Key Selling Points to Better Market Your Healthcare Business

Selling healthcare is more challenging than someone looking in from the outside would assume. We’re talking about wellness. Who doesn’t want that, right? But when wellness is so strongly associated with debilitating bills, it becomes a much tougher sell.

Healthcare doesn’t have to be as scary as it is so often presented. In this article, we take a look at how you can frame and construct your community outreach so that it has the biggest possible impact. Read on to find out more about how to market your healthcare business!

Step 1: Identify Your Demographic

“People who need healthcare?” Well. Sure. But for the sake of sales, let’s try to get a little more specific, shall we? In marketing, there is a concept known as “the ideal customer profile.” Basically, it’s a composite sketch of characteristics that together form the rough outline of someone who is most likely to do business with you.

“Ideal,” customers not only spend money at your business, but they also go in upcharges and cross-sells. They leave positive reviews online and are quick to recommend you to their friends. If you were to go out of town and needed someone to water your houseplants, they’d be the person you ask.

That last one was a joke, but you get the point. Ideal customers equals more efficient marketing and better sales. Once you’ve established your ideal customer, you can then figure out how to sell to them. For example, marketing professionals can use this data to determine what sort of social media sites the person frequents. When they are most likely to be online. What type of messaging they respond to the most.

The idea is to distill your resources into the most productive way possible. The better your profile, the easier your sales metrics are to hit.

Step 2: Establish Your Premise

Sales is all about providing a solution to a problem. Now, in healthcare that dynamic tends to be straightforward. You want good help. We want to connect you with the support that makes it possible. But in the United States, the words “simple,” and “healthcare,” don’t quite jive.

You need an angle. A clear identity that customers can connect with. Do you provide higher-end elective services? Or are you interested in connecting lower-income families with high-quality care that they can afford?

Naturally, the answer to that question should radically shape the way you address the public.

Step 3: Work on Community Outreach

A significant portion of the population pursues a reactive healthcare strategy, only seeking treatment when they have had a health episode. Unfortunately, by then it is often too late to offset the brunt of whatever health event they are suffering from.

As a healthcare professional, you know that preventative care is key to long-term health. Ahh, but how to get it? Healthcare-hesitant community members are operating from a place of fear or ignorance. With solid outreach you can help inform the community, redirecting local culture in a direction that favors regular, preventative care.

Step 4: Highlight Accessibility

Accessibility hurdles are what keep many people away from healthcare. Here are several barriers that many people encounter:

• Cost: The person simply does not believe that they have the money required to afford care. They will go to the hospital in the event of an emergency, but otherwise, they’re going to take the white-knuckle approach to dealing with their health. Grin and bear it.
• Insurance: The patient is uninsured and quite aware that even very simple healthcare procedures or appointments can result in hundreds of dollars of bills. Ha! Not happening.
• Transportation: The patient has the financial means to achieve care, but not the logistical ones. Maybe they don’t have a car, or the condition they need treated prohibits them from driving. Whatever the case, they can’t get there. This is a particularly prominent issue in rural communities where public transportation options may be scant, and hospitals may be geographically isolated

On the patient’s end, these issues can feel insurmountable, but many healthcare systems actually have some options that take the sting out of them. Highlight ways that your service may be more accessible than people living in your community might have otherwise assumed.

Are there state or local programs that offset the cost of care? Or maybe provide insurance coverage? As for transportation, do you have a shuttle program? Or perhaps a mobile clinic.

These features are very important to some people, so make sure that you publish them on the frontend.

As an added note, you can also use care disparity as a baseboard for patient advocacy. If your services aren’t meeting the needs of people in your community, it may be time to recalibrate and opt for more equitable and accessible care policies.

Pro-Tip: Let Data Lead the Way

All of the tips described above can be simplified and supercharged in a data-driven work environment. The application is obvious when it comes to marketing. That ideal customer profile we talked about earlier is basically just aggregated information. Data taken from hundreds or thousands of transactions and online interactions.

It’s also key in determining what your customer base wants and needs in their care. Are they care hesitant? Impoverished or otherwise uninsured? Data will give you the answers.

Keep in mind that sales is a constantly evolving artform. Your demographic might change. Your services might evolve. When these things happen, having an eye on the numbers will help you experience the change with grace.

The good news is that pretty much every program in your tech stack will constantly be taking data. Even employing the services of a data expert isn’t as inaccessible as many business owners first assume. While data analysts aren’t cheap to retain on staff, you can purchase their services on a freelance basis should you choose to.

As a healthcare leader, your job is to give the community what it needs and deserves. To that end, data is always there to lead the way.