PET center deploys "secret weapon" in marketing efforts

SAN DIEGO - So you’ve steered your imaging facility into the brave new world of PET scanning. You’ve laid down the cash for a scanner, secured a stable source for FDG, and told your referring physicians all about the new service. But there’s a secret weapon in your marketing arsenal that you might not be using.

The weapon is your physician staff, according to Debbie Saraceni, marketing director of Thompson Cancer Survival Center in Knoxville, TN. Saraceni explained how to position doctors as a marketing resource at this week’s 2002 Academy of Molecular Imaging meeting.

Saraceni based her talk on her own experiences developing marketing programs for oncology services, including radiology, at Thompson. The hospital started an aggressive PET marketing campaign in December 2000, and the effort paid off with a tenfold increase in patient referrals a year later, she said.

Using physicians as part of an organized marketing campaign plays to the clinical strengths -- and marketing weaknesses -- at most imaging facilities, many of which can’t afford to maintain large marketing staffs.

"Your priority is always to gain market share and grow your business," Saraceni said. "But you have limitations. I don't have an army of 30 people working with me. But I have the best marketing tool in our physician champions."

Saraceni lines up a physician champion for each of the clinical services that she manages, including PET. This individual becomes the hospital’s primary liaison with the referring physician community, acting as both an educational resource and a cheerleader for the technology.

The physician champion should become the centerpiece of an aggressive campaign to spread his or her experience and credibility to the referring community. Thompson started by sending its PET physician champion to oncology conferences, then followed up with a dinner symposium for 300 physicians that really got the referring community talking, Saraceni said. Major surges in referrals followed each event.

Saraceni and the physician champion then hit the road to visit personally with Thompson’s referring physicians. Saraceni calls herself a road warrior, spending 80% of her time meeting with referring physicians and making sure that Thompson is meeting their needs. Successful PET marketers will seek out every opportunity to get out and tout their service in the community, such as at symposia, support groups, or other events.

Thompson has also used more traditional marketing vehicles, like advertising, to promote its PET services, Saraceni said. The hospital’s ad campaign employs print and television and is based on focus-group research it conducted into what potential patients are looking for in a healthcare provider: A facility with cutting-edge technology that can potentially cure the patient’s cancer.

The combined efforts helped Thompson boost its PET referral numbers from 12 patients a month at the start of the program to 115 patients less than a year later.

Here are some other tips from Saraceni:

• Have an outstanding product -- a good product will sell itself, to some extent.
• Develop your strategic growth plans based on sound market research -- know your target market and your consumers.
• Hire smart people to market your product.
• Don’t do what your competitors do, even if it worked well for them.
• Maximize your physician relationships, and remember that physicians will listen to other physicians.