Week 4 Assignment: Generating Effective Marketing Strategies

Re-submit Assignment

• Due May 26 by 11:59pm
• Points 5
• Submitting a text entry box or a file upload (Turnitin enabled)

Choose one marketing or promotional activity intended to attract new business or maintain current business that you would like to implement in your practice. Research and present the following information:

• Monetary Cost: What is the actual or estimated dollar amount that implementing your strategy will cost? Be sure to consider all potential costs, both one-time and ongoing, associated with your activity. For example, if your strategy is to create and maintain a professional website for your business, you will need to research the annual cost of purchasing and maintaining a domain name and hosting that domain on a server. Who will design your website, write the content, and make updates to content? If you do not possess the skills to do this yourself, how much would it cost to hire a professional web designer? While it is okay to estimate the potential monetary costs associated with your strategy, this information should come from a verifiable source, not your own guesswork. Be sure to cite the source in which you obtained these financial estimates using proper APA citation.

• Time: Your time is money. The time spent on marketing takes away from time you could be generating income by actually treating patients. How much time will it take you to successfully implement this strategy? Is the investment of your time a “one time” occurrence, or does this strategy require an ongoing time commitment? For example, if you intend to give a lecture at a local health store how much time will it take you to research and write the material for the lecture? Are you using a power point; how much time will it take to create that? How much time will it take to set-up your lecture, give the lecture, and break down / clean up? Will you be managing registration for your lecture – that takes time, too? Because you know your own time management skills better than anyone, you do not need to cite sources for this section however you should be able to back up your “estimate” with a reasonable explanation. For example, I have writing and public speaking skills due to my previous undergraduate education and occupation, so I know that I can research and write a good hour long lecture in under 30 minutes. However, technology is more difficult for me, so it might take me the better part of a day to craft a visually appealing powerpoint to go along with my lecture.

• Reach: What patient population(s) will your marketing strategy reach? What patient population(s) will your marketing strategy exclude? We cannot reach every potential patient with each marketing strategy – that’s why we implement more than one marketing strategy in our practice. To understand the potential effectiveness of your marketing strategy, you must be able to clearly identify who it is likely to reach and who it will not reach. For example, creating and maintaining a Facebook business page is likely to reach millenials and even some Baby Boomer generations that utilize social media to search for health providers in their area. However, it will exclude pediatric patients who are too young or legally forbidden from creating social media accounts, or geriatric patients who tend not to utilize such technology. It might exclude low income populations whom do not have access to the internet in their home. If this is a patient population you plan to work with, you will need to craft additional marketing strategies to reach them. It may also exclude professionals who cannot access social media sites due to security regulations at their job site. If your practice is located in close vicinity to a governmental agency with these types of security restrictions on the use of social media, you should understand that a Facebook business page is not going to effectively reach their employees and you will want to consider other means of targeting that population.
• Effectiveness: How effective do industry experts feel your marketing strategy is? For example, if my strategy is a direct mail campaign, I could state that according to a review of several studies published to the Direct Marketing weblog, direct mail is more effective than Facebook, because about 98 percent of people check their mail regularly and 77 percent sort through it immediately (2016). The article states: “DMN3 reports that 39 percent of consumers first patronize a business because they received a direct mail advertisement. (BKV, 2016).” Since most people check their mail and the response number is also significant, direct mail could be a very effective business strategy. Again, this information should be coming from verifiable sources, not your own guess or opinion. Be sure to cite your sources using APA citation in this section.
• Additional Benefits: Some marketing strategies will have additional or added benefits beyond the primary benefit. Are there any additional or added benefits to your marketing strategy? For example, a direct mail appeal is targeted towards a specific geographic region surrounding your acupuncture practice. However because it is a physical piece of paper that can be given to another person, as opposed to a virtual marketing via a website, you might receive the added benefit of reaching patients outside your mailing area if a patient who received the mailing passes it on to a work colleague, etc.

You will incorporate this assignment into your final portfolio after considering and making adjustments based upon feedback from the teacher.