failure to understand consumers’ expectations and needs, leading to unproductive strategic decision making. As a result, the organization fails to understand critical areas that seek latent improvements

Opportunities

The major opportunity for the Mayo clinic is the continuous growth of social media and e-commerce marketing. The growth of these marketing platforms serves as an opening to create a robust online presence in various social networking media (Ginter et al., 2018). Secondly, the healthcare organization is likely to gain from the shrinking boundaries and the expanding global networks to reach an international market, a factor which will bring about a large target market and increased profitability (Helmers et al., 2016). Additionally, the Mayo clinic stands to benefits from technology advancement, which will be critical in facilitating healthcare service delivery and embedment of innovation in day-to-day operations. The integration of technology will play a crucial part in improving efficiency and reducing costs associated with healthcare delivery.

Threats

Mayo clinic faces a threat concerning the changing governing framework and introduction of new healthcare regulations. As a result, compliance with the new legal principles becomes complicated, thus challenging the performance of the healthcare organization. Failure to comply with the new regulations may lead to lawsuits, which might prove to be expensive (Helmers et al., 2016). Mayo clinic also faces the threat of direct and indirect competition, which is likely to limit the organization’s ability to expand and sustain the customer base.

Marketing strategy for Market Development

One of the significant strengths of the Mayo clinic is the development of a robust online presence in different social networking platforms as well as ensuring effective management of the social media to improve the impact of positive e-WOM and ensure a strong bond with the customers. In keeping trend with the changing market dimensions, reaching new customers, and retaining clients,  Mayo needs to develop a well-planned and budgeted marketing strategy will be crucial.

The first approach would be to examine the online client experience. The evaluation will involve fitting in customers’ shoes and developing online platforms that meet the need of these clients. In maximizing online customer experience, the Mayo clinic needs to optimize its website and incorporate features that attract patients. A patient accessing the organization’s website should be in a position to know the hospital’s location, and healthcare services offered in various locations within the shortest response time.

In using the Mayo clinic website, patients should be able to contact the right healthcare professional as quickly as possible. The mayo clinic should not just be good looking but should focus more on customer experience. Clear navigation would be a key feature in the organizational website to ensure viewers can get every information they need (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). Another approach to creating a robust online experience is developing an automated customer review on the website to show positive reviews and thus building credibility and encouraging more clients to the healthcare organization. The negative reviews will help Mayo clinic address and resolve the highlighted issues. YouTube channels and mobile app would also serve a better way to share testimonials customer testimonials and any other relevant information.

Mayo clinic should use online platforms, including the website, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, to raise healthcare information and hinder misinformation. The online platforms should be used to provide trusted and educative information on topics like corona virus, chronic diseases, immunization, among others. Mayo clinic needs to bring about exciting topics that encourage user engagement and empower social media fans.  Mayo clinic can use the platforms to answer queries and share patients’ stories to create conversation. Developing such a relationship with customers will even attract other people to visit the facility resulting in wider market coverage.

In ensuring a robust online presence, the Mayo clinic needs to leverage its social media platforms. Other than relying entirely on organic social media, the organization could use paid advertising to reach a wide target group who might require the medical services even those not connected (Kiron et al., 2016). An example, in this case, would be; few individuals share posts from a local medical facility online. Those who share are either employed by the facility or already engaged with it.   Paid advertising will serve as a better channel to reach a broader market, thus promoting development. A real application case is where they write articles and share them across different social media platforms.

References

Wald, J. T., Lowery-Schrandt, S., Hayes, D. L., & Kotsenas, A. L. (2018). Mayo clinic care network: a collaborative health care model. Journal of the American College of Radiology, 15(1), 167-172.

Helmers, R. A., Gabrielson, S. R., & Harper, M. M. (2016). Developing a new governance structure: the Mayo Clinic experience. Physician leadership journal, 3(3), 40-46.

Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L. E. (2018). The strategic management of health care organizations. John Wiley & Sons.

Olsen, K. D., & Dacy, M. D. (2014, January). Mayo Clinic—150 years of serving humanity through hope and healing. In Mayo Clinic Proceedings 89(1), 8-15). Elsevier.

Kiron, D., Kane, G. C., Palmer, D., Phillips, A. N., & Buckley, N. (2016). Aligning the organization for its digital future. MIT Sloan Management Review, 58(1).

Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2019). Digital marketing. Pearson UK.

Kennedy, D. M. (2019). Managing the Mayo Clinic brand: a case study in staff-developed service performance standards. Journal of Brand Management, 26(5), 538-549.