What is Patient-Centered Marketing?

Patient-centered care, also called value-based care, is exploding in popularity. Patients now look for brands that focus care around their needs rather than the needs of the healthcare system. As a result, patient-centered marketing has quickly grown as well.

However, one of the most challenging aspects in adapting to this new approach to healthcare is creating marketing content that resonates with patients. Patient-centered marketing focuses your marketing strategy on reaching, engaging, and educating patients in a more effective way.

In short, patient-centered marketing is about individualizing patient care to account for unique backgrounds, lifestyles, preferences, and medical concerns. It is a critical strategy as many practices shift to value-based care, relying heavily on patient-centered marketing.

Patient-Centered Marketing Benefits

When done effectively, an emphasis on patient-centered marketing has many benefits for both providers and patients:

• Enhanced organizational reputation
• Improved patient satisfaction
• Better patient engagement
• Increased trust
• Improved patient outcomes
• Enhanced patient education

When healthcare brand managers understand patient needs and deliver content that addresses those needs, patients will have a more favorable view of your brand, become more self-educated, and have a better overall experience.

Although patient-centered marketing holds significant benefits, it is a relatively new approach in the field. Historically, healthcare marketing messaging centered around the services, treatments, and physicians instead of the patient. With this new paradigm shift, here are a few ways to improve your messaging to meet the needs of patients.

Top 3 Patient-Centered Marketing Tips

Understand Your Audience

Empathy and deeper perspectives are required to unlock messages that resonate with your audience. Although patient satisfaction scores and community surveys provide a great start to understanding patients, it’s critical to go deeper to understand patient perspectives. To gain a better handle on patient needs, have discussions with those healthcare professionals who interact with patients daily: physicians, care coordinators, nurses, and other patient-facing staff. That way you can understand patient needs from direct contacts who interact with patients first-hand.

Take the time to understand not only where patients are physically in their journey toward health but their emotions as well. Are they in denial, angry, or feeling overwhelmed? Do they struggle with a lack of support system or financial instability? When you have a clearer view of their circumstances, you can create marketing campaigns that consider their needs.

Keep It Simple

Healthcare communications can tend to be complex. Most patients, however, prefer simple, easy-to-understand messaging. It’s critical to create understandable marketing materials to reach audiences and stay relevant. Aim to write at a middle school reading level so your audience doesn’t struggle to connect with your message.

Meet Them Where They Are

Engage with patients where they already spend time. Some patients spend time on certain social channels. For example, younger demographics are more likely to be on Instagram and YouTube, while older generations will be on Facebook and TV.

A patient-centered marketing strategy is about providing relevant and helpful information to your audience. In general, stick to the 80/20 rule: 80% of your content offers direct value, while 20% is about your brand.

Patient-centered marketing is critical to establishing a relationship of engagement and trust. Brands that start with the patient's needs first will find a number of benefits that will help improve the patient experience and grow their organization.

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Article Written by: Alex Brown