The Importance of Knowing Your Patients

By Michelle Matura Hentzell

Consumers have many choices for health care providers or health care related services. So how do you make yourself stand out above your competitors? What makes you different? You want to show to the consumer why you are different and why that it is better. As you think through a direct-to -consumer campaign, there are several things you will want to think about:

1. What is your value to potential patients? Simply stated, you want to clearly define how you provide value. For example, if you have a medical spa, share why your results are better, “Our X treatment decreases cellulite by X% over X months.”

2. Who are or could be your patients? Defining your target market is very important. For example, if you are a physician practice that is doing peripheral vascular disease screenings (PVD), you do not want to promote these screenings to a 20-year-old young woman. An older demographic would be more appropriate.

3. How do you reach these potential patients? There are many communication options to choose from like advertising, articles or speaking engagements to name a few. For example, if you are promoting DEXA screening, you are not going to want to advertise in Maxim Magazine.

There is tremendous marketing and communications power when you know to whom you should be communicating. Finding this information may be simple. Some are as simple as guidelines. You know that colon cancer screening should be occurring at the age of 50 so you know not to communicate to a 20 year-old. Another great place to find patient demographics or segmentation is looking at the make-up of your practice or business. Focusing on the right targets will help you yield positive results.