University of North Alabama Healthcare Marketer Interview Essay
Health Care Marketer Interview Instructions
As part of your course requirements, you will interview a health care marketing professional. This individual could be a hospital marketer, a post-acute provider (e.g. home health, hospice, nursing home, etc.) marketer, a marketer for a 3rd party payer or managed-care company, a pharmaceutical “rep,” the marketing director of a medical practice, or a pharmacy owner, among many other possibilities. This person should have all or part of the responsibility for marketing in a particular health care organization.
Tips Before and During Your Interview:
- Type up the questions you intend to ask ahead of time and order them in a way that makes sense. Try to cover a broad range of marketing topics with your list of questions. Textbooks may not cover the latest in social media or e-marketing strategies, but these people will be using them.
- You should include material derived from, and related to, topics covered this semester. However, try to make your questions reflect practical “real world” issues. I suggest avoiding the theoretical constructs that your textbook places emphasis on. Most health care marketers do not have a clue what Michael Porter’s Generic Strategies are, but they definitely know about real-world practical marketplace issues they are dealing with every day.
- The interview should be fairly brief (15-30 minutes), and can be conducted in person, by phone, by web conference, or via emailed document of questions.
- Other than that, try to make this an enjoyable project, for you AND your interviewee!
