No matter which business you are in, marketing is a must to stay abreast with the competition around you. Be it a small marketing initiative or an elaborate marketing campaign, it involves a lot of strategy and understanding of customer psychology. You need to understand your market and find your target to market effectively. Marketing becomes much more complex when we are dealing with an industry like medicine  which essentially runs on trust and values.

It is not easy to commodify medical services as each service offered is entirely different from the other. Oncology, cardiology, neurosciences, diagnostics, orthopedics, rehabilitation and so on, there are a wide array of services offered by medical practitioners and each requires a distinct medical marketing strategy. An in-depth understanding of the science involved and the benefits they offer is crucial while devising a marketing strategy. If you are a medical practitioner and intend to use effective medical marketing services to reach your prospective clients, this post is for you. This is a list of the most essential constituents of an effective medical marketing campaign:

1. SWOT Analysis

The first step in any marketing campaign is to carry out an effective SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats) analysis. Understanding your line of medical practice and the industry on whole is very important before you carry out the below mentioned steps. Analyze the strengths of your service and your USP (Unique Selling Proposition), things you need to work on, threats you need to face  in the future and opportunities you can encash.

2. Competition Analysis

This is one of the most important yet most neglected constituent of an effective marketing campaign. There are instances when big brands and businesses failed to do a competition analysis and eventually ran out of business. Keeping a close eye on your competitors, their success and marketing strategies is very crucial when it comes to sustainability and innovation. The idea is to never be complacent about one’s own success and to never underestimate a rising competitor.

3. Segmentation

Once you have analyzed your SWOT and have identified your competitors, the next step in a medical marketing campaign is to understand the market you serve. Be it geographic, demographic or psychographic,  use all possible metrics to segment your market into a clearly defined entity. It is easier to strategize when you have a clearly defined market.

4. Targeting

Though you have defined your market and the customers you want to cater to, you need to find your target customers who are specifically looking for the medical service you offer. It is easy to design a medical marketing campaign and its tone if you have a specific set of clients belonging to a pre-defined segment.

5. Goals

Goal setting is definitely one of the primary steps where the whole campaign is revolved around. A realistic definition of the goals is to be set in regards with the audience you are targeting; the outcomes you are expecting and the amount of time and money you are willing to spend to achieve this outcome.

6. Strategies

Every marketing campaign has a language of its own and a specific message it wants to convey. Medical marketing campaigns are no exception to this. In fact, marketing healthcare or dental services requires a unique strategy that encompasses compassion, trust and goodwill. Be it creatives, web design or execution, clear planning of the strategies is made to ensure the outcome of your marketing mediums and budget.

7. Marketing Mediums

We live in an extremely inter- connected world today where there is a wide array of mediums to connect with prospective clients. However, you need to careful while choosing these platforms and clearly define the strategies. Having a ‘one for all’ strategy for all the mediums may not work for a medical marketing campaign.

8. Marketing Budget

Last but not the least, you need to have a clear cut idea of the budget of your medical marketing campaign. You need to know the duration of the campaign, the resources needed and the people who are involved. Only when you have a cap on your budget is when you can strategize accordingly.