The Memorial Care Breast Center, Essay Example

Executive Summary

This presentation will be geared towards promoting the services of Memorial Breast Care Center as the Digital Mammographic institution of choice in the Southern California county region in the 21^st century, and will, be targeting women in the 20 -65 age group, in particular those in the 45 plus segment.

We will include the demographic structure as well as the characteristics of the customer in designing the promotional objectives, which will be based on a low cost budget approach, and the use of quality human resource skills recruited externally.

The Director of Operations shall show how the chemistry of these talented recruits and novel, yet brilliant promotional marketing strategies can allow the institution achieve greater than the breakeven 25, 0000 daily intakes, within the measurable time limits.

Strategies involving quality endorsements, community projects, direct mail, outdoor billboard advertisements, media contests, 30 seconds sound bites during television prime times, health fairs, job fairs, newspaper advertisement, and the use of marketing collaterals, will be elaborated on, to show how the company plans to position itself as the

institution of choice and a dominant force in the marketing environment.

The presenter has incorporated the possible impacts of the technological, social, economical, medical, political, and competitive forces, on its operations in designing this approach presented, but is prepared to make modifications where necessary, should there be drastic and unexpected variations from its projections.

In closing, it is assumed that the necessary financial obligations will be available, and that the significant recommendations and conclusions made, will serve to challenge the Board’s strength of character, as they consider the path the institution must take to succeed in the market place.

Demographic and Customer Characteristics

The Memorial Care Breast Center specialized health unit is located in Southern California plans to market its digitalized Mammographic Services in all six locations, with a view to dominate the market and become the institution of choice in the region.

In performance of this vital service, the organization intends to bring hope to the women in the age group 20-65, who are at risk of developing breast cancer, by comprehensively cover every stage from screening, detection, treatment, and cure in the battle against the disease.

Women in general are expected to have annual mammography tests, but those in the 45 plus age group are required to do monthly tests; and it is this segment of the market that will be specifically targeted for maximum revenue generation.

Memorial Care Breast Center hopes to use the demographic statistics for each zonal location to generate high response rate to its services, despite the prevailing economic recession, which in turn reduce the employment levels and increase the number of households not having insurance coverage.

The offering of discounts, free detection for first timers, samples, memorabilia, and other products, as well as aggressive promotional strategies in the community, the media, television, direct mail, endorsements, outdoor billboards, and collateral marketing by highly skilled professionals, will serve to attract the requisite volume of customers through the doors of the facility.

Promotional Objective

The Memorial Care Breast Center primary objective is to increase the level of awareness of prospective customers in the Southern California’s marketing environment, of its state of the art Digital Mammography services by as much as 15% in the first year of operation, since acquiring its new equipment.

The institution plans to highlight its special same day results availability, its highly technically competent staffing, low costs and discount packages in order to attract at least 25, 000 daily intakes. It plans to implement a promotional package that will include community projects, endorsements of special events and personalities, direct marketing, media contest, newspaper advertisements, outdoor billboardsand 30 seconds sound bites as the vehicle to drive the customers to its facility.

By use of Direct Marketing, the center intends to cause prospective customer to feel special, and through their responses lasting relationships are built.

It will be the desire of the facility to recruit marketing and engineering service personnel at half the promotional budgetary allocation, and utilize their skills to successfully implement a novel low budget strategy that the competitors will find difficult to replicate in the short and medium terms.

The business hope to recover 30% of its investments in the first year, 45 % in the second, and the remaining 25% by the end of the third year, by which time it will begin to become highly profitable on the basis of its excellent relationship marketing strategies.

Promotional Budget

Memorial Care Breast Center will seek to employ Marketing and Assistant Marketing Managers as well as a Service Engineer at a cost of 150,000.00 annually, and use the remaining equal amount to pursue its promotional implementation package.

A breakdown will be as follows,

Category Budgetary Allocation ($)

1. Public Relations (Endorsements) 25,000
2. Newspaper and electronic media advertising 40,000
3. Point of Purchase 10,000
4. Outdoor Billboards 20,000
5. Special Events (Health Fairs, Job Fairs) 15,000
6. Direct Mail 40,000

$150,000

Sales Initiatives

The focus of the sales initiatives shall be on building consumer relationship rather than simply seeking change in brand loyalty, because the business would profit more significantly over the long term.

Personal Selling of the services by direct marketing would ensue this objective is achieved as it would ensure the dissatisfactions and satisfactions of customers are identified and handled in a timely manner, and this is why this segment of the strategy will be allocated a higher percentage of the promotional budget.

This will require the acquisition of a modern database software according to Shavers (1996), will change the traditional marketing segmentation approach using statistical inferences from a cluster data to one computer selected (Shavers, D. 1996).

High profiles products, personalities, and complementary services that can enhance the vision and missions of the company, will be identified and where possible endorsed within the budgetary allocations for public relations.

Assessment of the non-response rate of consumers from the direct marketing strategy, and Door to Door Selling strategy deployed to make at least a 15% market penetration into that segment in the first year.

Telemarketing in areas where the company has no facility will feature strongly in a thrust strategy to bring consumers into the facility using mobile services. This will include use discount, free detection treatment, coupons, and other health benefits incentives.

Measurements

The clinic will strive to improve its market share by 15% in the first year, and another 10 % respectivelyin the 2^nd and 3^rd years of operation, so that it will achieve and maintain a dominant cost leading position in the industry, given its state of the art digital mammography services, highly technical staffing, and superior marketing strategy.

This achievement is dependent on the availability of budgetary allocation when and where needed in each year of operation going forward.

Promotional Implementation

Endorsements

Memorial Care Breast Center with its $30,000 budget for public relations, will endorse top athletes, and other celebrities participating in 10K Run for Cancer events for which sponsorship from large business organizations in the country will be sought. Opportunities will be taken to distribute T-Shirts, mugs, pens, caps and other souvenirs, bearing the company’s name and logo to participants as well as members of the public in attendance.

Community Projects

The organization will strategically select community locations that have high percentage of women in the 45 plus age group to hold Breast Cancer Awareness Week, during which massive registration campaign will take place, as well as counseling, free breast cancer tests, distribution of leaflets, and fliers.

Lecture sessions using highly trained personnel, and Q/A sessions for members of the public will also featured, as the organization seeks to increase its awareness in the county, as well as seek more consumers for its direct marketing programs.

Health and Job Fairs

Memorial Care Breast Center will participate in Health and Job Fairs in continued effort to improve its awareness and recruit trainees and other highly skilled personnel to its ranks, as it seek to maintain dominance in the market.

It will have a registration desk at its booth for all visitors, and use the information in its database program to initiate further contacts.

Marketing Collaterals will also featured on these occasions, so that no opportunities are lost in the campaign to saturate the market with information regarding the high quality and low cost service and benefits available from the facility at each location.

Media Contest

Sponsoring of health related contests on radio stations which transmit to the entire county and beyond on  quarterly basis will be a strategy used by the organization to attract consumers in the 20 -40 age group.

Contestants will be awarded winning prizes ranging from cash, coupons, discount certificates, gift cards, to free breast cancer checks. Promotion of the services of the company at different points in the programs will help to enhance its sales and marketing initiatives.

The marketing department will conduct surveys at the end of each quarter to determine the progress be made in terms of market share, customer awareness, and service quality and preferences.

Newspaper Advertising

Advertising in major newspaper in the region in an effort to inform and persuade consumers in the broad 20-65 age category regarding the services offered by the facility, will be conducted.

The institution will use the week-end advertising space over a six month period to convince consumers that despite the economic recession, lack of insurance, and other impacting environmental factors, it is prepared to work with all to ensure the breast cancer does not win the battle for their lives.

It will personalize the advertisements using women who made the decision and were successful, to motivate those who are considered laggards on such a life threatening issue.

In an effort to reinforce the marketing strategy on this medium, Memorial Care Breast Cancer, will use national statistics to help consumer to use its facilities without delay. It will compare the mortality rate on the national scale with that of its market segment as much as possible and where relevant to communicate the message.

Measurement of the effect of the strategy will be done by the marketing department so that future adjustment can be made to ensure objectives in terms of market saturation are on target.

The company in light of the level of market saturation expected will have installed at least four  800- 24 hour hotline numbers to process consumer’s questions, make appointments, referrals, give on the spot advise,  and to deliver information via the direct mail procedure.

Advertising slots will be sought in scientific journals and in health and women magazines across the state, to promote the services of the company. It is hoped to further improve the daily intake rate from even tourists to the area by this approach.

Direct Mail

Direct Mail according to Nash (1982) enables a company to fit the format to its message, Memorial Care Breast Center will use this medium to personalize its promotions to consumers to stimulate positive responses to its state of the art facilities, low cost, customer friendly and highly skilled personnel, as well as same day results; which facilitates counseling and future appointments on the spot.

The database software package should include Consumer Guided Marketing which is a feature that will process the data, and allow mails to be sent to only those consumers that are actually interested in the services. This will help to reduce the cost of mailing, as well as enhance the success rate of the approach (Shavers, D. 1996).

It will also give the company an indication of the level of market penetration that it is achieving, and allow proactive measures to be implementedto ensure higher response rates.

Outdoor Billboard Advertising

Outdoor Advertising signs promoting the services of Memorial Care Breast Center, its locations, benefits, customer friendly nature, competitive cost, discounts, as well as other pertinent features, will be placed at the entrance and exit points throughout the county, so that working female consumers will see them when leaving and entering their different locations off the highways.

Additionally, Memorial Care Breast Center will erect billboards on the main streets of major towns and bear pharmacies or government health centers, to reinforce the effect caused by the advertisements at the previous locations for six month periods.

Prime Time Advertising

The organization shall purchase 15 seconds time slots on major television stations across the county, to promote the quality service that it provides to the largest possible audience at any one time for a three week period.

The objective is to increase the awareness of the masses for a short period of time, but with the most effective and emotionally stimulating package that can be created.

Success in this area will be measured before future engagements are pursued.

Marketing Collateral

Contractual arrangement will be made with a design company regarding the printing of fliers, posters, brochures, and newsletter on an annual basis, but distributed quarterly for health fairs, job fairs, government health centers, pharmacies, community projects, Breast Cancer Awareness Weeks, Direct Mailings, and special events.

Memorial Care Breast Center hopes to use these materials to ensure maximization of all promotional strategies, at every location and medium used throughout the year.

Promotional Implementation Plan

Promotional Goal: To enable Memorial Care Breast Center to achieve market dominance within five years of implementing this promotional strategy in the Southern California region.

Recommendations and Conclusions

It is recommended that where the implementation process facilitates, certain strategies be implemented simultaneously to ensure different streams of revenues are activated at the same time, and enable the cash flow of the business to remain healthy.

Memorial Care Breast Center should strive to acquire the remaining Digital Mammography equipment and at least one more center within six months of rolling out the promotional implementation package, as the telemarketing strategy for those areas will only run for a limited time, after which negative reports may start reaching the company.

The low budget strategy is viable given the quality of the personnel that will be recruited and the job descriptions that will be assigned to them on a permanent basis at job fairs, health fairs, community projects, outdoor advertisings, special events, and inn public relations engagements.

Effective management of the budget will be required by the Financial Director of the company, to ensure the previously designated spread of the resources are maintained throughout each operating period.