The video is ~10min long and the transcript below takes you through a step by step process for developing your marketing strategy
Set the Direction for your Healthcare Practice
Now that you've taken the time to review the market you compete in, you're ready to dive into developing your marketing strategy. This is where you will set the direction and focus for all your marketing activities.
This can get a little bit complicated with a lot of marketing terminology, so here is a link to a fantastic example of a marketing plan with an example marketing strategy and template. The template will help you create your own personalised marketing strategy. Refer back to this deck if you find what I'm talking about confusing
Hopefully you've taken the time to 1. Exploring your market. During this exploration you would have noticed a number of opportunities emerge where you're starting to think "we can take advantage of this insight" or "I didn't realise this was happening." We're going to take this great ideas or insights into this phase of your plan
So let's jump in.
Understanding your Strengths and Weaknesses and the markets Opportunities and Threats
The first phase can be a difficult step as you need to look in the mirror and critique what's close to your heart, look inside your business for your strengths and your weaknesses.
We can be great at identifying our weaknesses and not so good at identifying our strengths. So when looking at your strengths, look at internal metrics. What types of patients are coming into your practice? What patients aren't coming into your practice? What are the strengths of yourself and the staff's knowledge and experience?
Where are you really strong?
Where are you not so strong?
What is the good and bad customer feedback you've received?
You now want to map out the top four to five strengths and weaknesses that you want to bring forward and do something about or take advantage of.
We've identified our strengths and weaknesses, we will now look externally for potential opportunities and threats to your practice. Strengths and weaknesses are internal to you while opportunities and threats are within the external environment eg. trends in the market, changing demographics, or environmental factors such as the pandemic.
It's time to take a look at the trends occurring in your market, the demographics, what your competitors are doing, and decide "the things you would like to take advantage of." An opportunity could be the ageing population in your target area and you want to maximise that opportunity because it's one of your areas of strong expertise.
A threat could be, new building works which results in reducing walk past traffic for your practice, potentially resulting in the lose of potential patients. A threat could also be, slowing economy which will result in patients spending less on their health. These are very simple examples, but the example attached to this link will provide you with more examples
So you've identified the top four to five strengths and weaknesses of your business and the top four to five opportunities and threats.Now it's time to start building your strategy.
Building your Strategy
So here is when we tie all this information together, where we see a strong link between your strengths and opportunities eg. expertise in treating elderly patients and ageing population in your local areas, this is a great opportunity for you to take advantage of. I know it's a very simple example, but it could be anything around the demographics of your population, trends in your market, gaps your competitors aren't addressing that match the stregnths of your business, your knowledge and expertise.
Then the concerning threats is where you see your business is quite weak and that you have threats that could actually impact you. Going back to a previous example, you have building works which will detract from your business and your loosing walk past traffic and your marketing skills are poor. This is a real threat that you need to plan for and overcome.
Positioning
This can be one of the most important steps but also the hardest to articulate. Positioning is really about "how you want your patients to describe your practice?"
How would your patients describe your practice to a friend, what is your key strength and who are the patients you treat.You also want to think about the future, and how do you want your customers to talk about you in the future. What is the desired position in their mind. The below template will help shape your statement.
Replace underlined areas with your specific strategy
For “your target customer” that “need your business addresses”, “your business” is the “define business category” that will “how does your business solve your customer’s need” so they can “benefit your product brings to the customer”
You positioning statement will describe your niche audience “target customer” and differentiate your business through “how does your business solve your customer need”
If you're able to articulate your positioning well, this will form the backbone of all your marketing communication and messaging
Goals
The final phase to "setting your direction" is to identify the goals you need to achieve to reach the target position within the market. You need to think about three to four goals that you need to achieve to meet that desired position.
When thinking about your goals here are some suggestions:
What do you need to strengthen in your practice to overcome any potential threats
What do you need to put in place to maximise the opportunities you would like take advantage of
Goals are where you want to head, the direction you need to direct your marketing activities to achieve your target position within the mind of your target patient. So you understand your strengths and weaknesses, you know what opportunites you want to maximise and which threats you need to be prepared for, you've articulated how you want your customers to think about you in the positioning area so you're goals is what is going to make this become a reality
Next Step in developing your Healthcare Practice Marketing Plan
Within your overarching strategy, you've set your goals and in the next step we're going to determine which activities you need to implement to do to achieve these goals
Please go through the template to understand the marketing terminology that will really help visualise
in your mind where you're heading.
Please don't hesitate to contact us at contact@aquabluemarketing.com for any support or any questions