3 Ways to Develop Marketing as Habit
When it comes to marketing, hospital or clinic owners can move towards making marketing a habit by doing these three activities.
Monthly themes. Identify a marketing need – work on your website for changes required for the need, write your marketing kit, create a new patient process – and make it the theme for the month. Always review the outcome.
Weekly reviews. When it comes right down to it, once you’re clear on your marketing strategy, marketing itself becomes a set of projects. When you start to look at marketing as the habit of focusing on a group of projects, you can begin to break those projects down into action steps or tasks. Your weekly marketing
review should include everyone in your organization and post the simple question, “What needs to be done
next?” to each project.
Daily Task. While you may have many things on your daily calendar including clinical appointments and medical procedures, make it a habit to schedule one time slot dedicated solely to marketing each day. Keeping your constant focus on marketing objectives is important.
80:20 Rule
Always remember that 80% business comes from 20% customers. These are high value customers who gives you most of business revenue. Focus your efforts and promotional strategies keeping in mind the needs of these people. While defining your customer or developing your marketing strategy, keep this formula in mind for better results.
Behavior matters
Research proves that 84% successful doctors are not the best in clinical skills but they are excellent in bringing patients to their door step with great behavioral skills. Understand your patient’s needs in a way no other competitor can understand and offer them solutions, give them complete treatment plan and process so that they are already convinced before any medical procedure.
Research proved that 67% consumers never came back because of the behavioral issues in the hospital.
One winning strategy
There is only one winning strategy: it is cautiously defining a target market and pushing a superior offer towards this market”. You can not cater to the whole market as a professional marketer. Define your target segment with complete customer demographics and understanding and offer this segment which no other competitor is offering. As an example, let us take a case. Suppose one is looking for mass practice which is highly price sensitive. Now offer services at a cost no other can match and make your marketing strategy keeping masses in mind. Make your services affordable and easily approachable.
Marketing is changing
During the past 60 years, marketing focused itself on the product centered itself on the consumer. Now we observe successful institutions are increasing their focus from products or services to consumers and the problems they are facing. Addressing these problems with innovative technologies, enhanced skills and minimum discomfort is the key.
Sell benefits not services
The intelligent marketers of today don’t sell products, they sell benefits. Need to remain good and healthy is the basic human need and if you can restore health and confidence in a patient, tell this benefit to them better than any other person can do. Do not sell your services or products but associated benefits. Design your promotional tools describing the benefits of treatment. Communicate to your target audience the benefits of your services. Remember people understand and are interested in benefits rather than your technical jargon.
Branding Matters
The key to branding, especially for small companies, is to focus on your target market which can also be a niche market and develop a superior expertise in this market. The most important reason why brand matters is that brand adds value to your product or service and you can charge for premium services. People have special affinity and loyalty towards brands. If you successfully develop yourself as a brand in your segment, you will not only have a good patient footfall but they will be willing to pay premium for your services.
Make your services obsolete
“Every organization should work hard to make their own line of products obsolete before their competition does”, says Philip Kotler, father of modern marketing.
In a new era of constant and speedy change, keep upgrading your skills which not only includes you clinical skills but marketing and management skills too. Offer new and customized offerings and solutions to your patients before your competitors does the same.
Target Audience database is important
The future of successful marketing resides in target audience databases, through which we know enough about each client to make relevant and personalized offers to each one of them. In today’s modern marketing, customer is king and has ample number of choices to make before finalizing the service provider. Try to get authentic database of your targeted audience and develop marketing programs catering to the need of this segment.
Good Brands are memorable and preferable
Strong brand provides immunity in challenging market place. Today’s healthcare market provides ample challenges for businesses like increasing competition and commoditization. Healthcare companies have more than doctors to win over — they have to reach patients, providers, and payers too. The pressure is not on companies to perform — it’s on the brands. People don’t buy into a company and its set of products or services. They buy into the brand, and what it means to them. They buy into the security within the brand promise and they buy into the way that brand relates to their individual human journey.
PLC
Every brand has a product life cycle or PLC. When you open a clinic, it is in nascent stage and requires lot of promotions, after sometime it enters growing stage where along with promotion you start getting some business. Finally it reaches cash cow stage where business is at peak. Promotions help you in reaching cash cow stage fast. Finally it declines and it’s the time for brand extension strategy. Understanding marketing basics are crucial to your clinic commercial success.