Fragmented & piecemeal fashioned marketing efforts result in suboptimal brand performance. In today’s world, creating & maintaining customer loyalty & maximizing the lifetime value of a customer is very important for a sustainable business. In the service industry, it is crucial to understand the customers, their needs & then offering what they want. In 2003, Kaplan said that customer relationship management is a critical strategy & it has four processes: –
Nowadays, marketing is just not CCD (creating, communicating & delivering) but also managing the client relationship.
Everything matters
Every department in an organization has an impact on customer experience & brand image. Whatever a business does to accomplish its goal does matter. Nowadays, marketing has become an organizational function & while working on strategies, it considers stakeholders, customers, suppliers, employees & the community. It has led to a concept of marketing- Holistic marketing.
Holistic marketing
According to Kotler, “A holistic marketing concept is based on the development, design, and implementation of marketing programs, processes, and activities that recognize their breadth and interdependencies. Holistic marketing recognizes that ‘everything matters’ with marketing and that a broad, integrated perspective is necessary to attain the best solution”
Holistic marketing is thinking about the business as a whole & then developing a marketing strategy. Understanding all aspects of business is very important which working on holistic marketing. The company must think about, how the consumer will interact with its product, its website, its advertising materials, its processes. Also, the interaction with people involved in delivering the service is given emphasis.
Holistic marketing is a dynamic concept which depends on marketing skills & quality of management. It is integration of marketing activities & involving all business processes which leads to balanced performance.
Holistic marketing in the diagnostic industry
The diagnostic industry is a dominant pillar of healthcare services. 90% of medical decisions are based on accurate laboratory test results. To grow the potential market & increase the market share diagnostic labs are dependent on optimal marketing mix. The holistic marketing approach is the best fit strategy for such a service industry, where people & processes are equally important.
Like other healthcare sectors, in the diagnostic industry, patient satisfaction is critical. Probably this is the goal of any lab. To avail the service, customers interact with diagnostic labs at various levels like customer care, front desk, samples collection, report collection & special services like report interpretation, etc. Also, to gain more customers & better customer experience there is a team of tele-callers.
7Ps of marketing are critical in healthcare services. Besides Price, product, place & promotion, additional three elements of marketing- People, Process & physical evidences directly influence the consumer experience & eventually behavior.
Now, COVID is in last phase & diagnostic companies which will put efforts to build customer loyalty through exceptional customer service will have competitor advantage.
For successful customer experience, a lab needs to focus on the following three things
- Price
- TAT-Turnaround Time
- Convenience
All departments in the lab are important in creating a better customer experience: –
- Samples collection-Phlebotomists-convenience
- Accession-better TAT
- Sample processing-TAT & Price
- IT-convenience & TAT
- Front desk/customer care-Convenience
Overall holistic marketing is the right fit strategy for any service industry because all the 7Ps of marketing are important element of marketing mix strategy of diagnostic labs. Giving better customer experience is job of all departments in the lab.
Thanks
Dr. Ashish Sahdev
PhD scholar-marketing
References
1) Theodor Valentin PURCĂREA, HOW TO KEEP LOYAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH SERVICE CUSTOMERS USING HOLISTIC MARKETING,
2) Kevin Lane Keller, Philip Kotler, 2006, Holistic Marketing: A Broad, Integrated Perspective to Marketing Management
3) Dr. Hisham Sayed Soliman, 2016, An Analytical Study of the Relationship between the Holistic Marketing and Overall Organizational Performance, International Journal of Business and Social Science Vol. 7, No. 7; July 2016
