QRT2 Task 1

Western Governor's University
E-Business

June 24, 2012

QRT2 Task 1
A1. Viability of Product or Service: The service I wish to develop is an online resource that promotes and offers support to breastfeeding mothers; before, during and after her breastfeeding experience. This service will be directed to the targeted market of breastfeeding mothers, their supporters, and will raise awareness of the benefits of breastfeeding with an end goal of increasing the need for breastfeeding support services while creating return customers. Resources available on-line would be the capability to ask International Board Certified Lactation Consultants ( IBCLC) questions through an on-line blog format, as well as breast care best practices. Products will be available such as breast pumps and supplies with the capability of pre-ordering supplies to be delivered to the new mother during her hospital stay. The need to expand comes from a lack of web presence currently within Self Regional Healthcare, there is a “store-front” within the Women’s Center with very little traffic and customer feedback suggests that an on-line site would be beneficial.
A2. Current Online Competitors: My online review of competitors revealed companies that were either segmented to target only products such as big Chains like Wal-Mart and Amazon.com who promise the convenience of a fast home delivery and for the most part easy returns. These would be direct competition if the sole focus of my service expansion was on the sale of products such as breastpumps and supplies, but would more appropriately fit into the category of budget competitors who target the consumers who may have more limited resources and prefer the less expensive options to products. In addition to the chain locations there are 18 pharmacies in the Greenwood area that offer access to tangible product purchases of breastpumps, shells and other supplies although the cost is much higher than Wal-Mart and access is limited to the pharmacy hours of nine to five, Monday through Saturday. Within an hour’s drive is Breakout Bras, they specialize in bras and lingerie but also has an inventory of breastfeeding supplies and clothing. This store not only offers the traditional brick and mortar store-front but also has a well-developed web presence which results are above the fold when search engine Google is employed. The online stores offers free shipping and repeat customer discounts. The most direct competitor in the education and resource competitors would be La Leche League; they are an international breastfeeding support group that offers education and support to lactating women. This group offers a variety of readily accessible articles that address the consumers frequently asked questions and offers an educational 4 monthly meeting model; the closest in proximity to the Greenwood area is over one hour away. La Leche also offers a yearly membership at $40.00 per year that gives the member access to more comprehensive information and discounts on products through their online store, as well as a bi-monthly publication. My service expansion is going to be different from the online competition because the consumer will know the “face” behind the online version, by that I mean the staff who will be answering the consumer’s questions and offering support online is the same staff who care for them during their hospital stay, continuity in care is a strong selling point and again promotes the return customer.
A3. Online Marketing Suggestions and Strategies: A competitive advantage that we have is brand awareness through the Self Regional Healthcare name, this organization is the healthcare provider for a 7 county region and with that the implied assumption as the authority. The marketing expansion strategy will focus on building customer awareness through education available online, target and reach demographic of breastfeeding mothers, increase and speed the rate of communication through blogging. An identified need of the targeted population is to have access to support and products that promote their successful breastfeeding experience. This endeavor is not designed to immediately increase the revenue of the organization but as a strategy to become the consumers’ preference for all their and their families healthcare needs on an on-going basis. The marketing mix I consider appropriate for this service is a modern mix because people will be the key to success for this concept. We will meet the traditional marketing mix for product with both tangible items like breastpumps and pads, but also non tangible with the services of the lactation consultants, education and blogging capabilities. The tangible products are prices at current market value as determined by the manufacturer Medela, they do not allow pricing to be published online so this prompts a call to the lactation consult and affords us the ability to promote other free support services available. We will continue to have the traditional brick and mortar storefront, but will add the benefit of gift card purchase and the ability to pre-order supplies online and have them waiting in your room upon arrival. Promotion of the new web page will be accomplished through banners on the Self website, links from the Women’s services page, business cards, word of mouth, and advertised through the women’s and children’s celebrations at the hospital. As stated earlier people will determine the success of this vision, they must be given the appropriate tools and have an understanding of the concepts. We have just completed 100% certification for all the staff in the breastfeeding advisor program. This program gives the staff the knowledge base to begin the process of breastfeeding support. The front line staff complete follow-up phone calls with patients and they encourage the breastfeeding mothers to visit the website, here they will have the ability to review educational material or send questions to the LC. The LC’s will be checking emails via the hospital provided iPad at least once an hour from 8am-8pm. It will be imperative to align the customers’ expectations to that of the front line staff, the front line staff is added value to the customer and we want the customer to be satisfied so as to build a solid long term commitment to Self Regional Healthcare by making them the provider of choice. We have added links on the website to allow for customer feedback through surveys. The surveys will help us formulate a plan and area of focus for a healthy community by determining sustained breastfeeding rates and identified needs of the community.
A4. Search Engine: To determine which search engine site to focus keyword development on, I first needed to determine which search engine site was most utilized, conveyed a positive image, was reputable and consistent in its practices and was viewed by consumers as the authority. The most popular search engine that meets all the noted criteria in my opinion is Google. Search engines build data bases through online reviews of webpages from which indexes are created; when consumers enter keywords of items/topics they are looking for, the search engine is able to give immediate results that match those keywords by scanning developed indexes and displaying the search engine results page (SERP) and contain links and descriptions to websites that contain the keywords entered by the consumer. The results most closely matching are listed first and in a descending order. The goal of the website is to fall above the fold, or be one of the first 6 listed links based on your identified keywords that will drive your website. Key words I will use; basic breastfeeding, abc of breastfeeding, breastfeeding, breastfeeding support-greenwood.
A5. Social Media Integration: The social media tools that are used by the population I wish to reach are primarily; Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. This information was gathered from informal interviews conducted with current patients on rounding opportunities. This captive audience reported that 90% had a Facebook account and 60% had a Twitter account, of this group they stated they had added a status update or “tweet” in the last 14 days. Because some may find the subject matter offensive a Facebook or Twitter presence may not be the most appropriate forum to promote sharing of ideas or collect customer feedback.
Blogging would connect with the consumer base/ community with the interest in breastfeeding. This directs the forum to a common interest and allows for discussions that promote, support and encourage breastfeeding. What could be better than real time support through the difficult times of breastfeeding by others who have had the same experiences or may be feeling and experiencing the same issues and concerns? Knowing that you are not alone is a huge support in and of itself. This support can mean the difference between a successful and unsuccessful breastfeeding experience. This blog or forum will be linked from the Mother’s Touch webpage to Greenwood Alliance for Breastfeeding Cyber Support (www.greenwoodabcs.org/forum/). This site would require a login or registration to maintain privacy and authenticity of information. As an organization we do not do a good job of actively promoting this website, we are the major content contributors.
For visual learners I think a video blog on YouTube would be a very useful tool to breastfeeding mothers. It would allow immediate access to short snippets of educational material that families can view in the comfort of their own homes. Topics of value to include; breastfeeding basics, positioning and breast care. The advantages to the targeted community of breastfeeding mothers are a visual aid to reinforce skills that are needed for a successful breastfeeding experience. Demonstrations of various positioning techniques for breastfeeding such as cradle hold, side lying and football hold give instant visual aids to the mother looking for alternative positioning or assistance validating current methods. Breast care would have visual representations of common conditions associated or commonly seen in the breastfeeding population; cracked nipples, thrush, engorgement, plugged ducts and mastitis.
This would be a very cost effective means of educating and offering support for breastfeeding for the organization and further by placing contact information; names and numbers of qualified staff you are making the human connection. This video will reach consumers not in the primary service area and would promote the lactation services of Self Regional Healthcare.
A6. Online Customer Relationship Management: The goal of online customer relationship management is to improve the customer’s experience, create repeat customers, create word of mouth marketing and sustain a culture that supports this style of customer relationship management. To know where we need to be we first need to know where we are, not in our minds but through the eye of the consumer. What we are doing well, what we need to do better, what is important to the consumer before during and after their birth to support their breastfeeding needs. This information can easily be collected through mechanisms already in place such as Press Ganey surveys that permits the organization to customize some queries. The HCAHPS survey collects patient perception data and makes it difficult to drill down to specific issues and unless the customer writes a separate commentary there is no comment section for free thoughts. From this information you build and support the internal culture you want from your staff; give good experiences, give the customer what they want, support word of mouth advertising and support the organization. Staff as external customers can be a help or a hindrance to the success of the organizations goals by the way they respond to customers and more importantly the way they promote or write comments on their personal social media accounts.
The strategy we will use needs to be more specific given the demographic we are targeting, focus needs to be on the customers experience from beginning to next, I don’t like to include finish or end because that sounds time limiting. We will collaborate with area physician practices to promote our “Starting of Right” classes that are offered free of charge to consumers and their families. These classes educate on what is happening to their body during pregnancy, keywords, and food to eat, when to call the doctor and we can begin working with mothers who may want to breastfeed to make sure they are ready. Self Regional Healthcare is also going to place a link on our website to text4baby, which is a service consumers can subscribe to from their cellphones to get updates about their current stage of pregnancy. This is also a great media source of mass notification if needed. For example a recent message that was sent out was a Tylenol recall that could have potentially affected many babies. We will offer breastfeeding classes, here the customer meets in a small group with the support person of her choice and they learn about the experience and benefits of breastfeeding as well as its challenges from board certified lactation consultants (LC). We are creating continuity by having the same LC see them while they are in the hospital. As we complete development and roll out The Mother’s Touch website, the consumer will have the ability to pre-order breastfeeding supplies and have them delivered to their inpatient room. An internal change we have just completed was to train all staff as breastfeeding advisors, this allows them to actively support breastfeeding and address the needs of patients in a timely manner. The staff are rewarded for innovative ideas, unfortunately not with royalties, but are managed up to senior leaders who come to the unit to thank them for their idea. Recently 2 staff members developed business cards to recognize breastfeeding mothers, they simply say; Self Regional Healthcare thanks you for breastfeeding your baby. The back contains the website information. These will be passed out to both patients while in the hospital or anyone seen in public.
Ultimately our goal is to be the provider of choice not only for women’s needs but for the entire family unit. Studies have shown that women make the majority of the decisions with regards to healthcare; we must give a great experience always.

A7. E-Commerce Solutions: The web mock up is an expansion of our current brick and mortar store front. The mock up does contain a shopping cart feature; payments will be able to be made using Visa and MasterCard via the hospitals current payment processor. Consumers will have the ability to order items online and have the products ready for them when they are admitted; consumers will also have the ability to get assistance with set-up and use. Inventory will be very limited to meet the specialized demand for our targeted population, but we would have the capability to expand as we develop market presence. After completing the education models I think that moving forward CafePress would be a good option for novelty items that promote breastfeeding; onesies, t-shirts or coffee mugs with saying like, Eat at Mom’s, Mom’s diner. I feel we would have no problem if we went with the basic level given the volume we currently see and if we see more support is needed we could increase to premium level. CafePress offers support on both the front and back ends with small fees to the seller but larger presence and name recognition.
A8. International Considerations: When reviewing the products we are promoting I needed to look outside the box, to say of course we would not be marketing on a global scale, but instead look at what internal or global cultural issues impact me as the marketer. Cultural sensitivity and awareness need to be paramount. We have a large Latin American population in our service area. This is the international consideration we need to focus on. The web mock up pages offer links that will take the consumer to information available in Spanish. In addition, Content will address cultural beliefs that would impact the breastfeeding experience; breastfeeding in public is taboo, you must formula feed until your milk comes in. We need to be sensitive to the Latin American cultures beliefs of disease processes, its causes and treatments. The caregiver can incorporate these beliefs into the education process, for example, engorgement is seen as a “hot” disease Latin American culture dictates that “hot” diseases are treated with “cold” remedies. In this example we would encourage the use of cold cabbage leaves. By doing this we have restored the balance of hot and cold. Most important is to build trust, always be respectful and involve family (as defined by patient) in decision making process.
A9. Web Development and Maintenance Costs: Start up cost for this web expansion should be minimal because we are going to expand a current concept. We will have to look at the hourly rates of in house employees including web-designer at $28.00/hr. and Lactation Consultant at $26.00/hr., their time will be needed to develop and test web content prior to deploying to our website. We currently have a very small information link that gives the consumer the ability to register for breastfeeding and childbirth education classes. We will utilize the current web server site and add a link under breastfeeding paragraph that will take the consumer to The Mother’s Touch home page. Business cards to promote positive breastfeeding experiences have been printed to hand out to consumers both internal and external who are “caught” breastfeeding, this will thank them and give the web address that brings them to The Mother’s Touch home page. Cost for 1000 cards was $60.00. Data collected from visitors or those who register on the site will be stored in the hospitals main frame for future targeted marketing campaigns. Approximately $200.00 per week will be spent on lactation consultants to answer questions and comment on blogs from consumers. Domain name will be $20.00 per year.
Products will be available for rent or purchase in both the traditional brick and mortar structure or online. As we assess going forward we may need more support from a storefront perspective and I would go with Yahoo. That site offers a larger global presence and capabilities along with payment processing and shipping options with minimal percentage paid per item sold.

B Website Index: The Mothers Touch * Home * Register * Take Survey * Facts 1. Benefits 2. Birth Control * Basics * Getting Started 1. Frequency 2. Duration 3. Waking Baby 4. Burping * Positioning 1. Cradle Hold 2. Side Lying 3. Football 4. Cross Chest * Breastfeeding Multiples * Latch 1. Flanged Lips 2. Angle of mouth 3. Breaking Latch * How do I know baby is getting enough? * Breast Care 1. Cracked Nipples 2. Sore Nipples 3. Thrush 4. Engorgement 5. Plugged Milk Ducts * Pumping and Storage * Weaning * Supplies * Medela Pumps 1. Swing Breast Pump 2. Symphony Double Breast Pump 3. Pump in Style Advanced Metro Bag 4. Harmony Discharge Pack * Shells 1. SoftShell Sore Nipple 2. SoftShell Inverted Nipple * Bra Pads * Shopping Cart * Gift Card * Ask the Lactation Consultant * Greenwood ABCs Forum link