Marketing to patients: What you need to know

Apr 13, 2006

Let's start by saying don't. Don't market to patients. Not if you're an imaging facility that performs standard diagnostic imaging examinations -- even if your equipment and systems are the best in the market and your services are top-notch.

I'm surprised at how often I see facilities advertising to patients when it doesn't make sense. A movie theater in Houston, where I live, regularly has an ad for a diagnostic imaging facility flipping by on the slide show before the film. I'm not sure what they're thinking. And by the end of this article, you won't understand it, either.

Frankly, if you are an imaging facility performing standard diagnostic imaging examinations, you're facing two scenarios: either you are competing against other diagnostic imaging centers in the area for the same pool of patients, or you are the only facility in the area and you are trying to increase the number of people who come in for diagnostic imaging -- you're hoping to increase patient demand for imaging services.

In the first scenario, the differences between your services and the services of another facility aren't easy for a layperson to understand. You may have better equipment. Maybe you have a PACS. You do stat and wet reads. These are fabulous, marketable advantages for a practice. But they aren't marketable to patients. Most patients do not understand that radiologists are doctors, and they do not understand what happens when they go to an imaging facility or how they get diagnosed. They just care that they are diagnosed, and quickly.

This type of practice would have to spend an incredible amount of time and money educating patients about these differentials through marketing and advertising. Frankly, given that they could spend less time and money simply marketing these differentials to referring physicians -- who already have at least a basic understanding of why they are advantages -- it doesn't make financial sense for a practice to allocate its marketing budget in this direction.

Local-monopoly practices may try simply to increase patient demand for imaging services, which would invariably come to their offices, but they still face the patient-education hurdle. They still need to go into long explanations of the importance of imaging. It may be a worthy cause, but it's an expensive one. And why spend so much time and money when you can simply market straight to the referring physician?

That said, there are times -- and situations -- when marketing to patients is a good idea. So when should a practice market to patients?

You should only market to patients when one of the following scenarios applies:

You have a new or cutting-edge product that referring physicians may not know about yet or that isn't yet reimbursed by insurance. (Think about most forms of plastic surgery, LASIK, and, in our own industry, magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound ablation [MRgFUS].) You may have to educate the patients, but in these cases it may be worth the money to do so.
You offer an examination that the national news or media has mentioned recently (think DEXA scanning for women) and that you want your market to know that you offer it. These potential patients will already be educated about the exam through the national media and they will be on the lookout for it.

If you're in one of these situations, marketing to patients is a smart move. But how do you do it, especially if you're used to marketing to referring physicians?

Who is your audience?

It's the cardinal rule of marketing, and I can't say enough about it: Know your audience. Who are they? What do they do for a living? How much do they make? Are they married or single? Kids or no kids? Where do they live: what neighborhood and what type of dwelling? What do they read? What do they watch? Where do they go during the workday and on the weekends? How you develop the answers to these questions depends on your specific situation, and it will take a bit of digging into neighborhood and patient demographics, for example, to figure it out. But the digging time is worth it.

Once you know the answers to these questions, you'll better know what motivates your audience.

Take that audience snapshot and craft a message. Spend a good amount of time on this. Now that you know who they are, what do they want to hear? How will you meet their needs? How will you assuage their concerns? You message should be positive. You should be offering solutions.

And that brings me to another "don't" when it comes to marketing to patients: Don't try scare tactics. Think about the way full-body CT scanning was marketed a few years ago when it was hot. People went two ways with it: They either scared people about the "great unknown," or they comforted people by telling them about the reassurance and confidence their scan results would give them.

The facilities with the positive messaging reaped the greatest rewards. Scare marketing will usually backfire on you. People don't feel warm and fuzzy -- or confident -- about things and people that seem negative. Also, fear often immobilizes people, especially when it comes to health issues. So don't do it.

And when you're offering these solutions, keep in mind that for most people, medicine is scary. At best, it's intimidating. People do not understand medicine. They associate it with discomfort and the fear of bad news. So take the following to heart in preparing your marketing:

Images of scanners, other types of equipment, or scans will frighten people. To anyone not in imaging, scans are scary. They say "Halloween." People do not want to see scary images and they will turn away -- not what you want people to do with marketing materials or advertising. Equipment, to people who do not understand it, is scary. It looms there, cold and uninviting. It says "torture device." If you must show pictures of equipment, show it with someone inside it, and show them interacting with a clinician.
Use warm images -- people interacting, smiling, warm colors, and so forth. Make the intimidating personable and welcoming. (Of course, everything you do in marketing should be consistent with your branding. When creating your visuals, keep your brand in mind.)
Keep your language as nontechnical as possible. If a fifth grader wouldn't understand it, don't use it. Think simply. People aren't stupid, but you can't expect them to be interested enough to get a dictionary when they're looking at your marketing materials. And you can't expect people intimidated by medicine to feel welcomed by highly technical -- again, read "scary" -- medical jargon or terminology. Anyway, marketing materials need to be as quick and to the point as possible -- if you're getting terribly technical, you may not be to-the-point enough.

All these come back to one simple truth: If you're marketing to patients, you're going to need to do a bit of educating. But don't try to overeducate. Only use messages that are simple, straightforward, and understandable.

Keep it simple, straightforward

If you have to explain in depth, you'll have to spend a lot of money to saturate the market with messaging, and pay to keep it saturated with messages that build on one another over a significant period of time. You may want to spend this money -- this depends on your business plan -- but if you have a slim (or even medium-size) budget, avoid it. Focus on the simple and the friendly. Focus on the solution you provide and the end result you offer, rather than the technical information that clinicians would find exciting. What appeals to doctors does not usually appeal to patients.

So you have your messaging and your visuals, but your work isn't over yet. Now you need to figure out where to place it and how to design it.

Spend some time at this stage thinking about how you plan to use your materials. Will you be paying for some advertising? Will you be sending things through the mail? Does your audience attend the types of events or meetings that will require you to send out sales representatives? Or will your sales representatives be scheduling in-person meetings with prospects?

You can answer these questions with confidence by looking back at your notes about your audience. Do these people attend events or public meetings? Which ones? Do they read certain magazines or watch certain TV shows? Where do they go to run errands? What do they do for fun? If you have the answers to these questions, you'll know best how to reach your target audience.

In addition, the answers to these questions will help you determine the exact nature of each medium and tailor your overall message and visuals for them. The message of a TV ad will be different than the message in a brochure. And the types of brochures are myriad: Which one is right for you? Do you need a standard trifold to fit into an envelope with a letter? Do you need a self-mailer? Do you need something in a large format or special size to get attention? Thinking through these questions will ensure that you create useful, effective materials.

All right; you're nearly set. You have your messaging, your visuals, and your strategy. Now you just have to execute that strategy.

Don't DIY

It's not rocket science to create marketing materials, but it does take some experience and know-how. Spend time and money on quality. Don't do it yourself. You're a high-tech facility in a high-tech industry. Patients will be turned off by marketing materials and advertisements that look home-made. And, frankly, sometimes making something yourself can be expensive on the back end, when the printer has to redo it to ensure it works on the press or when the U.S. Postal Service returns all your direct mail pieces because they are not up to regulations.

In truth, a professional firm, professional contractors, or your company's communications and marketing department can help you craft your marketing strategy, materials, and advertisements -- and although using them may be more expensive than doing it yourself, professionals can guide you through the marketing plan and development process, the technical aspects of creating your materials, and crafting the most effective materials. Ultimately, professionals will always achieve the best results. You will make out in the end.

In the day-to-day running of a practice, marketing strategy can fall by the wayside. But don't discount it or do it thoughtlessly simply because its results are often pretty or fun. Marketing -- and marketing intelligently -- is a serious business and it can mean absolutely everything to your bottom line. You could have the best facility with the best equipment and services in the world, but if no one knows about it -- or understands it -- then it doesn't matter. If marketing patients is right for your facility, it's worthwhile to do it well.

By Leslie Farnsworth
AuntMinnie.com contributing writer
April 14, 2006

Farnsworth is the president and CEO of FrogDog Communications, a Houston-based corporate communications firm that specializes in services for the imaging industry; she can be reached via email at [email protected] or via phone at (713) 862-2505.

M.B.A. education for physicians: cross-training options, January 25, 2006

Referral physician relationships drive imaging center success, November 25, 2005

Successful customer service requires scrutiny, October 17, 2005

Service blueprinting maps path to excellence, August 26, 2005