Healthcare Industry is currently facing a competitive era with sophisticated demands from patients, who are now, more of, proactive medical consumers. Patients today make informed healthcare decisions after extensive clinical research and rely substantially on the internet for reviews and recommendations on healthcare facilities and physicians. With tremendous pressure on reducing healthcare costs, the focus of healthcare has entered a new paradigm – ‘value-based care’.
Patients also play a major role in managing their own health conditions by interacting actively both within and outside the healthcare settings. Therefore to make effective patient engagements, a smart and revamped healthcare marketing approach is required. This can be achieved by a robust Brand Positioning Strategy (BPS). Proper positioning of the brand is a blend of art and science that can be formulated with the expertise of Healthcare Consulting Firms. These firms do a thorough assessment of the market needs, prospective healthcare offerings and competitor strengths and weaknesses for brand building.
Advantages of Healthcare BPS
Creates differentiated healthcare offerings for capturing the market-share.
Retains the existing patients by brand loyalty.
Attracts new patients seeking care services.
Aids in hiring the top-notch talented pool of physicians and medical professionals for best care outcomes.
Steps for Building a Healthcare BPS
- Making a brand audit to assess the organization’s current positioning - An extensive research is needed to fully understand what creates an impact for care delivery on the target customers and the driving force behind their clinical purchasing decisions.
- Clearly identifying the relevant market segments - It is important to provide a meaningful interpretation of the healthcare products and services to different audiences including physicians, patients and suppliers. This is because each of them has varying needs and value systems to be addressed and the proposed market offering must essentially cater to this wide spectrum.
- Aligning brand building activities with market opportunities that drive growth and enhance performance - It is crucial to clearly identify the target customers and the driving forces behind their healthcare decisions. For this, a systematic understanding of the unmet needs, desires and wants of patients is essential. Additionally, a full-fledged competitor analysis can identify the gaps in the prevailing market and align the service offering with the organization’s long-term and short-term goals.
- Creating strong brand architecture and formalizing the branding nomenclature - The branding architecture must cover the relational and strategic structure of the brand. It is also critical to have a clearly defined and descriptive nomenclature to explain the constituent parts of the architecture for clarity and consistency in the diversified healthcare market.
- Establish strategic initiatives that create unique brand experiences for all healthcare stakeholders - By doing this a memorable patient experience is created in line with the promises made by the brand. A well-defined communication strategy and a disciplined approach enhance the brand awareness and create a lasting impression on patients.
Critical Success Factors for Brand Positioning
- Retrospect your position in the market before calling yourself a leader. It is important to have a clear-cut differentiation of the brand-offering to sustain in the long run.
- Deliver a consistent brand experience with emphasis on core values to all touch-points. Patient satisfaction can be substantially enhanced through web interfaces with user- friendly portals, online scheduling and informative websites.
- Attach tangible benefits to your brand positioning to bring it to life. This helps patients understand its value better.
- Formulate a brand identity that is visually appealing yet empathetic to patients and align it with the brand position to reap better benefits.
In brief, BPS helps in identification of target segment, genuine assessment of care levels and services, meeting patient’s implicit and explicit needs, increasing healthcare quality and empowering patients for informed decision-making.
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