The individual marketing audit will draw attention on the insurers’ organization, which will analyze the marketing strategy, implementation and results at WellPoint insurance company. This is an insurance company that resulted from a merger between WellPoint Inc. and Anthem Inc. in 2004. Interestingly, now, the affiliated health plan of the company has over 34 million individuals and over 70 million subsidiaries. Consequently, this makes the company to be the largest insurance company around the globe in terms of membership. The company’s headquarter is in Indianapolis in Indiana. However, the company is an independent licensee of different health insurance companies such as Blue Cross together with the Blue Shield Association. Most of the members that the company serves are in California, Indiana, Maine, Nevada, New York and Virginia among others. In its daily operations, the company collaborates with other health insurance companies such as Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Empire Blue Cross and Anthem Blue Cross among others (Sparks, 2012).
According to research conducted by dissimilar health insurance companies in U.S, one in every nine Americans get their health insurance through WellPoint. In addition to the normal operations that health insurance companies conduct, WellPoint also focuses on preferred provider organizations, health maintenance, has a care plan in traditional indemnity plans, together with other hybrid plans such as consumer health plans among others. Additionally, the company also provides their care services to the customers that self-fund themselves by managing their diseases and offering them other relevant administrative services. Notably, the company offers different types of specialty products as well as services. Some of these services include the insurances in disability benefits, dental, radiology and long-term care (Plunkett& Plunkett Research, Ltd, 2008).
Marketing strategies at the WellPoint insurance company
It is important to note that coming up with a marketing strategy for Health Insurance Company is among the difficult jobs. This is because the sector entails dissimilar conflicts that occur between the insurance companies that their major aim is to increase their profits together with the insured individuals because they highly focus on attaining as much compensation as possible. Consequently, this forced WellPoint insurance to gather the most essential skills in marketing so that they can be in a better position of facing the challenges existing in the market. This enabled the company to draw attention of different types of marketing traditional skills, which encompass conducting a marketing research, putting consideration of the design of their products, observing the way in which they distribute their services and pricing. In addition, the company also has interest in their advertisement methods; they conduct sales promotion and have good management in their sales (Dodson, Dotson, Mcllwain& Young, 1993). According to the company, any effective marketing should entail good marketing research. This is so because WellPoint insurance company believes that suppose it wants to introduce a new branch in different sectors around the globe, it is essential for it to conduct a systematic marketing research before opening up the branch in order for it to find a most promising venue. According to the interview conducted by the company employees, they conduct their research through both primary and secondary sources. They collect their secondary data through the existing sources hence considering the size of population in the targeted region, income distribution, level of education and the costs entailed in transporting their facilities. However, they collect their primary data by conducting group interviews within the targeted regions hence collecting the required information (Dubelaar, Finlay, & Taylor, 1991).
Their additional marketing skill is the design of their services where by the implement services that can make their customers to adjust to easily. This happens through the organizational marketers providing information regarding the ways in which their clients feel about their services and whether they need some changes in specific sectors. They also enhance their services in order to reduce the complaints that most insurance companies get from their customers such as long waiting time before delivering their services. Consequently, this has enabled WellPoint to realize that implementing a good marketing strategy can support it in implementing, communicating as well as delivering high quality services to their respective customers. They claim that their major interest is to implement high quality services that guarantee high level of satisfaction in order to maintain their customers(McDonald & Wilson, 2000).
Remarkably, WellPoint insurance company believes that implementing a good marketing strategy will help it to generate growth hence increasing its profits. This is because the strategies focus on selecting the appropriate approaches to the targeted segment of the population. This is important because the major source of growth in the company depends on the increase of its members and the enhancement of their total revenues from the members. This can be through creating more profitable mix of customers and adding more activities in addition to their current health insurance services. Therefore, this enables the company to conduct much research on different marketing strategies so that it can come up with a strategy that will enhance significant growth. In addition to the above, this has enabled WellPoint insurance company to draw attention on the relationships in marketing, whereby it works hard on knowing their potential customers on a personal level so that they can be able to enhance good communication with them. This benefits the company because it makes their potential customers to be free with them hence communicating on a frequent basis. However, it also enables the insurance company to target their intended message to their interested customers (Dubelaar, Finlay, & Taylor, 1991).
WellPoint has also strategized in data drive marketing because they believe that in any insurance industry, tracking relevant data and conducting the performance analysis helps the company in meeting the required standards. This is because such information helps them to track their outcomes together with their level of profitability hence being in a position to determine their success rate. This also helps the insurance company to increase their members since it enables the members to see and understand the ways in which the company benefits them. However, WellPoint insists that data based marketing strategy has been beneficial to it because it allows customers to compare the services of different health insurance companies hence choosing the most appropriate one. Concurrently, the strategy has been supporting the WellPoint to pass important information to their customers together with their marketing messages and this has enabled it to increase its total membership hence being the largest insurance company around the globe in terms of membership (Kim& Lim, 2008).
Additionally, WellPoint has technology based marketing as another marketing strategy that it considered using and it turned out to be beneficial. However, this type of marketing encourages communication between the company and its customers through the internet. This is because the company believes that the traditional marketing, which requires the company marketers to travel for long distances in order to access customers were time consuming and expensive. Therefore, the company believes that since the health insurance company deals with uncomfortable issues including sickness and different medical wants, it is important to incorporate technology in communication in order to increase conveniences in their services. The company does so because it also believes that this can be a productive practice since it can attract new members. However, the services has enabled the company to transform the uncomfortable services to comfortable by ensuring they deliver their services on time without any delays since they are directly available to their customers at any given period. The company implemented the online educational videos and other appropriate references sites, which allow the customers to access direct interactions with their providers thus keeping their communication levels updated. In addition to technology, WellPoint has flights, which mainly focuses on attending to customers with emergencies all over the globe. This has turned out to be beneficial to the company because it increased the trust in their services between them and their clients hence attracting more members to join the company(Johne& Davies, 2000).
Moreover, WellPoint health insurance companies apply the strategy of targeting the best market. During this process, the company ensures that it targets the most appropriate population for its health insurance and mostly, it targets senior customers. After identifying the target group, the company ensures that it analyzes the profile together with the characteristics of the targeted customers with focus on factors such as their average age, total income that they receives and their geographic locations. This is imperative because analyzing the profile of their customers help them to know how to tailor their marketing in order to enhance customer satisfaction since they believe that the significant objective of marketing it to solve different health problems affecting their customers. Additionally, the company also believes in marketing the reliability of the company because it claims that most customers of health insurance companies aims at feeling secure with their health insurance companies. This is so because WellPoint believes that slow payments causes long-term harm to the reputation of their company. Therefore, this encourages the company in ensuring that all its marketing functions aim at supporting customer satisfaction, which is essential because it maintains their customers hence increasing the total profits that they receive. They also ensure that they build strong trust with their customers so that the customers can know that the company will be there for them during difficult and illness periods rather than making their situations worse(Kim & Lim, 2008).
WellPoint has also simplified its purchase, which is among the beneficial marketing strategies in the company. This is so because the company believes that customers can encounter different problems while trying to compare the policies applicable in different insurance companies. The health insurance companies have different factors that customers should consider. These factors include cost of their co-pays, the procedures that the company will cover their monthly premiums, deductibles as well as the ways in which they can access the customers. Therefore, the company simplifies all the involved methods hence supporting good understanding among their customers. They also ensure that their members know their representatives so that they can access help whenever they need and support them to understand the purchasing process. Consequently, this implies that WellPoint Health Insurance Company ensures that they implement products that can meet the needs of their customers thus enabling it to achieve healthy profits (Dodson, Dotson, Mcllwain& Young, 1993).
Furthermore, the company aims at choosing the right and quality customers who are beneficial to the company. In doing so, the company applies the modern forms of advertisement where by instead of using televisions to advertise their services, it uses modern types of advertisements such as door knob, online and promoting their websites through social media. The company also has email signatures that highly relate to the services that they offer, which acts as an advertisement approach since it conveys the intended message. The company has a website, which enables the interested clients to access information regarding various types of services that it offers. In addition to that, WellPoint is an active member of the local networking events, which benefits it because it allows it to meet potential customers as well; it acts as a potential place to conduct their advertisements. The company realized that most online users visit the yellow pages, which made it to be listed within the pages hence enabling many customers to learn about them (Johne& Davies, 2000).
Remarkably, in addition to the discussed strategies, WellPoint Health Insurance Company has practiced other marketing strategies, which have enabled it to emerge successful in the market of health insurance companies. For example, the company ensured that its name becomes familiar to the public through using different means such as television, providing enticing offers and opening up a website among others. The company also uses telephone marketing, whereby it collaborates with telephone companies so that they can send messages regarding different offers to their customers. They also have call centers, with the main aim of alerting their potential clients on the new products and services within the market. It further applies the web insurance marketing since it plays a significant role in promoting the insurance policies, thus sending messages to their potential clients. They also conduct community health insurance marketing, thus increasing the recognition of the company within the community hence increasing their chances of meeting individuals who can turn out to be their potential clients (McDonald& Wilson, 2000).
Implementation of the health insurance strategies in WellPoint Health Insurance Company
In implementing the health insurance strategies at WellPoint Health Insurance Company, the marketing staff ensures that they develop plans that they can carry to successful conclusion. They make sure that all the plans that they develop within the strategies address all what and why questions entailed in the marketing activities. During the implementation process, the marketing staff applies four dissimilar skills. These include the diagnostic skills, which ensure that the marketing strategies fulfill the intentions of both the clients and the company. It also identifies the organizational level, where it highlights the stages within the marketing strategy that different problems can originate. It also applies the implementation skills, which calls for the staffs involved in marketing to have all the vital skills that will increase the productivity of the company. Finally, during the implementation of the identified strategies, the company ensures that all its marketing staffs have evaluation skills so that they can be able to track dissimilar marketing actions(Kim & Lim, 2008).
Results of marketing strategies in WellPoint Health Insurance Company
The discussed marketing strategies have enhanced positive results in the company. For example, since the company introduced the strategies, it has been able to enhance the effectiveness within their products and services. The company also acquired a strong competitive advantage and enhanced awareness among its customers. Furthermore, the strategies supported the insurance company in reducing the costs involved in different areas as well as increasing their savings. It also enabled the company to get the chance of accessing new opportunities and meeting their goals and objectives (McDonald & Wilson, 2000).
Whether the organization adheres to biblical principles
The marketing strategies that the health insurance company applied adheres to the biblical principles revealed in the person, life and teachings of Jesus Christ. This is because Jesus taught people to love their neighbors as they love themselves. In adhering to this teaching, the company ensures that it creates awareness in the community regarding the goods and services that they offer so that the community members can understand them better before making their decisions. Furthermore, the company loves their customers because in every decision that they come up with, they put their clients at the forefront and they work hard towards customer satisfaction. They also run their business similar to the life of Jesus Christ. This is because according to the bible, Jesus Christ spends most of his time teaching different things to people including the ways in which they can lead a pure life. This is similar to the manner in which the insurance company conducts its business because it spends time enlightening the community members about their services so that they can make wise decisions. Similarly, the insurance company also offers good health services to the community members.
References
Dodson, D., Dotson, M., Mcllwain, T & Young, D. 1993, Implementing Marketing strategy 9Part four). Health Mark q. 11(1-2): 43-57
Dubelaar, C., Finlay, P.N. & Taylor, D. (1991).Expert systems: The cold fusion of marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, 7(4), 371-382.
Johne, A, & Davies, R. (2000).Innovation in medium-sized insurance companies. How marketing adds value, The International Journal of Bank Marketing,, 18(1).
Kim, L. & Lim, Y. (2008). Environment, generic strategies and performance in a rapidly developing country: A taxonomic approach, Academy of Management Journal, 31(4), 802-827
McDonald, M.H.B. & Wilson, H.N. (2000).State-of-the-art development in expert systems and strategic marketing planning, British Journal of Management, 1(3), 159-170.
Plunkett, J. W., & Plunkett Research, Ltd. (2008).Plunkett's health care industry almanac: 2009. Houston, Tex: Plunkett Research.
Sparks, K. K. (2012).Insurance activities of banks.New York, NY: Wolters Kluwer Law & Business.
