The healthcare market is enormous – and it’s only going to get bigger. Global healthcare spending is anticipated to increase at a compound annual growth rate of five percent from 2019 to 2023.
Medical suppliers who want to increase their share in an expanding market should act now. The right marketing campaign is the key to success. What’s the “right” campaign? It depends on your target audience.
Suppose you’re a supplier trying to sell medical masks to private physicians’ offices. In that case, your healthcare marketing techniques will be (should be!) different than if you’re a supplier selling diagnostic ultrasound equipment to integrated delivery networks (IDNs).
Buyer personas are integral to guiding your approach. A buyer persona allows you to define your target audience and better understand their buying behaviors, so you can craft your marketing accordingly.
This guide takes you through a simple three-step process to craft buyer personas for healthcare.
Why Buyer Personas Matter
The purpose of a buyer persona is to understand how your customer thinks and acts. With this information, you can better understand the decision-making process that governs what, when, where, and how they buy.
What a Buyer Persona Is
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of who is using your product or service. This imaginary profile covers details like demographics (sex, age, race, income, marital status, educational level), purpose (such as career goals), and motivation.
What a Buyer Persona Isn’t
A buyer persona is not a guess. It’s fact-based, created with detailed market research.
3-Step Checklist to Creating Buyer Personas for Healthcare
The healthcare supply market is exceptionally competitive. A well-crafted buyer persona allows you to stand out with concise, impactful messaging that attracts the buyer’s attention – and keeps it throughout the medical equipment sales funnel.
Here’s how to create buyer personas for healthcare.
1. Conduct Quantitative Analysis
Suppose your product isn’t exclusive to a single market segment (for instance, you target both individual physicians and IDNs). In that case, the first step is to break down your broader market into smaller segments.
Create a list of existing clients and group them according to details like location, contract value, and engagement (as evidenced by the frequency of orders, for instance). With this demographic and revenue information, start looking for trends.
For instance, you might find a correlation between location and an uptick in spending – indicating a gap in the market that you can step in to fill. If a competitor had an area sales rep changeover, it’s a prime opportunity.
2. Complete Qualitative Research
One of the biggest mistakes companies make when crafting buyer personas is ignoring psychographics in favor of demographics. This is where qualitative analysis comes into play. To better understand your target segments, both at the individual and organizational levels, get more intimate.
Reach out to trusted clients to arrange a chat. Healthcare professionals are busy, so keep it short. Emphasize that you’re trying to collect feedback to see how you can better serve them.
During the interview, get a brief description of the business, the individual’s role within the organization, and their main goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Are they looking to cut costs? Have they been tasked with researching new tech? Is efficiency a factor?
Also, refer to your offering, asking what they use it for and, of course, what improvement they’d like to see in your product or service. Remember, retention is half the battle in healthcare sales.
3. Create and Socialize the Persona
You can now create your semi-fictional buyer persona based on the evidence you’ve collected. Say you sell heart stents, for example. A quantitative analysis reveals that private hospitals in the Midwest are your most significant revenue source. Your qualitative research shows that it’s the heads of cardiology departments who are the relevant decision-makers.
So, make your buyer persona the head of cardiology in a hospital setting. Let’s call her Rachel Harding. Dr. Harding will be further along in her career, at least 40 years of age, and highly educated. She must balance providing the best patient care with budget limitations set by higher-ups.
As head of her department, Dr. Harding must stay on top of the latest developments. She does this by reading certain healthcare publications, like Wiley’s Clinical Cardiology, and attending essential conferences, like the American Society of Echocardiography Annual Conference.
Finally, Dr. Harding is busy. She’s overseeing an entire department. Maybe she also has a family at home. Her time is precious. Your healthcare marketing strategy must take this into account.
Now you have an idea of where and how to reach a professional like Dr. Harding best. Thus, the buyer persona makes it easier to sell to your end customer without ever meeting them in person.
Find Out More About Making Buyer Personas Work for You
Share Moving Media helps healthcare suppliers reach diverse buyers through targeted content. Our publications, educational services, and associations cater to distributors, providers, and manufacturers. With our industry knowledge and comprehensive content offering, we help you increase market share.
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