The lifeblood of any medical practice is patients. A major part of improving the patient acquisition process is learning how to target an appropriate audience. For example, a common mistake family medical practices make is targeting a broad audience rather than a specific one. This leads to all kinds of issues like wasted resources and unhappy patients.
Although family medicine can mean treating everyone, you might not want to market that way. Understanding who your core target audience is and how to appeal to them can lead to a successful medical practice rather. Niche marketing, or small market segment, involves targeting specific groups. However, this requires an effective strategy that reaches them on an individual level and addresses their specific needs.
Step 1: Choose Some Niche Markets
Medical marketing differs from traditional marketing. When choosing your niche markets, you cannot simply choose by basic demographics like age and ethnicity. It is usually a combination of demographics that allow you to get a better picture of what to advertise and to whom. To understand what combination of demographics you want to look for, ask yourself a couple of questions like:
- Medical conditions your medical practice treats effectively
- Unique treatment options
- Type of person you want to treat
- The ideal patient
These questions help you understand where you want to take your medical practice and what kind of people you want ultimately inside it.
A good example is a family medical practice in Hartford, Connecticut. Person A offers vitamin infusions to help people stay healthy and nasal spray influenza vaccines. Their ideal patient is a middle-aged mom with a medium to high income, who has children and is married. Further, this kind of patient has money to spend on treatments like vitamin infusions and has children for the nasal spray vaccines.
Step 2: Develop Strategies to Target Your Selected Niche Markets
Now that you have found an appropriate group or groups, identify ways to target them. Terraboost offers Wellness Billboards that include hand sanitizers and wipes, which offer a positive brand experience for those who see and interact with it. Positioned in thousands of widely known and popular locations like supermarkets and pharmacies, Terraboost gives legitimacy to your medical practice while appealing to the niche market you seek.
Moms, a popular group to advertise to, need wipes or hand sanitizer to keep their and their children’s hands clean. They often frequent pharmacies and grocery stores to pick up medicine and food. Thus, by having a strategically placed Wellness Billboard, you will have access to your niche market in an area with high foot traffic and high visibility.
Step 3: Make Patient Personas
Patient personas are a critical step toward effective niche marketing. Personas are fictitious characters generated to represent each patient category. Typically, it is realistic to have 2-3 patient personas for every service offered. Personas have names, profiles, and pictures to remind you what kind of person you would speak to during visits. Personas can include fabricated names, age, jobs, bios, hobbies, the technology they use, needs, tech literacy, frustrations, wants/deserves, and personality traits.
By having patient personas you provide a frame of reference when communicating with your new patients. As your medical practice receives more patients, you can update and fine-tune these patient personas to get an even more precise idea of what your patients need and how to effectively interact with them.
Patient Persona Video from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital