Positioning is effective marketing strategic tools that can help a hospital compete for market share and

revenues more effectively. In developing strategies, a hospital must first assess a community's health
needs, establish the hospital's current and desired positions on its segments' perceptual maps, and
finally, choose and implement appropriate positioning strategies

Healthcare system consists of hospitals, medical devices and systems, clinical trials, medical research,
outsourcing, telemedicine, medical tourism, health insurance and medical equipment

Service Marketing Mix for Indian Hospitals:

The term marketing mix refers to a set of tools available to an organization to shape the nature
of its offer to customers.
As per Kotler, marketing mix is “the set of marketing tools that the firm uses to pursue its
marketing objectives in the target market".
Medical service can be defined as a health care service intended to influence a person's health,
directly or indirectly, through procedures executed by medically educated personnel
The components of traditional marketing mix are Product, Price, Place and Promotion but while
talking about hospital sector it is better to apply Service Marketing Mix which has three
additional elements viz. People, Physical Evidence & Process
Using the right balance of marketing elements, hospital service marketers can ensure that their
marketing efforts fetch them expected result.
1. Product:
Most products of the hospitals are services which can be classified as line services,
supportive services and auxiliary services

 Line services/Core services - include indoor & outpatient services,

emergency services i.e. ICU & operation theater
 Supportive services – It includes services offered by medical & Para-
medical staff
 Auxiliary services – It includes ambulatory services, dietary services,
indoor & outdoor patient registration services, engineering &
maintenance services

2. Price:
It is found that hospitals in large urban areas, and usually teaching hospitals, are more
likely to consider cost information in their charge setting than their rural and non-
teaching counterparts, they also identified a huge gap between charges of public &
private hospitals
 Pricing in hospital services is generally done by keeping in view the cost of running the
hospital, the overheads, salaries of the doctors, nursing staff and administrative staff,
cost of infrastructure, bed occupancy, quality of service etc.

Prices of various facilities are revised every year depending on the change in technology

Before fixing prices, governmental controls are also taken into consideration

Price can also be based on the level of facilities provided for instance – General class vs
Cubical class vs Private class vs Super Deluxe class

3. Place or Distribution Channel

For effective distribution of Medicare services, it is essential that the hospitals should be
able to provide basic medical services at different parts of residential areas and to rural
areas in particular.

Furthermore, Hospital should be located somewhere which is easily accessible by

patients and transport services are also available for them easily

Hospitals in general will have three major distribution decisions

 They include physical access (channels, location, and facilities), time
access and promotional access

4. Promotion:
It helps a hospital helps in communicating the existence of services offered to present,
past & future customers

Generally, promotion includes advertising, sales promotion, personal selling & publicity,
but instead of undertaking aggressive promotion, hospitals rely lot on WOM & social
marketing
5. People:
It includes doctors, nursing staff, paramedical staff, supporting staff & front office
executives

To provide quality treatment many hospitals running their own medical and nursing
schools to train the staff according to their requirements.

Patients also play a key role in hospital service delivery

 Patients want doctors to demonstrate concern and competence, be
congenial, communicate with them, be courteous, and be civil

 Such behavior by service personnel could be a very useful tool for

medical providers to ensure customer satisfaction and retention

6. Physical evidence:
It is the environment in which the service is delivered with physical or tangible
commodities and where the firm and the customer interact

Physical evidence particularly plays an important role in the hospital where the patients
are already depressed or traumatized, and a good atmosphere could make all the
difference

Few important aspects of physical evidence for hospitals could be:

 Physical design of the hospital
  Amenities, signs, symbol, and artifacts
 Ambient conditions
 General condition of equipment and neat appearance of staff members
 Energy Efficiency and Indoor Air Quality

7. Process:
It could be defined as an operational flow of activities which are taken place at hospital
for the efficient delivery of services.

Since the inseparable nature of services does not allow any differences in the
production and delivery of a service, process becomes an all- inclusive ‘P’ for service
marketers.

Hospitals must pay as much attention to proper planning, designing, organizing and
functioning of the various departments (specialties)

Following attributes of process leads to patient satisfaction:

 Least difference between perceived waiting times and expected waiting time
 Choice of physician
 Appropriate use of patient safety measures & patient education

Marketing strategy in Hospitals:

Marketers need to understand that marketing for hospitals isn’t just about “selling” products
and services or focusing on building the hospital’s brand value in the market.

One need to consider the entire healthcare ecosystem at the local, regional, national, and global
level, and create messages that fit each segment in relation to the hospital

Priority mix of marketing strategies

In terms of social media platforms and campaigns, here are a few ideas that hospitals
can adopt in India. These campaigns are already popular and ‘routine’ in hospitals across
the United States, Canada, Australia, and United Kingdom.

 Invite patients for free check-ups via social media promotions

 Organize Doctor-Tweet-Ups / Google+ Hangout Q&A sessions
 Tweet about interesting happenings in the hospital, including what the
doctors are currently reading, surgeries being performed, births and
celebrations
 Hospital website should feature articles about healthcare, geriatric
lifestyles, diet and fitness, sports and rehabilitation, disability and long-
term care, caregivers and potential global health threats
 Publish a quarterly or monthly hospital publication that is consumer
friendly – highlight your strengths and success stories, narrate triumph
of human spirit in difficult surgeries, show the human side of the doctor
in their everyday life, and involve your patients
 Publicize collaborations with national and global hospitals and doctors
who are visiting the hospital for important surgeries and procedures

Also, as per the latest trends, social media adoption Hospital marketing emerged as a
reputation management tools for hospitals.

Digital platforms can be used enormously to extract out the best possible results and
thus following aspects could not be ignored while designing a effective Marketing
strategy for a Hospital
 1. Creating a responsive website
High-priority prospective patients are the most important website audience. While
the site has many audiences (vendors, employees, job applicants, etc.) making the
user experience particularly effective for prospective patients who are doing due
diligence on your hospital and your doctors.

For example, if obstetrics is an important service line, ask if this visitor group can
quickly and easily find exactly what they are looking for… and how can you deliver
that.

2. SEO and PPC use

A huge and largely untapped marketing and business development opportunity for
most hospitals is the effective use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-
Click (PPC) online advertising.

The purpose is to drive visitor traffic to well-designed landing pages on your site, or
in some instances to micro-sites

3. Use Social Media Well

The world is on social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and the likes
are the virtual places where one can reach to create brand awareness with potential
customers as well as attract good talent.

Appearing on social news feeds often will go a long way in keeping you in the mind
of the users. Interesting posts keep people interested and people would remember
useful tips and their source

Marketing Challenges:
The healthcare industry presents many unique challenges that push healthcare marketers to think of
new ways to market services and products

Few major challenges from marketing point of view can be highlighted as:

1. Getting started with the digital communication

The conservative nature of the healthcare industry and its highly regulated environment has
meant that it has been slow to adapt to digital communication.

Despite being a data rich industry, the data is often fragmented and held on different systems,
in paper files and with individual institutions.

There is also the importance and overwhelming need for patient confidentiality, with data
security often flagged as the main reason why there is caution around digital adoption
 2. Too many stakeholders
Within the industry, there are many stakeholders with their own priorities and as a marketer,
trying to satisfy all is difficult.

Ensuring that you have the correct messaging and that the information is accurate requires the
involvement and approval of several disparate stakeholders, which is often time-consuming and
can affect deadlines around marketing campaigns

3. Evolving healthcare landscape:

Diseases are evolving, constantly new diseases are coming into light.

Competitors are also at their toes trying to go for the best possible measure, constant R&D is
trending.

4. Financials involved:
Healthcare system generally involves lot of financial input at each step.
High chances if one thing goes wrong it could impact someone’s life, thus it is completely
different from selling any other services.

In monetary terms, at each step lot of investment is required – it becomes tough to catch up
over each new advancement with so much finances at stake.

5. Governmental regulations:
Company are tied up due to many governmental regulations – revolving around promotion of
medication.

No DTC advertisement allowed.

Conclusion:
The healthcare industry faces ever-evolving challenges and marketers must adapt to the
empowered patients or healthcare providers of today to answer their needs.

Another major problem in our country is the lack of transparency in healthcare services and
products

 Government of India must ensure pharmaceutical and medical companies are

committed to transparency and refrain from frequent price increases to help
rebuild trust with patients, consumers, physicians, and health care insurers

 Tax free regimes, land bank for building hospitals, special interest rates and
loans from banks, should be initiated and can change the face of healthcare
infrastructure in India
 Indian government’s health care spends as a percentage of gross
domestic product is among the lowest in the world.

However, has recently been to push pharma companies, medical device

makers and now hospitals to cut prices through various policy
interventions. One of the biggest was the cut in the price of stents and
knee implants in 2017 by over 70%, besides the regular revision of the
Drugs and Cosmetics Act

 The health of the hospital sector has been deteriorating since early CY2017 due
to several factors that have adversely affected its profitability