How Important is Marketing Strategy in Healthcare?

How important is marketing strategy in healthcare!?! Pretty darn important if you ask us.

If you haven’t noticed, times are changing for the healthcare industry. Insurance policies, costs, and reimbursements have changed; large corporate hospital-management firms have arisen; and the economy has shrunk. Doctors are finding that medical practices aren’t exactly recession-proof like we once thought.  At the same time, patients are seeking less care, either because they don’t have insurance that will adequately cover it or because they can’t afford their deductibles.

This means that healthcare marketing strategy is crucially important and the revenue models that have been in place for years won’t work anymore.

Doctors: For your practice to grow, you must have a coherent strategy in place to attract patients, retain the patients you have, and maintain the relationships between your staff and your patients.

Device Companies: The traditional sales rep won’t cut it anymore. You need to focus on solutions and outcomes, not product features. You need consider the needs of individual decision-makers and their preferences for interaction.

A changing climate demands you take a brand-new look at your marketing strategy. A truly effective, integrated strategy creates efficient ways for your target audience to find what they need, to make an informed decision and provides new information and insights – not just promotional hype.

There is no one size fits all for healthcare marketing strategy, but here are a few questions to get you started:

• How does your technology solve a well-defined problem in a new way?
• What audience ensures long-term growth? What audience will best drive short-term growth?
• What attributes of your product are most meaningful to these targets? What compelling truth motivates the target to buy?
• Considering the complex buying path for healthcare, what are the best intervention points and best messages to drive behavior change?

To sum up: if you agree that the healthcare and medical industry can no longer rely on incremental product improvement and a retail/detail sales force to succeed, then it’s time to rethink your strategy from the ground up.

If you want to chat about your marketing strategy, get in touch. We love talking about these radically changing times and how you can survive them. And here’s a hint: Luck isn’t a strategy.