- Pramod Goel
- Jul 20, 2023
Healthcare decision is not something an average person spends a lot of time every day. Only when a medical issue arises, the patients and their families search for the locations and solutions to meet the needs. For medical tourism marketers, it can be frustrating, as their marketing efforts may be ignored largely until a patient needs care. What healthcare providers need is a marketing strategy that is present consistently in the potential patient's life. Here patients are your consumers who are unique in themselves. Their needs and requirements are varied from one another, so their consumption pattern and behavior are different. As a healthcare marketer in the medical tourism industry, you need to satisfy these needs and requirements through your service offerings. This is possible when you understand the different stages of consumer behavior. Here we will highlight the four most crucial stages of consumer behavior that can boost your healthcare marketing in the Medical Tourism industry, which are:
- Patient’s Awareness
- Comparison and Evaluation
- Decision Making
- After Sale
Stage 1- Awareness:
Consumers don’t actively look for your services until they are aware of what you are offering. So, you should not expect that the potential patients to actively look for what you are offering. Only when you establish a basic familiarity with your services then they can make a decision and this gives you a competitive advantage.
You may think about the mediums like word-of-mouth, television, print publications, etc. to boost awareness. This can work to some extent but not enough to grab a potential market share as consumer behavior has changed a lot. Now, they prefer more transparency, which they get with an online experience like direct mail, digital ads, videos, etc. Thus, you need to build your online presence by creating a good center profile, educational articles, videos, treatment packages, etc. This will generate the required awareness with transparency about your services and the patients will be in a better position for decision making.
Stage 2- Comparison and Evaluation:
This stage of consumer behavior is when a patient realizes the need for a healthcare facility and starts looking for options. When they look for options it means they want to evaluate and find a better solution. Your marketing efforts must focus on how to reach this crowd and for that, you must have up-do-date websites, center profiles, social media accounts, active blogs, and a more prominent online presence. You can help the potential customers to become more informed with regular updates using social media marketing, email campaigns and CRMs.
Stage 3- Time to Make Decision:
This stage comes when your targeted patient is already aware of your service and has shown interest in it. This is the most important stage as here you have to encourage the potential patient to book an appointment. As you know what the patient is actually interested in, you can design direct email campaigns with targeted emails to encourage them to buy your service.
As the customers have evolved in this digital age, patient-provider communication is the key. Real-time communication with the patients using tools like a direct chat application will help them find answers to their queries immediately without any delay. This will help you win their trust and strengthen your relationship. As a provider, you will also understand much faster exactly what the patient needs and offer him/her a customized solution. When the patients get exactly what they need with complete transparency without wasting time, they will also don’t waste time to book appointments.
Stage 4- After-Sale-
Medical Tourism marketing is not over with patient booking an appointment or buying your service, you should also convince them about the post-purchase benefits you will offer. There must be a focus on patient's areas of interest so that they may visit the center in the future if needed and most importantly provide referrals. You should keep your patients informed about your new offerings or promotions using email campaigns or newsletters.
Applying these four key stages of consumer behavior will boost your healthcare marketing and give you a competitive edge. However, you have to tap these consumer behavior stages so that you can get the maximum benefits. To boost your Medical Tourism marketing prospects, you need an expert like PlacidWay, as we aim to bring transparency between medical providers and patients. Our innovative direct chat application establishes real-time communication between patients and providers. Also, we can help you to educate your targeted customers with articles, treatment packages, center profiles, doctor profiles, testimonials, videos, social media marketing, email campaigns and more. Let PlacidWay help you with top-notch digital marketing to make the best use of these key consumer behavior stages.
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