Reference no: EM132157432

Question: Overview: Effective marketing plans begin with thorough external environmental and internal organizational assessments, alignment with strategic plans, and clear identification of directional strategies. The marketing plan must reflect logic, cohesion, realistic interventions and costs, and ideally work with the strengths and opportunities that fit the overall context of the proposed service line. In this assignment, you will develop a conceptual level marketing plan for St. Anthony Medical Center's Labor and Delivery service line, which is based on your assessment. Additionally, the marketing plan will include evidence-based recommendations and your creative insights regarding how to optimally position and communicate the Labor and Delivery service line to prospective consumers.

Recall from your previous visit with the leadership team, that your CEO has communicated a growth strategy for St. Anthony Medical Center. The marketing director and leadership team have further determined that the Labor and Delivery service will implement a market pull strategy where consumers will be drawn to the organization based on some unique feature or features of the service line (also known as differentiators). You are competing against two other similar services at area hospitals, so your marketing conceptual level recommendations will need to assure that you have differentiated St. Anthony Medical Center's Labor and Delivery service in a competitive manner. Consider how a health care organization might differentiate it's service from a competitor (review your Unit 2 readings or conduct research in the Capella University Library on strategic marketing and differentiation strategies). You may wish to reflect on some of the facets that you as a consumer consider when selecting health care providers and organizations.

Your marketing director and the Labor and Delivery unit manager would like to discover your fresh perspective and recommendations. At a conceptual level, given the organization's desired target versus actual performance, what suggestions might you offer to convert prospective consumers into satisfied Labor and Delivery patients? Remember to assess gaps between actual performance versus desired targets (review the current Labor and Delivery budget to determine current versus targeted number of deliveries, profit margin, and so forth).

This all corresponds with steps four and five of Kotler's Marketing Plan format in Health Care Marketing. Savvy interns will read the assignment scoring guides and construct an outline before beginning research for this activity.

Last week, you were exposed to a lot of information about St. Anthony Medical Center in general and the Labor and Delivery unit in particular. You may want to consider reviewing those documents, interviews and e-mails again while working on this unit's assignment.

Instructions: Review the vision, mission, values statement, strategic directional strategy for St. Anthony Medical Center, and assess the Labor and Delivery service line offerings.

• Conduct a gap analysis of St. Anthony Medical Center's Labor and Delivery service relative to internal goals.

• Construct a competitive analysis of St. Anthony Medical Center's Labor and Delivery service relative to competitors.

• Propose general or conceptual level recommendations to close gaps such as missing services, missing marketing channels, suboptimal profitability, and so forth.

• Formulates insights or creative approaches that may be helpful in construction of an action plan to implement the recommendations.

• Submit your assignment by due date. Be sure to use current APA style and formatting throughout.