Going to market with your health business is a step that most people feel stuck in. Having an idea and building it into a product can be very daunting to say the least. Now you have gone through that process, it is time to start telling everyone who cares to know about your product and make them patronize you right? Not so fast! There are some bases you still need to cover before marketing your product.
What does marketing a health business mean?
Healthcare marketing refers to the various means a health business employs to attract new patients while keeping the old ones loyal and engaged.
How to market a health business?
Taking your health business public is not like any other business, it is a lot more sensitive because there are so many things that are prohibited for you to share to the general public.
Marketing will entail more of educating but not disclosing too much to be abused by a non professional.
There are so many ways to market a health business, some of them are: social media, paid ads, press releases, television, radio, signages, branded materials, referrals, etc.
Things to know before planning your marketing
As we mentioned earlier, you can not just start advertising once you have an idea or have executed this idea. Here is basic information you need to know about your product/service in order to be successful at marketing it.
Know your Mission statement: this is a guideline by which a company operates. Everything the company does should work toward your mission’s statement. It answers the question of “who, what and where” of your business and marketing efforts.
Target audience: Before marketing your business, you should identify your target audience. The target audience refers to the specific group of consumers likely to buy your product or service. Target audience may be dictated by age, gender, income, location, interests, etc.
Branding: Is the process of creating and controlling people’s perception of your business. This is more than your logo, your tagline, etc. (that is just a part of it).
Marketing message: It is how your business or your brand communicates to its target audience to talk about itself and what it does.
A Marketing Plan: This helps to determine who the target market is, how best to reach them, at what price point the product or service should be sold, and how the company will measure its efforts. Your marketing plan should be flexible and quick to change as the need arises.
Commitment: Commitment helps you to stay on course when your business is not giving expected returns. Commitment is a very important factor in marketing and running your business.
Understand your market and competitors: Knowing who your competitors are, and what they are offering can help you to make your products, services and marketing stand out.
Understand your customers: Understanding your customers is the key to giving them good service. You need to be attentive to them, good customer care involves getting to know them better so you can anticipate their needs and exceed their expectations.
Offline or online marketing? How to choose
First there is no marketing channel superior to the other, each channel serves its own purpose. Quick analogy, imagine running a killer campaign online to get people to visit your physical store. People follow your address and don’t find your store or have difficulty doing so because you do not have a signage in front of your premises. Do you think the campaign was successful?
Offline marketing includes radio,newspapers, television, billboards, banners, telemarketing, brochures, fliers, etc.
Online Marketing includes social media, email marketing, paid ads, SEO, through your website/landing pages, etc.
Picking which channel comes down to knowing who your product or service is for. Example if you run a pediatric clinic you are not targeting the children but the parents.
Who are their parents? Are they career people? Who is the child’s primary care parent? Is the mom a housewife? Where could she likely be at a given time, what are her hobbies? Where can you find the dad during the weekend, etc.
Answering all these questions and more will help you decide if you should be focusing more energy online or offline. Remember not to overlook any channel.
How to choose which social media platform to use for your business?
Start with your audience: You should identify the social media platform your audience uses. The audience is the most important factor when choosing to take your business to social media. If you are marketing a telemedicine product and your target is to reach busy professionals who are tech savvy and do not have time to visit the hospital then you would likely find them on Linkedin during work hours because they see it as networking. You may not find this set of people on Tiktok. Except of course one of your user persona is a GenZ who would rather chat with a doctor than visit a hospital.
Define goals on social media: this will help you point to the specific steps and actions you’re taking to meet your business goals.
A business goal could be to get 20 patients a week to come in for a dental procedure. Your social media goal could be to get at least 200 people to inquire of your services online. You can now set up strategies to achieve these goals.
Know your business: your products and services, brand personality and business type should all influence your channel selection. An aesthetic clinic will be advised to use more of instagram than twitter because instagram will give them the opportunity to showcase pretty, clean content that resonates with their brand.
Research your competitors and others in your business: You should conduct a competitive analysis which should provide insights on what platforms they’re using, what’s working/not working.
Measure and adjust strategy: Measure your statistics on each social media platform monthly, and analyze which posts performed the best. Spend time thinking of why these posts stood out to your audience, and why some posts didn’t perform well on certain platforms.
If you need help with any of the steps mentioned so far, just send us a chat. We will be happy to help you.
Your go to market plan should be all encompassing. Social media should not be your only marketing plan.
It is also important to be realistic in goal setting and have in mind that marketing is not free. Even if we are made to believe that some platforms are free. You need to set a few bucks aside to get your brand/business known by the right people.
