Strategic Planning and Marketing-James Shiplet

This article from the US - Small Business Administration is a great way to understand marketing a business whether it’s a large Healthcare Corporation or a small business such as a physician in private practice.  Marketing plans include everything from understanding who you’re marketing too and your viable spot in that identified  market, to how you intend to target that market. Your marketing budget should be huge a component of your marketing plan as it will outline the costs of how you are going to achieve the rest of your marketing plan. Large healthcare corporations have the funds to hire a marketing firm or even hire a marketing director; however, for small practices there are resources available from the SBA to guide them through the process of writing a marketing plan and developing a marketing budget.  (US-SBA 2013)

Marketing plans are reviewed during the annual budget planning process. However, when a hospital launches a new service in between budgets they take the time to revisit their original plan and decide how much funds from the marketing budget will now be allocated to market the new service.

It takes some time to develop a marketing plan, but that time is well spent for any organization because it delineates how they will associate with their customers.

                                                                       References

Developing a Marketing Plan. (2013). In United States Small Business Administration. Retrieved

        June 30, 2013, from http://www.sba.gov/content/developing-marketing-plan