Patient-Centric Marketing: Aligning Healthcare Strategies with Patient Needs
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Effective Strategies for Patient-Centric Marketing: Building Trust and Loyalty
Gone are the days when the bulk of healthcare marketing was about staying top-of-mind with your referral sources. Today, driven by our increasingly digital world, patients are empowered to find and evaluate their own providers, from primary care to specialists. A referral’s opinion, while still highly valued, is not the only one at the table.
The digital revolution has made choice more accessible to patients. Now healthcare organizations must respond by making the "patient gaze" central to their marketing.
What is Patient-Centric Marketing?
Patient-centric marketing is marketing directly to patients in a way that is unique to what is marketed to healthcare industry peers. Diving deeper, patient marketing considers segmentation by demographics, geography, behaviors, and then further delineates the patient mindset, hesitations, anxieties, and life, and weaves those insights throughout communications and promotions.
There are a number of AI-powered segmentation tools that help marketers gain clarity on different patient segments, or at a more baseline level, at a minimum segment by patient age and make sure that your messages to reach referral sources and partners are unique to them.
Patient centricity in healthcare may begin with the beginning of the patient journey — at first point of contact — but it does not stop there. It continues throughout their journey, including experiences with their care team and communications between appointments.
Benefits of Patient-Centric Marketing
Patient-centric healthcare marketing is a boon to patient care as well as to your organization's growth goals. As patient viewpoints become more deeply rooted in your marketing, patients will feel better seen and heard by their potential (and current!) providers. This leads to a multitude of benefits that ripple out far beyond your patient acquisition goals.
Better Patient Engagement and Satisfaction
Patient marketing can significantly improve patient engagement once they're in your care. This approach sets the stage for a positive relationship from the very beginning, as patients enter feeling more confident that their needs are being recognized and valued throughout their care journey.
For example:
A hospital develops an app that allows patients to easily access their health records, lab results, and upcoming appointments, increasing their involvement in their own care.
A clinic implements a text messaging system to send appointment reminders with personalized health tips, showing they remember and care about individual patient needs.
Strategies like these for marketing to patients not only improve the patient experience but also create a sense of partnership between healthcare providers and patients — for more effective healthcare interactions overall.
Improved Health Outcomes
What follows better patient engagement? Better adherence, followed by improved health outcomes. Patient-centric marketing sets the ball rolling in a positive direction that ripples through the entire care process.
For example:
A nationwide physical therapy group institutes the practice of creating custom exercise video playlists for each patient, and this results in higher completion rates of at-home exercises and faster recovery times.
A growing primary care practice sends thoughtful seasonal health tips and preventive care reminders to patients, leading to an increase in vaccinations and early detection screenings.
These patient-centric approaches show how personalized care and communication can translate into tangible health benefits. By making health management more accessible and relevant to each patient's life, healthcare providers can drive better outcomes and ultimately improve the overall health of their patient population.
Increased Trust and Loyalty
When patients feel seen, heard, and respected by their care providers, they are more likely to return through the duration of their care and recommend your practice to others, even as other companies compete for their attention in the digital world.
This sense of being valued and understood creates a strong emotional connection between patients and their healthcare providers. Patient centricity in healthcare marketing plays a crucial role in nurturing this connection, so that one-time visitors become long-term, repeat patients.
For example:
An OB/GYN practice offers virtual "mom-to-be" support groups, creating a sense of community that helps keep patients engaged throughout their pregnancy and beyond (as well as increasing patient-to-patient referrals).
A cardiology center provides a heart health tracking app that integrates with their electronic health records, encouraging patients to stay with the practice for continuous care.
By being loud and clear about your commitment to patient needs and preferences, your organization can build a loyal patient base that not only returns for care but also becomes advocates, recommending you to friends and family, ultimately not only contributing to patient retention but also growth.
Strategies for Implementing Patient-Centric Marketing
Patient-centric healthcare marketing opens up a world of fresh opportunities for your team. It's a chance to bring what you excel at — providing great patient care — directly into your marketing efforts.
By doing this, you're not just promoting “marketing” to patients … you're extending your care philosophy into every interaction with potential patients. Here are our key strategies to put this patient-focused approach into action:
Conducting In-Depth Patient Research
Understanding your patients is the bedrock of patient marketing. We never recommend investing resources into any marketing efforts without this crucial first step!
To truly connect with your patients, you need to get inside their heads, understand their fears, hopes, and expectations. This deep dive into patient perspectives will inform every aspect of how you do marketing to patients so it will resonate with the people you're trying to reach. Here's how you can go about it:
Anonymous surveys to gather feedback on patient experiences, preferences, and needs. These can uncover insights you might never have considered.
Detailed maps of the patient journey, from first contact to post-treatment follow-up, identifying pain points and opportunities for improvement. This bird's-eye view can reveal surprising areas for optimization.
Analysis of online forums (such as Reddit) to understand patient discussions about healthcare topics and your organization. It's like being a fly on the wall in your patients' conversations.
Embed a dynamic feedback loop into your processes. This involves creating systems that capture patient pain points in the moment (such as empowering frontline employees to document experiences).
We've found it's immensely beneficial to have an outside expert guide your organization through the patient research process with specialized healthcare consulting services.
Why? Because when you're in the thick of things day-to-day, it's easy to develop blind spots. An external perspective helps avoid biases and assumptions that might otherwise slip through the cracks, giving you a clearer, more objective view of your patients' needs and experiences.
Creating Relevant and Educational Content
Once you understand your patients, the next step is to create content that addresses their needs and concerns. The goal is to demonstrate that you deeply understand and care about their health journey. Here's how you might approach this:
Create easy-to-understand guides, videos, and infographics about common health conditions your practice treats. These should break down complex medical concepts into digestible, actionable information.
Share real patient experiences and success stories (with permission and anonymity) to build trust and show empathy. These stories can help potential patients see themselves in your care.
Educate patients on preventive measures and healthy lifestyle choices. This proactive approach shows you're invested in their long-term health and brings them in for necessary preventative steps.
If serving diverse communities, provide content in multiple languages. This inclusive approach demonstrates your commitment to serving all members of your community.
By focusing on these areas, you're providing value to your patients before they even step foot in your practice. This patient-centric approach to content creation can help establish your organization as their go-to healthcare partner.
Using Digital Tools for Engagement
There are so many technological tools out there to boost patient engagement and provide convenient access to information and services. By embracing some of these tools, and ensuring your brand is consistent across them, you can start to create a more patient-friendly healthcare experience. Here are some of our top digital strategies:
Make sure your app is more than appointment reminders and messages — add value by offering features like medication reminders, symptom trackers, seasonal health reminders, and in-app telehealth consultations. If you don’t have an app yet, there are easy ways to partner with developers, without starting from scratch.
Share virtual tours of your facilities on your website to help ease patient anxiety and familiarize them with the environment before their visit.
Start creating a more robust social media presence, sharing health tips, answering patient questions, and building a sense of community.
Strategies for Maintaining Ongoing Relationships With Patients
As seen in the examples we gave above, patient-centric marketing often shines brightest when it comes to deepening and maintaining relationships with existing patients, rather than solely focusing on attracting new ones.
This retention-first approach makes sense not just from a care quality perspective, but also from a business standpoint. Retaining existing patients can often be less expensive and more profitable in the long term.
With this in mind, here are the strategies we've found most effective for nurturing your ongoing relationships with patients:
Prioritize training your care team on empathy and communication. One way to boost patient retention is by providing consistently positive experiences throughout their journey. Regular training for doctors, nurses, and intake staff can improve their interactions with patients.
Invest in cultural understanding training. Especially if you serve a diverse community, your care team needs to be familiar with and respectful of differing cultural norms and beliefs, so that every patient feels welcome and understood.
Implement personalized, systematic marketing between appointments. Keep your patients engaged and health-conscious by sending personalized communications such as vaccination reminders, seasonal health tips, and relevant health information.
Develop a user-friendly patient portal. Create a digital hub where patients can easily access their doctor's notes, test results, upcoming appointments, and past health records. By making personal health information readily available, you empower patients to take an active role in managing their health, which goes a long way toward strengthening their connection to your practice.
The goal with this type of patient marketing is to build a community of engaged, informed individuals who view your organization as a true partner in their health journey.
Trust and Loyalty in Your Practice or System
The “patient gaze” may be choosy, but it’s because patients are inherently vulnerable. Your patients entrust their health — and at times, their lives — to your care team. It’s good that they should be exercising any discernment they have in choosing their providers.
They’re asking: “Who can I trust?” “Who understands what I’m going through?” “Who will make it easier for me to become or stay healthy?” “Who will meet me with empathy, rather than judgment or dismissal?”
The goal of patient centricity in healthcare marketing is to provide clear answers to these questions throughout every touchpoint with patients. If you're already providing excellent, empathy-led care, patient-centric marketing becomes a powerful tool to showcase your values upfront, building trust and connection before the first appointment even begins.
Not sure where to start with patient-centric healthcare marketing? Our value-mapping sessions are designed to help healthcare organizations like yours identify and articulate your unique strengths, align your team, and develop strategies that resonate with patients. Meet with a strategist at EnticEdge to learn more!
