5 steps to developing a marketing strategy
Writing your healthcare company’s first marketing strategy can be tough. You want to include all possible activities, you don’t want to miss out on the tactic that will make you millions. But, are you driving business growth by writing an exhaustive list of everything you could do?
No.
The purpose of a strategy isn’t just to identify what you will do and how, it also helps you rule out what activities you won’t do. Be focused with your strategy, concentrate on activities that deliver on your goals.
Why should you develop an integrated marketing strategy for your healthcare company?
If you’re reading this you’ve probably already decided that you need structure around your marketing activities, but how else can a proper strategy be of value?
- At the top level, a marketing strategy enables all activities to map back to impacting the business growth — critical for aligning efforts and showing return on investment in marketing.
- It gives structure and focuses your efforts. In other words, it helps you figure out where you have an unfair advantage over the competition which you can exploit.
- Finally, it gives you a base to measure from. Learn what works, what doesn’t and iterate to level up.
Great. You now know that a marketing strategy is the one thing standing between you and your business being wildly successful. But, everything you read about it has been fluffy, nonspecific, buzzword bingo. We get it. What you want are concrete steps to create a comprehensive strategy, that is actionable and gets results. Well, it’s your lucky day. Below, we will walk you through five simple steps to develop your healthcare marketing strategy, on one page*.
Step One: Consider your business goals.
As with any strategy, you want to start with the end in mind. Take a look at your business goals. Where do you see marketing being able to help achieve them? You don’t need to think about how right now, think about if marketing can help the business achieve a goal.
Your strategy should always be time-bound. It’s a good idea for your marketing strategy to match the cadence of the wider business goals.
When it comes to healthcare there are several ways marketing can help:Revenue targets → Marketing can deliver campaigns that drive leads, support sales, and ultimately grow your bottom line.
Product development → Maybe you’re launching a product or looking to improve its uptake. Focusing on your customers is key to building something fit-for-purpose. Marketing comes in here by being the voice of the customer and supporting the education of physicians and patients.
Funding and corporate goals → Perhaps you’re building up to a funding round. Marketing can support the corporate branding and positioning here - it’s not all about sales support.
Now you’ve identified which of your business objectives would benefit from marketing support, you can begin step two.
Step Two: Map out your marketing objectives
For each business goal, think about what a successful marketing program would need to deliver. They should be tangible and focused. If your goal is to generate a certain amount of revenue, all the marketing activity for this goal should in some way help achieve this.
Example: If your business objective is $1m revenue, a marketing success could be to generate a certain amount of inbound leads (you’ll need to factor your close rate here). This is one of your top-level marketing objectives.The way you word your marketing objectives is also paramount in how you measure success along the way. But, and it’s a big but, be sure to avoid “vanity metrics”. It might be that, for your campaign, getting 100 likes on a Facebook post is important, but if it isn’t don’t include it as a measure of success.
Step Three: Know your audience
Within healthcare marketing, there is probably quite a diverse group of stakeholders you need to engage with to achieve your objectives including; patients, payers, advocacy groups, healthcare systems, speciality doctors, and general practitioners (or Primary Care Physicians in the U.S.), and more.
You do not need a full “persona” built out for every potential audience type (there are times this is useful, but it’s not essential). What you do need is to map out these stakeholders, what problems they’re facing, and what is stopping them from buying from you.
Stakeholders you should be thinking about:
→ Who buys it?
→ Who is the end-user?
→ Who benefits from this technology?
→ Who influences the decision?Documenting who these people are will help you in the next step.
Step Four: Identify your tactics & channels
This step is all about the “how”. This is where it gets fun.
Assessing the market gives you a view of where you have a competitive advantage over the other players. You’re looking for an intersection of where your customers are, and where you can win. There are times that completing a full SWOT analysis and market research can really improve your marketing success.
Again, think about what is stopping your customer buying from you right now.
Some examples:→ Lack of awareness
→ Understanding of how it works
→ Understanding of how it adds value
Whatever the reason, use this as the base for developing your tactics for each audience.
Take your research from your stakeholder mapping and drill it down. Think about where they work, how they consume information, where they get advice, which digital channels they use, which conferences they attend. Spoiler alert, your target audience is going to use multiple channels. It could even include their physical environment. For example, being aware that there are restrictions on what MRI Technologists can take into an exam room, so you might want to rethink your branded metal clipboard idea ;-).
Stay focused.
- What activity is actually going to help you achieve your goal?
- What influences your buyer?
When thinking about what activities to do and campaigns to run, consider the intersection of what message you want your audience to get, what action you want them to take, where they’re getting information from, and where you have a competitive advantage.
These tactics can be tracked as Key Results, keep them top-level and measurable (for more information on structuring OKRs, check out this great article by Atlassian). When it comes to the end of the year, your Objectives and Key Results are how you’ll measure success.
Step Five: Document your one-page marketing strategy
Congratulations, you have all the elements of your healthcare marketing strategy! It’s now time to document it in an overview. Why? To keep everyone focused, to enable internal communication, and to ensure if changes are needed through the year, it’s agile.
What should I include in my one-page overview?
Business objectives → Marketing objectives → Audience → Market information (research, competitor analysis, SWOT)→ Tactics & key results → Deliverables → Resource requirements.With your deliverables defined, now is the time to assess your resource requirements. Think about this in terms of time, money, and people. What are realistic timelines for delivering the activities set out? How many people do you need, and do you need to engage with an agency to deliver this? Think about your budget, make sure to include conferences, printed collateral, campaigns you’ll run, advertising, and your marketing technology stack.
Key takeaways for your marketing strategy
- Always begin with the end in mind. All marketing activity needs to link to real business objectives.
- Take an integrated approach to your strategy. After that, drill down into channel-specific tactics.
This approach focuses on making marketing a driver for business growth. We’re not here for “marketing for marketing’s sake” or focusing on textbook answers and vanity metrics.
*disclaimer: sometimes you’ll need two sides of one page 😉.
If you’ve found this article interesting or would like to chat about how we could support your strategy development, drop us a line hello@evolene.co.uk. We’re here to help get your idea to the people who need it most!
This article originally appeared on Evolene’s company blog.
