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Don’t Rely on Intuition, Ask!

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

You surely do have a good sense about your patients or referring physicians but why not obtain good information in absolute terms? Having solid market intelligence is a healthcare marketing essential and enables us to make the best choices in our service offerings, pricing and tactics. Most of us believe we have a good understanding of the healthcare market we serve. And while that is true, it is not totally true.

Way too many of us cut the corner of simply making assumptions and neglect to ask our customers what is really on their minds about our healthcare service. We are missing out on good opportunities to continually improve and grow our services. I often hear the lament of how frustrated primary care physicians are about the lack of feedback they receive from consulting physicians or patients who tell their friends their frustration about the service they didn’t receive at their doctor’s office but don’t tell the people who can fix the problems.

Get in the habit of seeking feedback. Whether positive and negative, feedback, can help tune work processes and services to better suit your current and future patients/customers. Obtaining feedback can move your healthcare organization from ordinary to extraordinary.

Varying Methods of Collection

There are many different ways to obtain the feedback. There are several different on-line services that you can use such as SurveyMonkey or PollDaddy. Using such a site will help you create a survey of any size with the option of conducting analysis once the data is collected. Or consider creating a quick survey on your website asking key questions or instill a face to face feedback moment at the end of a visit – give them a form or ask them to meet with one of your staff members to go over some service oriented questions.

Questions to Ask

Once you are in the habit of seeking feedback from your customers, you will seek out input on a variety of things. Typically you will want to know about how your service is valued, what are road-blocks in the delivery of that service? What can be done better and what is already done well. Your questions will reflect what your interests are but here are some example questions:

How old are you? (knowing this information can help you tailor the delivery of your service based on generational differences.)
Why did you choose us as your service provider?
How long did you have to wait before you were provided with an appointment?
How would you rate your overall satisfaction with our service?
How would you rate the overall customer service you received?
Did you consider any alternatives to our service? If so, how did you make your decision?
Are you familiar with our website? (This can lead to several other website questions)
What do you wish was different about our practice/service?
Would you recommend us to your friends and family? Why/why not?

The Last Thing to Consider

What do you do with the data once you have collected it? Be sure to systematically analyze the information you are receiving. Set up studies so you can chart improvement and catch problems early on. Thoroughly review data to determine if you should change services, personnel, customer service efforts. Your patients are a great source of insight for your continued and future success as a healthcare provider.

Tags: marketing input, patient experience, patient feedback
Posted in marketing, practice development | No Comments »

Essential Questions for Healthcare Planning

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

You are either starting or have started your business and should have spent some time on the basic start-up elements (mission, services, pricing, brand, financing, revenue and expense projections) As your practice matures, don’t let the execution of your operations overtake your planning. In the United States, our business culture tends to be fast moving and dwells in “doing.” That’s how we get things done! But don’t leave out the thinking and the planning as you move your organization into new realms. Differentiate your healthcare organization by asking these essential questions:

1) What makes (or will make) your healthcare organization unique for your patients? Perhaps it is your service delivery or maybe it is your brand, but make sure that you come to your prospective patients mind in an un-aided fashion – essentially you want to be on their short-list for the service you offer. You want to know that your patients or prospective patients want and need your service.

2) Do you have good knowledge of the healthcare market? Not only do you want to know what works best for your patients but you also want to know what your competitors are doing and offering. You want to know everything that is happening in your specific market. And you want to be able to know why your patients prefer you or why they don’t.

3) In tandem with knowledge of your market, you want to know as much as possible about your existing patients. What do they appreciate about your service and are there areas in which you can improve? Having a deep sense of your service prowess will aid in stable patient retention.

4) How will you communicate with your customers and keep them in the fold? You want your patients to think about you beyond when they obtain their bill for your services. How often will you communicate? What will be the purpose of these communications? How personalize can you make them?

5) What type of customer relationship management (CRM) system will you use to keep track of your healthcare customers? You can keep track of your patients as well as the physicians who refer patients to your service. Learn about them and collect information to help enhance your relationship development.

6) What benchmarks are you going to set to help you recognize progress? As you plan, you want to make sure you have metrics in place that can help you assess your success. Your metrics may change as you grow. You may start with website hits or patient volume but as your processes mature, you may refine the metrics to help you assess your practices in more detail.

7) What is your organization’s culture? Developing a top-down and bottom-up culture that promotes the patient experience can help develop your reputation and reinforce your branding.

Posted in Thinking fodder, marketing | No Comments »

A Basic Healthcare Competitive Analysis – Four Steps Toward a Stronger Market Position

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

You know who your competition is if you are working in a hospital. Whether you are in healthcare marketing or physician relations, you know about the competition. You have heard so much, you have a strong sense of where they are in the marketplace and where your organization falters. So forgive me for dwelling on some basic principles on doing a competitive analysis but for your colleagues working in a medical practice or a new clinic, this brief overview provides an important refresher.

Step One: Define your competition

Make sure you don’t leave anyone out when thinking about your competition. You may have competitors that surprise you – it is possible that the local drug store is opening a “minute clinic” or a new practice is opening a concierge service. Don’t rely on what you think you know, ask questions and do the research so you are not surprised. This overview will also provide you with the dynamics of the overall market.

Tip — One method for locating your competitors is to look around – physically (drive around your neighborhood) and virtually (use Google Maps, check out industry association directories and/or use a keyword search and see what other businesses are listed.

Step Two: Learn as much as possible about your competition

Start with their website to learn what they offer, how they position their services and how they deliver healthcare. There are several resources/methods, depending on the size of your competition, that may provide good market intelligence:

Harris InfoSource, a division of Dun & Brandstrett — www.harrisinfo.com
Hoovers (www.hoovers.com)
Standard and Poors (www.standardandpoors.com)
Hospital association(s)
Hospital physician directories
Generic search for articles
FaceBook page information/posts
Twitter feed
Actually sample their service in some fashion

Step Three: Assess strengths and weaknesses

It isn’t enough to collect the market intelligence about your competitors, work to understand what makes them strong and where they are vulnerable. Analyzing your competitor’s market position allows you to position your organization more carefully in the market. Consider any un-served or under-served facets in the market. Healthcare marketing is often more about service and access than about quality because healthcare consumers struggle with identifying quality markers leaving much of the comparison resting squarely on service features.

Step Four: Determine your competitive advantage

Once you have gained valuable insight from your market awareness, you can use this analysis to help frame or update your marketing position. You want to emphasize your strengths as a healthcare organization. What makes your service the most attractive to potential patients? Do you have the most convenient schedule? Is your staff the friendliest? Does your physician offer a distinctive service – concierge, geriatrics, multi-specialty approach? Focus on what makes your service appealing to your target audience. How are you truly different from those competitors?

These four steps sound remarkably easy and they are but you would be surprise at how many organizations do not know the specifics about their competitors and rely on their gut versus true market data. Base your actions and even reactions on your knowledge about your competitors not on rumors!

Tags: basic marketing intelligence, competitive analysis, healthcare marketing, know your competition
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Creating a Healthcare Marketing Budget

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Creating a Healthcare Marketing Budget – The Most Rational Method

Forgive my blog-cation. It was not completely intentional. There was a death in my extended family and that set solid planning on edge. I am returning to weekly publication. Onward!

Often, I tell clients to be careful with advertising expenditures. Of course, they know they need to be careful because typically, for healthcare providers, budgets are small, small, small and demand for return on investment (ROI) is great. But still, with this knowledge many healthcare marketers still want to plunk down valuable dollars on traditional media outlets without doing a solid analysis of what they will get in return and worse, they place advertising because of a knee-jerk reaction instead of considering the longer term requirements.

At a minimum, I ask that you have an overall promotion plan and create a budget. I could push you just a bit more and suggest that you develop metrics for measuring the effectiveness of your outreach but that is a different post. Right now, the focus is on the basics of developing a healthcare marketing budget.

As a percentage of sales, advertising expenditures vary considerably from one organization to another. Pharmaceutical companies spend approximately 20% of their sales on advertising. It is unlikely that a hospital or medical practice will spend such a high percentage on their healthcare promotion efforts. But what should you spend?

Different Methods of Determining a Heatlhcare Marketing Budget

Method #1 – Historical

Built upon whatever was used previously, often with a percentage increase. This method is not typically tied to overall objective.

Method #2 – Fixed percentage of sales

Often used in markets with stable revenue volume and where it is easier to see the direct relationship between sales and advertising. Organizations have recently found this method to be problematic with the economic downturn for advertising budgets have been slashed just when they needed to be increased.

Method #3 – Based on marketing objectives or tasks

This approach centers on creating objectives that the actual advertising needs to complete – i.e. number of physician referrals requested based on advertising about physician referral service.

Method #4 – Accepting industry average or based on competition

This approach is not dissimilar to method #1 but is based on the concept of an industry average that is accepted by market leaders. This method does not work in favor of an organization wanting to increase market share by detailing competitive advantages or spending beyond the acceptable average.

Method #5 – What’s left

I don’t even like to include this method because it is counter-intuitive. Essentially, an organization budgets for all other costs and then determines that the remainder of funds can be expensed to advertizing. This method is reactionary and does not recognize the value of outreach and promotion.

Recommended Method

In lieu of the above methods, I suggest that you decide on your objective(s) first which is like method #2. What are you trying to do with your promotion dollars? Are you trying to increase visibility for your new wellness center or do you want to promote the new primary care physician? First, delineate what you want to accomplish.

You will also need to consider who is your target audience and how you might best reach them. There are blog posts about marketing segmentation that can help you think about your targets. Once you know your objective and target, it will be easier to consider the methods to employ to reach that market. If you are targeting new moms, you may want to reach out to parenting bloggers. If you want to focus on new members to your community, then piggy-back onto new neighbor outreach programs or consider library postings or even direct mail to new homeowners.

In some cases, you might want to have a large bill board, especially if you intended objective it to build overall brand awareness. The point is to match you tactics to your objective.

Then prioritize based on resource availability. Gather estimates for each medium and pick and choose your promotion endeavors carefully. If you are building a longer term budget, you can experiment with alternatives and make quarterly or annual assessments based on effectiveness.

Okay, I know I am cheating because I told you that I wouldn’t cover metrics in this post, but let’s just take one moment to consider results tracking. Set up a tracking report for every promotion action, a spreadsheet will be just fine and include, at a minimum, the following categories:

Outreach description
Contact information
Placement date
Repeat runs
Cost (labor, design and placement)
Intended target
Impact (measured how)
Comments

Advertising, to be effective, needs to be planned, tested and analyzed. And always be able to answer the question – Is our advertising most-effective in this medium?

Tags: healthcare marketing, healthcare outreach budgeting, healthcare promotion planning
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Healthcare Marketing (The Basics): Market Segmentation — Slices Matter in CT Scans and Your Market

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

In a discussion with one of my clients the other day, there was some confusion about some basic marketing principles. It seems those of in the field of business development often bandy about phrases as if everyone knows exactly what we are talking about. Just yesterday, I mentioned the “impact on SEO” and was startled when the question came back, “what is SEO?” So, I thought I would spend some time on the basics, in a short review fashion.

What Is a Market Segment? Okay, a market segment, just like that CT scan slice is a part of the whole. But the part has some similarities or shared features that allow it to be a part of the whole – a segment – that you can direct specific actions toward. And the particular segment is usually unique from other segments in the market.

What’s the Value of a Segment? Segmenting your market into more manageable groupings allows you to reach out to them in a fashion they are more likely to respond. By limiting who you are approaching and focusing on some core commonalities, you can get closer to satisfying your customers’ needs. You have tailored your approach to their specific concerns. You have zeroed in on the target and don’t have to speak in gross general terms: Do you need a urologist? vs. Are you getting up several times a time to urinate without much success?

Depending on the segment, it will respond to various channels differently. For example, one of your market segments might be female baby boomers. What might be the best way to reach them? You can try print ads in your local paper – somewhat expensive or, if you have been collecting emails for your existing patients, you might reach them via email marketing. If you segment is Gen Y females, you know they spend less time on email and respond more favorably to social media outlets so you might rely more on FaceBook or even text messaging. In either case, a market segment is measurable. You want to make sure you know the result of your action upon this segment so that you can correct or augment your approach.

How Do You Segment? Okay, so you understand that dividing your segment into common features will allow you to focus specifically. But how do you make the cut? Some traditional ways to segment a market include:

Geographically
Demographically (i.e. age, income, gender)
Psycho-graphically (i.e. values, lifestyle)
Or through behavior (i.e. utilization rates)

Remember that the value in segmenting your market means that you can tailor the message to have more success. This approach demands a greater awareness of service processes but also lends itself to providing insight into which segments are more successfully served based on your resources. Not only are you able to address the market segment more precisely but you will utilize your marketing dollar more wisely.

Basic questions to ask when determining a market segment include:

Is this segment the right size? Large enough?
Does this segment have an identifiable need?
How viable is the segment? Will it grow? How might it change? Is it fixed? Who is already serving this segment and how does that impact my service?
How difficult will this segment be to reach? Impact? Approach?
Can my organization serve this segment well? Do we have the correct resources?
By targeting this segment, is my organization remaining true to its mission? What is the best way to segment?

Taking the first step is often the hardest. You may be re-tooling your outreach or starting fresh. Either way the process is the same. Take your current patient base and think about them in aggregate. Then look for some trends or common features. Do you see some patients more often? Are there more profitable services that certain types of patients need? Or, if you are working with physicians, do you want to focus on primary care providers? You want to find the commonality that suits treating the segment as a group – that will help you direct outreach to them in a more precise fashion. Segmenting by specialty allows you to develop a strategy that is more targeted and meaningful to that physician. Or in the case with your patients, for example, if you are an OB-Gyn and want to grow your gynecology care, you might segment by age. Your outreach efforts will be more successful the more precisely you target your audience because you are creating messages that focus specifically on that targeted segment. If this process is new, you may want to start by just targeting one segment and seeing how it goes. And, like any outreach effort, make sure you track your results and tailor your efforts according to those results.

Okay, that’s it for healthcare marketing basics: segmentation. Next week we will look at your outreach budget. And by the way, in case you didn’t know, SEO means search engine optimization.

Tags: health care marketing, marketing segmentation
Posted in marketing | 5 Comments »

Workflow That Signals Your Healthcare Organization is Working to Better the Relationship with Your Patients/Physicians (Part 5 of 5)

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

The goal is a deeper relationship with the consumer. We have been discussing creating customer value for the last four posts. Let’s go one final step. Borrowing from the principle that a well-tuned and consumer centric service IS the marketing, take a deeper look at how your organization’s work flow alerts your consumer that you care – or don’t care.

Prior posts have enumerated the value of a customer relationship management (CRM) systems and how important your front line personnel are to enhancing your relationships. Go a little further in your thinking and look at your entire work flow process but do it from the eyes of your consumer. “Mystery shop” your own service and see how it feels to be the referring physician or the patient. What are the gaps in service? Do all of your employees recognize that their primary goal is to make the consumer feel good? Are there clogs in the process? Does the patient or the physician have an easy vehicle in which to make suggestions? Is your service fixed or do you recognize the need for constant refinements?

Intense competition makes it harder for healthcare organizations to keep their consumers satisfied and loyal. Simply put, better service results in happier physicians/patients which results in repeat business and increased revenues. Use your workflow to enhance the consumer’s experience and to make them happy. Don’t get caught in the trap of focusing on the business goals that are pressing but make sure you have the basics being met for your patients and physicians. Is your workflow process focused on achieving the organization’s business objectives and less concerned with improving customer relationships?

Look at your process by first identifying customer needs. Consider what work should be done, who should do it and if there is technology that can support the work and make the process more efficient. Keep in mind that the healthcare consumer is more informed and wants to be more involved in the process. The patient who listens and follows the doctor’s suggestions without questioning is less and less common.

You may be tempted to tweak your process here and there but consider a strategic look at the entire process and how it feels from your consumer’s reference point. If you examine the who, what and where of your operations, you might be pleased and surprised by the changes you can make.

Tags: healthcare operations alignment, healthcare service IS the marketing, patient experience, physician experience
Posted in marketing, physician relations, practice development | No Comments »

How well do you employ technology to assist in developing your consumer relationships? Creating Customer Value, Part 4 of 5

Monday, February 1st, 2010

For many medical practices and hospital departments, technology can sometimes be a frustration and trying to tame it is often left to the IT workers. But don’t let prior experiences or installation/training frustrations limit your progress is using technology tools to enhance relationship development.

Step one should be the collection and analysis of consumer data from all possible sources. This helps all who communicate with customers know the content of that communication and potential next steps. This central repository helps an organization personalize the communication and track the process.

For a tool, you have a wide choice of options. You can use something as simple as Access. Or off-the-shelf options include GoldMine and ACT! There are many other software tools that can help you collect data, monitor communication and transactions and they range from simple on-tool tools (HighRise) to more complex, enterprise wide options.

Having a database of information for your consumer allows you to focus on the needs and preferences of your “customers.” Understanding what your customers want will help you work toward their needs and develop relationships. You can organize and analyze the data that you collect to determine preferences and drive your efforts toward responding to those needs.

Customer relationship management as a tactical technology tool can help you gain insight into the behavior of your customers. This can ensure physicians and patients are served in the best possible way. Customer relationship management helps organizations recognize and pay attention. Keep in mind that while a technology tool can help collect and analyze this kind of information, it is the overall strategy and culture of the organization that puts energy behind this information and creates a responsive process.

Step two should be using your insight to improving communication with your consumer. Targeted communication that gets in the hands of your potential customer as they need it versus sending blanketed mailings to everyone with no particular focus hoping something will appeal will save the organization money and will improve the relationship with the individual target. They will not feel bombarded with non-focused communication.

No surprise that different customers prefer different communication channels. Certainly newer digital channels and social media tools offer greater opportunities to directly personalize messages. But don’t throw out traditional methods which may appeal to a sector of your market. The message is to carefully segment your market for both message and channel. That new mom might find information on your FaceBook Fan page really helpful as she deals with the adjustments of having a baby in the house. The grandfather who can’t finish a golf game without visiting the restroom several times might find a post card about your prostate services more helpful.

Working out the above is a matter of re-prioritizing your internal communication approach based on the insight you garner from data collection – the following are basic but sound steps to employ:

Communicate to the customer based on their needs; avoid silo approaches.
Use customer information from the entire organization and centralize it to make customer profiles and develop a more in-dept understanding of your customer.
Segment your market.
Communicate with the various segments as one entity – do not overwhelm your target with multiples communications and messages.

Whether you are focusing on your physician relations program or want to have a more targeted approach with potential patients, the need to track and measure nurturing activities is a basic outgrowth. The information flow works in both directions so that significant market intelligence is collected as these relationships are cultivated. The more individuals working on a specific relationship, the more navigation is required so that the target is not overwhelmed by a disorganized flow of information from various sources. Technology can serve the process by easing the management and integration of information. Use technology to enhance your developing relationships by being more focused in your communication and more aware of what your individual customer wants and needs.

Tags: health care marketing communications, health care marketing tools, healthcare marketing, physician tracking, practice marketing, relationship building, relationship development
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Creating Relationship Value through the Patient Experience (Part 3 of 5)

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

How high have you set the bar of satisfaction for the patient experience? Here are what some other healthcare organizations are saying on their websites, this January (2010) about their view of the patient experience:

Cleveland Clinic

“Patients are the purpose of our work, and Cleveland Clinic has embarked on an ambitious plan to examine and improve every facet of the patient experience. This effort encompasses every point of contact between patient and provider, from parking to prescription pick up.”

Johns Hopkins Health System

“Our quest for excellence isn’t limited to the treatments we provide. Several initiatives are under way at Hopkins to help physicians, nurses and staff to deliver the best possible service to customers.”

Gettysburg Hospital

“Gettysburg Hospital is ramping up its commitment to patient satisfaction with the aid of a qualified specialist. Tracy Lee joined the hospital last September as director of patient experience. Lee tracks patient satisfaction survey results and develops strategies for improvement.

Lee explained that many health systems have placed renewed emphasis on patient satisfaction in recent years. A federally mandated consumer survey known as HCAHPS—the results of which are available to the public—has driven that trend.

“We all know what it’s like to either be a patient or have a loved one in crisis, and I enjoy helping make that experience a better one,” she said.”

These three organizations could not be more different from one another. And yet is placing special emphasis on the patient experience. Each of them are defining that experience as beyond taking care of a patient clinically:

“…every point of contact between patient and provider.”
“Excellence isn’t limited to treatments we provide.”

When a patient visits the hospital or a doctor’s office, that individual experiences a series of events that often overshadow the actual contact with the medical provider. On a recent medical visit , I spent 15 minutes with the physician and 45 minutes “in process” once I entered the office – time at reception, time in the waiting room, time with the med technologist, time waiting in the exam room and time checking out after the visit. It is easy to see how a good interaction with the physician can be overtaken by less than stellar service interactions.

You have heard me say that service is the marketing and that phrase is so true when it comes to the patient experience. If you patient leaves happy, they will consider the experience positive and likely share that with their friends and family. They will probably want to be your patient for a long time and will refer others to you. Their positive experience will create a long-lasting relationship value for them. If your patient leaves grumpy, none of these good things happen. In fact, a patient is more likely to share bad service news than good news and in telling their friends and family, you are on your way to a poor reputation.

So, think about, how high is your patient experience bar?

Tags: customer service, healthcare marketing, patient experience, relationship development
Posted in marketing, practice development, the practice of medicine | No Comments »

Getting Gumption for the New Year – 2010

Monday, December 14th, 2009

The bell is tolling for 2009. We are closing out the books, taking stock and looking forward. What do we want to accomplish in 2010? We have a few weeks left but good planning takes time and good thinking.

Seth Godin posted a thought-filled and thought provoking e-book today. He collected seventy or so thinkers — each providing a worthy thought to jump-start your own thinking. The book is free to download from Seth’s blog site and is worth the read. Each contributor writes no more than one page, the thoughts are conceptually digestible and you can read it in one sitting or stretch it out and tackle during the orphan minutes in your day. Not specific to healthcare marketing or planning, but inspiring in a broader sense, some of the topic titles include:

Social skills
Mesh
Focus
Sacrifice
Momentum
Open-source DNA
Passion
Slow Capital

One of the entries I like the most is written by J.C. Hutchins and is included below but you’ll get even more value by reading the entire e-book:

Gumption

Most of us settle in, and settle for what we have. Rather than pursue, we accept. Our lives become unwitting celebrations of passivity: we undervalue our work and perceive ourselves as wage slaves (and so we phone it in at the day gig), we consume compulsively (but not create), we pine for better lives (but live vicariously through our televisions).

These corners we paint ourselves into, it’s no way to live. There’s no adventure here, no passion, no hunger for change. Remember that relentless optimism you once had? The goals you wished to achieve, before settling in? They’re still there. You need a nudge to find them: a little gumption.

You can start that business. You can lose that weight. You can…write that book, and be a better parent, and be all the things you want to be – the thing this world needs you to be. It requires courage and faith, both of which you can muster. It requires effort – but this effortless life isn’t as satisfying as it seems, is it?

Declare war on passivity. Hush the inner voice that insists you are over-the-hill, past your prime, unworthy of attaining those dreams. Disbelief is now the enemy, as is the notion of settling. Get hungry – hyena hungry. Get fired up. Find your backbone, and your wings.

Flap’em. It’s the only way you’ll be able to fly.

Onward!!!

Tags: thinkers, wisdom
Posted in marketing, physician relations | No Comments »

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