The healthcare industry is a constantly changing landscape, and no matter what role you play, standing out is a must, and there are both tried-and-tested and innovative ways to do so. Medical market research can help find these ways. Market research for healthcare is what companies turn to when calibrating marketing strategies for a launch, and what drug makers rely on to convince skeptical would-be buyers.
Here are some guidelines:
Own your own information – conduct your own specific medical market research
A company must own their own information. The company must present its own data in order to achieve the greatest commercial impact. Although the medical market research company is an important contributor to the operation, especially with the analysis of data as well as with projections and recommendations, it’s ultimately up to the company to deliver the data to its internal teams. The current atmosphere of cutting costs, especially in research budgets, is less than ideal but it remains important for a company to be hands-on, especially with its medical market research.
This atmosphere also breeds an excessive emphasis on transactional activity: there is less attention paid toward the next move for your research goals and more on asking the right questions and it is possible to become stagnated in this “transactional mode”.
Continually realign with customer wants, needs and values: keep your market research in healthcare up to date
In an index of the percentage, for each industry, of organizations that are aligned with the satisfaction of customers, the healthcare industry has the least percentage. It lags behind industries such as media, technology, and financial services. The truth is that the healthcare industry is not focused enough on its customers, as it has been an industry primarily driven by procedures and providers, and not its customers.
A recent study assessed the financial and operational goals, as well as alignment to customer values, of 18 healthcare organizations. Among them, only one was found to be performing well, and half failed to meet a single criterion. This makes it obvious that the healthcare industry is struggling, and as such, a shift from B2B relationships to customer interaction may be necessary.
Here are some ways to do so:
Ask those who personally interact with your customers
These can be customer support or sales personnel, and they tend to truly understand customers’ needs and wants.
Know who they are
It’s important to know the demographic of your customer base, as it may provide clues as to their decision-making process.
Define your objectives
Set clear goals for what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase income, or ensure that customers keep coming back? Setting clear objectives helps guide your actions.
Leverage all medical market research methods, particularly social media
Understanding your customers is key to knowing their needs and wants, and social media, being a common platform of expression in this day and age, can be a rich source of market research for the healthcare industry. The better you know your customers, the better you’ll be able to deliver what they want.
Keep an eye on the trends in social media, it could be your most useful medical market research tool.
Most social media websites and platforms have many built-in ways of tracking and analyzing trends, such as Facebook and Twitter. One way is by just searching the most-used terms and the most popular posts, and an example of this is Twitter’s hashtag system.
More specifically:
Use it to widen the scope of your medical market research.
80% of people with an Internet connection use social media, and it continues to grow in popularity across demographics. This widens your audience.
Use it to be more cost-efficient.
Social media has many free tools that can be utilized in medical market research.
The healthcare industry is challenging and it changes seemingly from day-to-day, but a well thought out medical market research strategy and a strong partnership with a market research company specialising in healthcare can really be the difference between success and failure.
