Internal Marketing: A Competitive Strategy for the Long-Term Care Industry

industry. An essential part of their marketing effort has to be what is termed the nursing home to the community, including prospective “internal marketing.” Internal marketing consists of an effort by the organiresidents, by what is commonly called “word of mouth adverzation to train and motivate its employees to provide better service. Internal tising.” This information is passed on via a grapevine or netmarketing must precede conventional marketing campaigns if the latter are work of friends and acquaintances. Through it, the staff comto succeed. Negative staff attitudes will affect quality of care, and negative ments are propagated to the public regarding fellow staff word of mouth communication by patients and staff to the community will members, the management, and the type and quality of care negate the effects of the marketing campaign. A survey by the authors shows provided to the patients. It is essential that marketing prothat education and advancement of nursing assistants has been neglected. grams attempt to manage this communication network just They recommend the internal marketing efforts focus on those nursing as they use the mass media. The way to manage word of assistants. J BUSN RES 2000. 48.177–181.  2000 Elsevier Science mouth advertising is to ensure that the staff is satisfied, motiInc. All rights reserved. vated, trained, and loyal. In short, nursing home management can only create effective marketing programs by first conducting what is called “internal marketing,” and by focusing that internal marketing on nursing assistants. The spread of managed care and the competition being encountered from hospitals and home health-care agencies will drive nursing home management to pracMarketing by Nursing Homes tice more sophisticated marketing in the future. Technology Nursing homes have historically relied on the social worker and the present alternative care models encourage provision and/or admissions person employed by the individual home for geriatric care in the home, short-term respite care, and to market their services, plus the occasional physician referral others models of care. Competition for patients is intense, (Molloy, 1994). These professionals receive little, if any, trainand more effective marketing is essential for survival; however, ing in marketing during their formal education, and certainly the nursing home industry has had little experience with marnone on internal marketing (Robbins, 1997; Grant, Kane, keting in its 30-year history. When the typical nursing home Potthoff, and Ryden, 1996). Little marketing effort is made has designed a marketing campaign in the past, one of the most to fill nursing home beds, and little is done to promote the important ingredients has been actually left out: the employees. image of the nursing home. Even less is done to promote Employees affect the success of marketing campaigns in word of mouth advertising through the caregiving staff. two ways. First, they are essential to the delivery of health As reported in Hospital Marketer Study Archives, 83% of care to the patients. If they fail to deliver the quality of care marketers that were surveyed reported that they received the least support from nurses (16%), physicians (14%), and other Address correspondence to Dr. Jack Cooper, Western Connecticut State Unistaff (13%) (Cooper, 1994). A 1993 survey of top-level nurses versity, 181 White Street, Danbury, CT 06810, USA. showed that nurses in long-term care institutions spend less An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the American Association for Advances in Health Care Retime on marketing than do nurses in acute or home care (Scalzi search, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, March 9–11, 1995, and was included in the 1995 Proceedings of that association. and Wilson, 1993). When we consider that, in the nursing