The St. Stephens Sleep Lab is a facility affiliated with the St. Stephens Hospital. It is located in Brooklyn, New York. The facility houses ten beds providing services for individuals who have sleep disorders or who are exhibiting symptoms of such kinds of illnesses.
At present, the sleep lab is looking into achieving a breakeven and making profit within a year upon the establishment and opening of the business. The remainder of the paper will discuss how St. Stephens Sleep Lab will attempt to realize such goal.The objective of attracting clients to the sleep lab in order to obtain profit is a complex process.
It should follow a business plan that maps out how the facility will undergo the process from start to finish. Initially, the facility needs to determine the target market for the services that it provides, and identifying other services as well that might add value to the facility. This process has something to do with the demographics of clients and how their needs will be met by the services provided by St. Stephen’s Sleep Lab.
Following the required information, the facility is prepared to formulate strategies or approaches in gaining consumers to accomplish organizational goals and objectives, most especially in the area of gaining profit. The planning process then will require research and thorough analyses of the market structure. (McNamara, 2008a) Since the functions of the sleep lab are focused on providing services to detect symptoms and causes for sleep disorders and provide opportunities to clients to cure disorders or illnesses associated to sleeping through recommendations and referrals.Marketing strategies to obtain a client base should then be focused on how the facility will be able to attract the attention of individuals who have sleeping disorders.
It would help to consider not only the technical aspect of a sleep lab, such that it offers services that are medical or health related. The sleep lab should also incorporate other elements within the facility to provide clients their needs and concerns. Advertising and promotional strategies is the most popular and easiest ways of obtaining a client base.Numerous advertising strategies and techniques will be able to draw consumers as long as the methods and means of advertising and promoting suit the dimensions of the sleeping lab. (McNamara, 2008b) Advertising and promotion will be in the form of television, print, and web materials.
Permanence and reach to wider populations is provided for by online advertising. Putting up a website in cyberspace is a good way to establish presence to majority of the population as online users are growing in number each day.The website should be able to provide information of signs and symptoms of sleep disorder, and recommend that people who suspect they might be suffering from these disorders should sign up for the sleep lab in order to come one step closer to finding a solution to their sleeping problems. On the other hand, print materials, such as newspaper ads, fliers, brochures, etc.
will be made available in health care facilities that do not have access to sleep labs.Moreover, it will be a good idea to provide available print advertising materials in areas wherein possibilities of sleep disorders might arise. Targeting employees who work at night and get off by day, or who work in institutions that might result to their acquisition of respiratory illnesses, and other institutions with stressful work environments and requiring much time and involvement from its members will acquire most clients for the sleep lab.In addition, advertising the sleep lab at primetime and late night slots on television is a good idea, as a good number of individuals who have sleep disorders are more likely to be watching television late at night and early morning. Another strategy to obtain clients for the sleep lab would be to establish partnerships with health care facilities, clinics, hospitals, etc. (“Partnerships and Affiliations,” 2008) Opportunities to widen the client base would manifest if the affiliation is not limited to St.
Stephens Hospital.There are other facilities who do not own sleep labs and what better way to channel their patients who need to undergo sleep observations and diagnosis but to be affiliated with a sleep lab. St. Stephens Sleep Lab will work on obtaining enough information of health care facilities, hospitals, clinics, etc.
who would benefit from the services of a sleep lab. First, St. Stephens Sleep Lab should be able to pitch the idea to these facilities and institutions with the purpose of urging them to a partnership.The partnership is simple – health care facilities, hospitals, clinics, etc. with patients who need to undergo sleep observation and diagnosis will be referred to St.
Stephens Sleep Lab. In return, the sleep lab will recommend medical practitioners and professionals from these facilities and institutions to their clients, according to the nature of their illnesses and what type of treatment they need. (“The Sleep Lab Experience,” 2008)In relation to the need to research and advertise to employees and organizations that might need to undergo services available in sleep labs, St. Stephens Sleep Lab should be open about conducting talks and discussions for free within these institutions. The sleep lab should coordinate with organizational leaders presenting the need to orient their employees and other members of the organization about the dangers of sleeping disorders and what these conditions might pose to their work productivity and efficiency.
Perhaps it is recommendable to suggest that opening their doors to sleep lab services will increase their corporate social responsibility and provide employee satisfaction. (“The Sleep Lab Experience,” 2008) The talks and discussions will cover why employees and other members of the organization are at risk and have the increasing potential to obtaining sleeping disorders. The sleep lab will then continue to discuss the need to undergo services that the facility provides under the context of improving work productivity and efficiency.In the end, the sleep lab will ask employees and other members of the organization to sign up under their services, if they want to, granting those who signed up discounts and other promotional materials for allowing sleep lab to state their case. This process will obtain additional clients for the sleep lab, because the target population within organizations with stressful and demanding work environments fit the kind of services that the sleep lab offers.
