Marketing’s Important Role in Healthcare

At first glance, many people may not understand what marketing and healthcare fields have in common. However, modern marketing is a powerful force in every industry, including healthcare, and is intertwined in the world of medicine.

When beginning a marketing campaign, a good marketer will focus on the “pain point” — the need for a target demographic. Proposing a solution to the problem drives the rest of the campaign. Customer satisfaction is everything in this process — if customers’ needs are met, the chances of a transaction, or repeat transactions, increases.

Similarly, healthcare focuses on the customer journey, addressing literal pain points in its mission to heal patients. Patients visit the healthcare provider because they have a problem. If they feel heard and are helped adequately, then they walk away feeling better, with a solution. Furthermore, in the occurrence of future ailments, the satisfied patient may keep that doctor or institution in mind and return again.

Patients will absolutely find a new doctor if they feel like their needs are not met. There exist numerous choices of healthcare providers, some in very close proximity to each other, and offering identical services. So how does a provider stand out from the crowd and attract new patients? The key is marketing.

Over the course of the last ten years, the field of healthcare has undergone a shift in marketing strategies. Firstly, new technology allows for a broadening of digital marketing, as well as new medical equipment and practices that are advertised as safer and more convenient. Furthermore, image marketing has given way to a more specific, service-oriented marketing. In that same vein, instead of addressing individual health problems, many providers have begun to focus on building an ongoing relationship with their patients.

Staying up-to-date with changes like these will aide a healthcare provider in navigating the market it operates in. Marketing tools, like a SWOT analysis or ROI tracking, provide additional insights.

Among all this, an important question arises: why? Simply put, threading marketing strategies into your campaigns will give you an edge over competing practices, increase your reputation among potential patients, and boost provider visibility.

In order to achieve that, however, the service and quality of care that a healthcare provider offers have to have real value. The marketing material should be factual, high-quality, memorable, and hard to replicate by any competing healthcare providers.

Originally published on Thomas Looby’s website.