The customer journey might seem straightforward enough. A person thinks, “Hey, I need that product,” and then buys it. In fact, the customer journey is a complex five-part process. Mapping out the steps and tailoring content to target the customer at each step is a great way to bring them on board with your brand at any stage of the sales funnel.
Below, we provide a step-by-step guide to customer journey mapping in healthcare to help you boost sales.
An Intro to Customer Journey Mapping in Healthcare
Understanding the customer journey’s steps is the first step in content mapping. Here they are:
- Awareness: This stage makes the consumer aware of their want or need for a product or service. The consumer identifies a problem to solve. Example: A private physician’s practice recognizes the airborne infectiousness of the COVID-19 virus. The physician realizes they need FFP2 masks to protect staff and patients.
- Evaluate: The consumer starts researching their options, comparing differing providers. They are looking for a solution to their problem. Example: The physician investigates FFP2 vendors, looking for a reliable product, affordable bulk orders, and fast delivery.
- Decision-making: Having weighed the options, the consumer selects a provider. Example: The physician finds a vendor that meets their criteria and places an order.
- Advocate: The consumer uses the product or service and is so happy with the experience that they refer other consumers to the product or service provider. Example: The physician is satisfied with the FFP2 product and customer experience. They recommend the vendor to a fellow healthcare practitioner who is also in need of FFP2 masks.
- Retention: The consumer continues to use the product or service without switching to a different vendor. Example: The physician becomes a recurring customer, placing a new bulk order every month.
As you can see, customer journey mapping in healthcare allows you to step into the consumer’s shoes. With the example above, we peek into the physician’s mind and identify three selling points (reliable product, affordable bulk order, fast delivery) that would be relevant to them.
So, what is the role of content?
Content marketing can come into play at any stage of the journey. The right content format with the right message allows you to target your potential consumer effectively.
4-Step Checklist: Mapping Content to the Customer Journey
Follow these steps to create content according to customer journey mapping in healthcare.
1. Create Your Buyer Persona
Create a theoretical sketch of your target audience. This is your buyer persona. Research and write down a list of traits, like profession, demographic details (age, location, gender), professional goals and challenges, and influences (like medical journals they read).
Forbes recommends consulting frontline workers who work directly with consumers (like salespeople) to create buyer personas.
2. Draw the Map
Next, take your buyer persona and walk them through the customer journey described above. Again, this is about adopting their mindset. Ask yourself these questions at each stage:
- Awareness: How will the person seek a solution to the problem they’ve identified, e.g., via Google, healthcare publications, industry thought-leader websites, etc.?
- Evaluate: What points are important to the person, e.g., the price versus convenience?
- Decision-making: What touchpoints will the person come into contact with to conclude their decision, e.g., visiting a company website versus calling a healthcare sales rep?
- Advocate: What will convince the person to advocate the brand they end up choosing? What channels will they use to spread the word, e.g., word of mouth versus social media?
- Retention: What will keep the person coming back, e.g., reliable delivery, special deals, etc.?
3. Perform a Content Analysis
With the answers to these questions, it will become clear what content formats you should use to guide your target consumer through the sales funnel.
Here are some ideas:
- Awareness can be driven via info-packed content in the form of blog posts or infographics.
- Evaluation can be informed through website landing and sales pages or live demos.
- Decision-making might be driven via free trial sign-up pages.
- Advocacy can be encouraged via shareable social media posts and forward-friendly emails.
- Retention can be encouraged via engagement-boosters, like user guides, webinars, and podcasts.
4. Craft the Right Content
Finally, you’ve got the information you need to start crafting content according to your customer journey mapping in healthcare.
Let’s get back to that private physician in need of FFP2 masks, for example. He’s a GP running a family medicine practice in his early 50s, has been in private practice for 20+ years, is a family man, and prioritizes giving his patients affordable care.
When he’s looking for FFP2 masks, he’s prioritizing efficacy and convenience. He needs masks that work that will be delivered to his clinic doorstep fast. Cost-effectiveness is another concern, though: He’s willing to pay for quality but would prefer bulk pricing to keep costs down.
How are you going to get this guy’s attention at every stage of the customer journey? Maybe a blog post summarizing clinical study results on the efficacy of different types of masks will catch his eye at the awareness stage.
A clear sales page that offers bulk pricing options might be what wins him over when evaluating.
You might then follow up the sale with an email, asking if he’s satisfied – and whether he wants to place repeat orders, so he doesn’t have to think about re-ordering. There’s your retention phase.
In that email, you might include social media links to your company profiles, like Twitter. He then follows your company on Twitter.
Then, on your company’s Twitter page, you might share some infographics about the efficacy of FFP2 masks in minimizing COVID-19 transmission. The physician retweets the infographic to his followers – becoming an advocate of your brand.
We Help You Create Content Your Customers Love
Share Moving Media helps healthcare manufacturers craft authority content that captivates consumers and spurs them to take action. By boosting conversions, we help you increase your market share. We are a full-service media company, covering diverse formats from e-books to webinars and more.
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