Healthcare marketing factors
When designing a healthcare marketing strategy, healthcare organizations should examine multiple marketing factors, including target audience, strategic positioning, and customer segmentation.
Target audience
Considerations when refining a marketing strategy for healthcare include gathering information on the audience the campaign seeks to connect with.
Often, the target audience is a prospective or existing patient base, but sometimes healthcare marketing strategies focus on providers, public officials, educators, or other professionals who may benefit from health products and resources. For example, a pharmaceutical company may market a new drug therapy to physicians, who may recommend it to their patients.
Good questions to ask when conducting market research on a prospective healthcare audience include:
- What does the audience need? How are their needs currently being met?
- What are their lifestyles?
- What do they value in their healthcare services, providers, and treatments?
- How loyal are they, and how receptive are they to emerging technologies?
- How do they seek answers to medical questions? What sources do they rely on for information?
- How frequently do they seek services?
In addition to identifying key features of a target audience, a successful healthcare marketing strategy considers the barriers that may prevent an audience from accessing the product or service. Common barriers to access include financial limitations, a lack of transportation, and inaccessibility of services (in rural communities, for example).
Strategic positioning
Strategic positioning is a process by which an organization sets itself apart from competition.
Through strategic positioning, a healthcare organization specifies the benefits it provides to target customers. Whether it’s a new prescription drug with fewer side effects, a user-friendly telemarketing app, or a compassionate care team specializing in palliative care, naming and refining the specific need a product or service meets can help keep a healthcare marketing campaign focused and grounded.
An early step in taking a strategic position is helping an organization develop a clear, communicable mission and set of values. A target audience should know what a healthcare organization does, what it stands for, and what consumers can expect from it.
Customer segmentation
In healthcare marketing, customer segmentation has to do with dividing a target audience into different subgroups for the purpose of providing ever more tailored advertising.
Customer segmentation often involves dividing potential and existing customers along four lines:
- Geography: Where do patients live? What goods and services are already accessible for patients in the area?
- Behavior: What patterns of behavior do existing or potential patients exhibit? How do they currently learn about new healthcare options? How often do they use healthcare? How often do they seek new treatments and services?
- Demographics: What are the patients’ ages, genders, incomes, living situations, and education levels?
- Psychographics: What are the patients’ values? What do they care about? What are their attitudes toward healthcare professionals and the healthcare system generally?
