Business to Business Marketing Strategies

It’s Time to Really Get to Know Your Customers, Choose Micro-targeting:Brainstorm some creative, original and unique business strategies because you will need profitable and small marketing subsets.

It is always essential to get to know the person you are speaking to. Without knowing who, you will never understand what it is that you need to discuss. Therefore, get to know your buyers because shoppers tend to buy things that are evidently important to them. Buyers want to purchase something that will help them or make them happy. Sometimes buyers will even buy on sentimental value. After all, the clientele is the reason why businesses are able to do what they do in the first place.

Paid Placements Are Here to Stay: Spend Your Money on the Right Content and Platform

B2B marketing teams are forced to invest in paid or sponsored placements in order to speak with businesses who are more difficult to reach than others. Additionally, social networks and large publishers have now invested their time in paid media rather than earned media. Social media outlets such as twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest have been offering sponsored content placements as well. Facebook made significant changes in late 2013, which has led to a 44 percent decrease in non-sponsored brand content. In order for your users to see your content on social networks, you have to pay. The days of being able to put it out there for free are over, and money is now becoming a major factor in the social aspect.

By 2020, Forrester predicts that 1 in 5 sales will result from data collected from wearable devices. Your challenge is to create a digital experience, fitting the preferences and needs of your audience.

Mobile Healthcare Marketing

It’s no secret that the present and future are going mobile in every way. This on-the-go trend and today’s way of life is only gaining popularity as more and more organizations and companies find a way to make their goods and services known through mobile portals such as smartphones.

Messages sent to mobile devices are meant to be immediate, precise and direct. These are short sweet notifications that are easily read while your consumer is food shopping, running around the office, or schlepping their kids to soccer practice. Your messages are with them whenever and wherever they go. This constant attachment to your consumer is a privilege that they give you and permission to contact them is very important and should never be abused.

With that being said, healthcare marketing in particular is increasingly on the rise. Patients find comfort in being able to directly communicate with their healthcare provider and visa versa. Becoming even more common are appointment reminders via email that go directly to your patient’s pocket. Also, apps, like the Apple iPhone health app let patients make reminders for medications, appointments, and any other healthcare needs.

Having your messages in the palm of your patients’ hands is essential. Doctors and especially large practices need to take advantage of the growing trend by making themselves available online in as many ways as possible. This may mean social media accounts such as  Facebook, twitter, and yelp. Of course when looking for healthcare professionals, recommendations are most common via word of mouth. A practice’s reputation is extremely influential and by creating an account on a reputation site specifically for healthcare like, health grades or vitals, you can get the extra boost and keep you in line or to help you surpass the competition.

If your practice is not going mobile there is a great percentage of patients being missed Most of these sites are free and should render great returns for your business. Don’t be locked out in the cold this winter, heat your practice up with new or refurbished online sources for your patients and stay connected!

Healthcare Marketing – Telling Your Story

In healthcare marketing, the art of storytelling is a powerful method of communication. In order to engage and attract new patients, a good-health story line is necessary. Sadly, it is a forgotten method inside the medical office.  The key to success is to tell your story from a different perspective.

Use the doctor as your storyteller because it is more easily remembered since he or she is the provider for it. Furthermore, it makes a stronger impression, and the weight of importance is greater. Use a benefit oriented story from the doctor when giving patients their instructions, for they are more likely to comply.

Patient-staff can better personally relate to each other more so than patient-doctor relations when storytelling from a patient-staff angle, for it increases the effect and value. Try to reinforce health or follow up care instructions when communicating via staff-patient. During the non-doctor encounters, incorporate positive attitudes and a narrative voice of the office because this is what patients pick up on. Make your presence warm and inviting.

In order to effectively communicate your brand message, communicating via story format is important. A benefit that results is the creating of referrals and sharing a positive story.

Tied to communicating the brand message is the actions, activities and patient-interactions within the office. From the provider’s unique medical training and experience, as a hypothetical example, it might be appropriate to link a particular story or message to how patients benefit. The benefits, for both patient and the practice, are significant, for truly effective storytelling often requires training, coaching and regular practice.

The Key to Successful Customer Service

A vital element in revenue and profitability is dependent upon your relationship with consumers of healthcare. To realize how healthcare’s new swing from provider-centric to patient-centric is much more significant than a smile and warm welcome, substitute “patient” for “customer” or “consumer.”

It is important to know that it is at least six to seven times more costly when acquiring a new customer as opposed to retaining an existing one. To increase profitability by 75 percent, a five-percent increase in consumer retention is necessary. 20 percent of existing customers will contribute to 80 percent of future revenue. Bain and Co., Gartner Group and Harris Interactive are respected companies in the corporate world where these statistics originate. Understanding these statistics is important to help master customer service. Linked to provider compensation, patient satisfaction must be achieved. Based on non-clinical values, patients will increasingly judge. In order to find better service, patients are more likely and more willing to change providers. What makes it or breaks it for the office is the staff, the office culture and other considerations, not just the doctor.

Invest in routine training that is culture-wide. Often, many practices don’t have enough training to deliver customer service adequately. Everyone can appreciate the importance of a quality service who has direct patient contact. An unbiased evaluation and proven methods can be delivered by an outside and independent resource.
The non-clinical considerations should be reviewed. Typically built around the provider or the business are the office operations, administration and functioning. Intangibles such as convenience of location, rapid appointment setting, office environment, operating hours, etc., are what patients’ biggest concerns are.

“Zero waiting” is key. Patients hone in on the sense of having to wait; on hold when calling, waiting for the first available appointment, waiting to see the doctor, waiting for lunch hour to be over, etc. What attracts new patients are offices with “after work” office hours, little or no waiting time and same day appointments.

The patient must be informed in a timely manner about delays, changes/improvements in the office routine, and lab reports. Similar steps and procedures that keep the patient informed should be implemented.

The unexpected must be integrated. The element of surprise is delivering quality customer service, something which is often overlooked. Exceed expectations and steer away from the norm.

What fuels referrals and recommendations is an unexpected WOW-effect that makes long lasting and positive impressions.