Introduction
This marketing plan has been developed to enable Chappy’s Chiropractic Clinic to establish itself as a strong player in the chiropractic market segment. The target market is composed of patients who are looking for the services of a chiropractor. Chappy’s Chiropractic Clinic offers exemplary services paying special attention to customer service. The clinic aims to translate customer satisfaction into a source of competitive advantage.
The electronic marketing platform will have attractive features to draw people to the site. The marketing mix will only focus on product and promotion. The main objective of this electronic marketing plan is to increase sales and market share. Moreover, the plan will help the clinic to take advantage of existing opportunities in the market.
Product Offered
Chappy’s Chiropractic Clinic provides a variety of services. However, the clinic specializes in the care of infants as its core service. In addition, the clinic sells pillows, orthotics and vitamin supplements are offered to the patients to generate revenue as part of facility’s augmented services.
This marketing plan recommends the inclusion of acute care services, such as pain relief procedures for spinal disorders, sport injuries, and corrective medicine. In other words, the clinic should specialize in treatment and rehabilitation of chronic conditions.
The services indicated above will be offered offline, in the brick-and-mortar facility. On the other hand, the clinic will provide online services, such as post treatment advice to patients and general counseling to the people who visit a clinic.
By focusing on this wide range of services, Chappy’s Chiropractic Clinic will benefit from the advantages of the electronic marketing. Brannack (1997) observed that information technology was no longer there simply to support television. It became a dominant marketing avenue (Hoffman 1996).
Attractiveness of Electronic Marketing
Electronic marketing is an emerging trend in marketing. An increasing number of companies are using electronic marketing to increase their market share and grow their revenues. The first benefit derived from electronic marketing is that it allows companies to reach many people at once (Hoffman & Novak 1996).
In this sense, the internet is superior to traditional mass communication models because it enables people to interact with one another. Other benefits of the internet are that it gives individual users the ability to upload content. In addition, the internet allows consumers to quickly and easily give feedback (Hoffman & Novak 1996).
Electronic Marketing Mix Strategies
The main issues that Chappy’s Chiropractic clinic needs to bear in mind is that there are fundamental changes in how markets behave because of the emergence of electronic commerce. According to Wigand and Benjamin (1995), the electronic commerce industry was projected to become a deathbed for companies that missed the right time to move at least part of their marketing to online platforms.
The main changes in marketing were to result from greater customer access to suppliers, elimination of intermediaries, lower distribution costs, and reduction in profits paving way for volume based business models (Wigand & Benjamin 1995). These issues need to guide the marketing strategies of healthcare facility.
Promotion
As indicated earlier, the marketing mix will only handle the product and promotion due to the nature of services offered by the clinic. The main aim of promotion will be to increase customer awareness concerning the clinic and the services it has.
Pricing
Access to information on the website will be free. The clinic will gain money by charging for services offered in its clinic. The website will inform customers about the cost of services offered. Other competing clinics will also have an ability to provide the prices they charge for their products on their websites.
One of the impacts of this is that the clinic will end up competing with other companies in the industry offering the same services. Clients will be able to compare prices and make choices based on the prices, services and qualiy.
Distribution
A distribution channel is a group of interdependent firms that work together with the aim of transferring a product and information from the supplier to the consumer (Hoffman & Novak 1996). The clinic deals with the clients directly; thus, it acts as a distributor. However, the emergence of the internet has changed the way businesses distribute goods and services.
In addition, competition in the market has forced many companies to identify new segments in the market. According to Hoffman and Novak (1996), electronic commerce channels provide a wide coverage even though they are hard to coordinate as compared to traditional systems.
Communication Strategies
Marketing communication refers to the use of messages and related media to provide relevant information to the target market (Wigand & Benjamin 1995). For instance, the clinic currently uses newsletters to refer information about its products to potential clients. This method, therefore, qualifies as a marketing communication tool since it creates customer awareness.
Online Medium
The website should be made user-friendly since the clients from the older generation are likely to visit it. The website should indicate the location of the clinic, the qualifications and the experience of the main medical practitioners available, as well as the services offered at the clinic.
Additionally, the site should include a section that gives medical advice relating various medical conditions. The website should also contain a section where potential clients can channel their queries and leave their feedback. Moreover, it should have the clinic’s contact details.
Offline Medium
The electronic marketing platform should be promoted through the newsletters issued by the clinic. In addition, the newsletters should advertise the services offered by the company.
To create more awareness, adverts should be placed at the entrance of the hospital and other strategic places within the facility. They should also be placed in the local newspapers and channeled on radio stations (Sarkar, Butler & Steinfield 1995).
Cost and Benefits of the Online Medium
To maintain online traffic, the website will use articles optimized for search engines to provide advice to the readers. The effectiveness of this communication strategy will be gauged from the number of clients that will contact the clinic or report to the clinic after seeing it online.
Measurement of the Performance of the Site
The main metric used in the measurement of the performance of a website is the number of page views per unit time. This affects the ranking of the site in search engines’ rating. Search engine ranking can serve as a secondary measure of the site’s performance. Since the clinic does not plan to sell anything online, there is no need to use a financial measure to determine how well the site is performing.
Physical Features of the Website
The main colors of the website will be white and red. These are the corporate colors of the clinic. The site will have three-dimensional graphics and interactive links. The site will also have a link to the social media account of the clinic and display an online map, a part of Google Maps, showing its location.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the clinic needs to adopt electronic marketing to take advantage of its benefits. The clinic will be able to reach out to many clients. It is also a cheap marketing option. Furthermore, Chappy’s Chiropractic Clinic can use the platform to increase sales and market share. By employing both the online and the offline channels, the company will be able to gain a competitive advantage over other competitors in the market.
List of References
Brannack, M 1997, ‘Is the Internet Changing the Dominant Logic of Marketing?’, Journal of European Management, vol 15, no. 6, pp. 698 -707.
Hoffman, DL 1996, ‘A New Marketing Paradigm for Electronic Commerce’, The Information Society: An International Journal, vol 13, no. 1, pp. 43-54.
Hoffman, D & Novak, T 1996, ‘Marketing in Hypermedia: Mediated Environments: Conceptual Foundations’, Journal of Marketing, vol 60, no. 5, pp. 50-68.
Sarkar, M, Butler, B & Steinfield, C 1995, ‘Intermediaries and Cybermediaries: A Continuing Role for Mediating Players in the Electronic Marketplace’, JCMC, vol 1, no. 3, pp. 1-13.
Wigand, RT & Benjamin, RI 1995, ‘Electronic Commerce: Effects on Electronic Markets’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol 1, no. 3, pp. 1-20.