Are you satisfied with the results from your marketing efforts and spend? Would you like your marketing to be more effective and powerful? This article outlines the 5 principles that can explode your marketing returns.

The healthcare industry (Hospitals & Individual doctors) is facing a universal challenge that most doctors and hospitals are grappling with nowadays- Healthcare Marketing. Despite their best efforts most doctors and hospital managers are dissatisfied with the returns that they get on their marketing spend. The level of dissatisfaction ranges from severe discontent to a vague uneasiness about getting adequate returns on the investment made. One always wonders if there is a better way? And the answer is a clear and resounding “YES”.

The fundamental problem that hospitals and doctors are facing is the universal and dramatic change in Buying Behaviour of the patient with the advent of the internet (Dr. Google) and Social media. While other industries have been quick to adapt to this change and have modified their marketing radically, healthcare has yet to reconcile with this change.

The cash paying patient’s decision-making behavior regarding their treatment has changed. They demand more information, transparency, accountability, support, second opinions and reviews. Unfortunately, doctors and hospitals have not only not adapted well to this but are actually hostile and resentful, hoping that somehow things will get back to “normal”. The sooner we accept this as the new normal and modify our thinking, strategy and planning the more effective we will be.

So, in this article I introduce FIVE basics that form the core of contemporary Healthcare marketing and are absolutely essential to build a powerful and effective marketing response

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1. Integration
2. Ensuring Ease of Access
3. Powerful Engagement
4. Follow-up for Conversion
5. Post-treatment Engagement

Integration

All hospitals and doctors engage in a myriad different types of marketing activities that involve a serious investment of time, money and bandwidth. However, what is sorely lacking, is a system to integrate these activities and track the leads or enquiries generated. Some of us use rudimentary methods but they lack comprehensiveness. Typically, post lead generation follow-up is done via CALLS. Calling patients without taking prior permission is quite intrusive and can be a big “No – No” for the modern discerning patient. Most patients don’t like to be pushed into and making decisions regarding treatment over telephone calls. This can be seriously counterproductive. Remember Hard selling causes mistrust!

The solution lies in building an Integrated system that captures these enquiries and then engages with the patient at their own desired pace and using the channel or medium of their choice. This is explained in detail in the next section.

Ensure ease of access

The hospital or the clinic must incorporate all available methods for a patient to connect and engage as per their preference. This implies that the mouth of your Sales funnel must be as wide as possible. You can learn more about the healthcare sales funnel here. Some of the portals that need to be created are:

• Website
• Facebook business page
• Active Facebook messenger
• Consultations over video
• Your personal App
• Trained call centre (secretary)

The effectiveness of these portals is critical for success and incorporation of modern technology in these is a must. As an example, an effective and user-friendly website should incorporate the following:

• Be Mobile friendly
• Fast loading time
• Ease of navigation
• Capture patient interest
• Messaging based on visitor personas
• A Smart- Bot that engages meaningfully with the visitor
• Google analytics and Facebook pixel

 Again, you need to have all of these modalities in one platform. Having separate vendors providing these services is not just ineffective but can cause leakages that seriously impacts performance and returns on investment.

Powerful Engagement

The key to success is not just providing easy access to your system but providing patients with quality engagement. So, ensure that you equip each modality adequately to effectively respond to ALL the patients. Using AI based smart-bots which are personalised to you, your specialty and your practice is effective way to ensure quality interactions with your patients. It guarantees higher engagements and conversions!  In case you are interested you can drop an enquiry at Catex Health which provides all these services under one roof.

Follow up For Conversion

This is one of the biggest lacunae in our healthcare marketing. We are able to generate enquiries, patients may even come to the doctor for a consultation but then afterwards disappear. We don’t know if they decided to seek treatment elsewhere or not get treated at all. However, we would like to know what happened and respond accordingly! We could provide information that will support them to decide or in case they went to another doctor it would be good to get feedback in order to take effective corrective measures. Again, an integrated system driven by AI based smartbots available on all channels (Your own App/ Website/ Facebook messenger) is the most powerful method to drive this.

Post treatment/ discharge Lifelong engagement

After the patients have been discharged, it is very difficult to stay connected. Some doctors are of the opinion that compliance and follow up is the patient’s choice and problem. This is not true, it is our responsibility to support treated patients to comply and follow-up.  However, this takes gets neglected due to the paucity of time. Those who understand and invest in post discharge engagement are sure winners! The quality of the post discharge engagement is important. It has to be timely, easy to access, easy to understand and personalised to the patient. Again, technology-based services are the answer.

In conclusion, the changed environment demands an appropriate response form us doctors and hospital managers. By integrating access, patient education, follow up and long term engagement in one platform creates a powerful marketing machine that is unstoppable.  

In case you are interested to learn more about the “Patient Magnet” the most powerful Integrated service to grow your practice please reach out or drop a mail.