A clinic can provide treatment for everyone, but it must target its marketing activities at a very specific audience. In order to manage your marketing budget properly, you need to know exactly who your patient is, to create what is known as a client profile. We’ve provided you with a detailed plan to guide you through the process and make sure you don’t forget anything.
1. Choosing a specific service to promote
It’s important to know what you intend to offer to your potential client and why. Maybe it will be expensive cosmetology services to increase the average check, or rare procedures that only your clinic performs. Perhaps you’ll focus on low-value doctor appointments to fill your schedule. If your budget allows, you can run several ad campaigns at once to cover all needs, but each should be customized for its target audience.
2. Select and segment your target audience
Even if your clinic is highly specialized, you’ll have several subgroups of your target audience. Advertising to the “men and women 25-65” category will just waste your money and you won’t get results. Remember: you need a separate advertising message for each audience.
What criteria can you use to segment your target audience? The most classic parameters will be the following: gender, age, occupation, financial income, whether the patient is on OMS or VMI, chronic diseases, risk groups.
If you run an already operating clinic with its own patient database, an advanced medical information system will help you better understand your target audience. For example, you can identify customer segments through a tagging system. Tags can be assigned by doctors or administrators at any stage of the patient experience. In this way, the manager can generate a report on segments and determine what kind of patients come to the clinic most often and what services they choose.
3. Segmentation for already established clinics and thee new ones
The segmentation process will vary depending on whether your clinic is already operating, or if you are just planning to open one. If you have been in business for some time and have a customer base, we recommend the following procedure:
- Analyse your patients and divide them into subgroups.
- Calculate the profit from each subgroup. It is essential to count profits, not revenues, because we want to promote ourselves to the categories of patients who bring us the best net income.
- See if you have a target audience that you have previously considered in your planning, but for which you have not yet achieved your goals.
- Prioritise sub-groups of your target audience to see where to focus the maximum effort.
If your clinic has just opened and you don’t have an established base, you may still be able to segment your target audience. Write down the concept of your clinic, go through the descriptions of your products and services, analyze your competitors, identify the main categories of future patients.
It is very crucial for start-up clinics to carefully record patient data so that segmentation will be easy in the future. A good electronic medical record will enable you to track the results of your client acquisition channels, to understand at what stages and why potential clients refuse appointments.
4. Create patient avatars
A patient avatar is an extension of the classic segmentation and helps you better understand your client’s portrait: what they actually interested in and are their criteria for selecting a clinic. It is actually a life description of the average person in your chosen subgroup. There can be several avatars per segment. You describe the avatar as an individual person: you give them a name, define their age and specify as many characteristics as possible.
Here’s a list of typical questions you can mentally ask your target audience to highlight the avatars:
- The client’s name;
- Their gender;
- Age;
- Marital status;
- Having/not having children;
- Description of the other half (if any);
- Place of residence (preferably city, district);
- Occupation;
- Income (personal and family);
- Social status;
- Who makes decisions in the family;
- Education;
- The client’s biggest fear when going to the clinic (it is advisable to describe this in as much detail as possible);
- What annoys them, makes them angry and unhappy;
- What is valuable and important for them to receive from your clinic and treatment in general.
Remember, a well-written avatar is the backbone of your marketing. It helps you better understand your patients and will be an indispensable aid when working with third-party marketers who don’t have the opportunity to dive deep into the subject matter, but are helping you with promotional projects.
5. Engage the audience that is already interested in you
A common phenomenon we notice is that clinics don’t pay enough attention to the categories of patients who are already bringing them a steady income. People are already coming to us, so why do something extra, right? In fact, such neglect deprives the clinic of additional, and often very significant, profits.
Working on retention and building loyalty is extremely important and requires little investment. Use existing patient data to offer bonuses and discounts from time to time, notify them of new promotions, congratulate them on holidays and birthdays, and develop a loyalty programme.
6. Set good business goals when working with your target audience
Getting more patients and profits is a demand, not a business goal. To work successfully with your target audience, set clear goals for yourself so you will be able to track your progress. Don’t forget to mark a reference point so you have something to compare it to after your campaigns.
You probably know how to set SMART goals:
S is specific. Exactly what needs to be done, who will do it and where.
M – measurable. For example, increase the number of leads by 40%.
A – achievable. Plan ambitiously, but achievable, so as not to be demotivated.
R – relevant. Make sure the goals you set are really important to your business at the time.
T – Time-bound. If the goal doesn’t have a deadline, then the goal won’t be met.
It’s okay if in process you realise that your priorities have changed and you’ll have to adapt your original goals to the new challenges. However, try to think carefully from the beginning about what you want to achieve in the end. This will help to avoid wasting energy, time and money.
7. Prepare the clinic for new patient influx
When you are done with segmenting your target audience and launching your marketing activities, you will get a lot of requests. It is a good idea to prepare your team, both administrative and medical. Tell them about your plans and activities and explain why you are doing this.
Speak again about the rules of communication with patients. If necessary, you can invest in a little training for the team. Pay particular attention to how receptionists communicate with clients – over the phone and in person. Write down the basic scripts for conversations, what must be said and what is strictly unacceptable.
Additionally, evaluate how the appointment process works for you now. Is it possible to make an appointment online? How long does it take? Do a test run with colleagues or acquaintances. Sometimes people get to the last step – making an appointment – and give up if it takes too many steps. Don’t let your efforts be wasted.
