The Corona Virus (COVID-19) Pandemic has revealed a new order that deeply affects business processes. In this process, brands had to implement significant changes in their management and communication approaches.
Brand managements also become very critical in processes that affect and concern the whole society, such as COVID-19. In this process, in which the health sector was the main actor, it required a very challenging teamwork to ensure both crisis management, brand management and patient loyalty. It was subjected to a test on issues such as the transfer of the campaigns to the digital environment, technical hardware and software infrastructure. Brand management in health services is also an issue that should be carefully considered in this context.
It is unthinkable for today’s healthcare businesses to be different from the current market conditions. Many public and private health enterprises compete in the production of health services and try to be preferred by patients.
Integrated Marketing and Branding Studies
Today’s market conditions require institutions to have an understanding of the needs of consumers rather than the goods they produce. Consumers now have such a complex and busy lifestyle that they are no longer influenced by advertising messages alone. Therefore, businesses have to enter the market with differentiated product personalities that will meet the desires of consumers, that is, with the brands they generate, based on modern (integrated) marketing communication disciplines.
Corporations should ask themselves the following questions while generating marketing strategies that will increase their sales:
- “What should I produce?
- Where should I produce?
- At what price can I sell?
- Under what conditions should I produce?
- How much do I produce and sell? Where should I sell my products?” In addition to questions such as;
- With which branding strategy can I present my products to the market?
- What is the market segment (section) I am targeting?
- What should be the personality, symbol and organizational structure of the brand that I will present to the target market segment?
- Which integrated marketing tools will I use for brand positioning?
In service providers, on the other hand, the relationship between quality and emotional bond rather than the product plays a major role.
Branding and Emotional Bond Relationship
Marketing; It is a process that covers the identification, production, pricing, distribution, promotion and sale of goods, services, ideas and solutions that will satisfy consumers by identifying their current or unsatisfied needs, wants, desires and expectations. In other words, marketing is the discovery and fulfillment of demand. For this reason, marketing can also be defined as a consumer creation activity.
The attributes of a brand are generated using the marketing mix (product, price, distribution, promotion, etc.). Effective use of the marketing mix also increases the effectiveness of the brand. In this sense, knowing that marketing and brand are inseparable parts of each other is extremely important in terms of understanding that the success of the brand depends on the marketing success.
“There are two basic building blocks of a brand’s strength: the logical and performance benefits, and the emotional and image-related benefits”. The sum of these two benefits explains the brand. For example, being sensitive to patients and their relatives can be a way for a healthcare organization to differentiate itself while its competitors focus on other motives.
The difficult aspect of the brand is the emotional and image-related aspect. This feature of the brand will generate healthy communication with consumers. The digital perception management strategy should also be kept in mind as another important factor that should not be ignored.
