Marketing personas are an essential part of a successful marketing strategy yet are frequently overlooked when companies handle marketing in-house. That is especially true in medical marketing, which often carries the mindset that patients with the right problem will find your practice. The truth is that unless you have a one-of-a-kind medical practice without competition, marketing is essential for success and so are patient personas.
Ardath Albee has been extensively quoted from her talk at The Intelligent Content Conference for defining a marketing persona as “a composite sketch of a key segment of your audience” This marketing technique is also referred to an audience persona, buyer persona, customer persona, customer avatar, patient persona, and target market persona.
While not a real patient, this fictional persona should comprise traits, habits, and interests that match your target audience. This persona is detailed with demographic information, behaviors, concerns, and interests inspired by your actual patients or an idealized version of a group you want to attract.
The personas should even be given names – and not just because it’s fun. A good persona name makes it easy to remember a key point about that persona. Persona names are often alliterative, though they don’t have to be. They should also include a key target point. For general marketing personas these could be an industry, job title, or function. For a patient persona, you might want to use an aspect of their demographic or a health concern they would come to you to treat such as Hair Restoration Harry or Facelift Fran.
Why Do You Need a Patient Persona?
Without a patient or customer persona, your marketing plan is essentially throwing spaghetti against the wall. If it isn’t focused on the audiences that want your services then you’ll waste money, time, and opportunities.
How Can I Use Patient Personas?
With a patient persona, you can fine-tune your advertising spend and reallocate it effectively when you want to add to or modify your services. You can also use language like your personas do.
You can then break down your customer list by various matching patient personas. Depending upon the nature of your practice, you could even write an e-book for a specific persona or be a guest on a podcast whose audience matches your target persona.
Your customer lists, website metrics and analytics, and other data can be used to create these patient personas. For example, a family dermatology practice would have very different patient personas than a dermatology practice which focuses on cosmetic surgery. Starting with your existing data ensures that you are basing your patient personas on facts and trends instead of guesswork.
The better crafted your patient personas, the more focused and optimized your marketing strategy can be. You will likely have multiple patient personas. The benefit is you can prioritize them and allocate your marketing budget accordingly.
How Do I Create a Marketing Persona?
Good patient personas are accurate, succinct, and useful. They are based on a series of questions about your target audience’s habits, interests, and demographics. To make it easier for you, we at Efferent Media have made a Patient Persona Checklist that you can download and fill out for each target audience.
Creating a patient persona can be tedious, though, so many businesses outsource it. If you are ready to find out what marketing services can do for you – or just want us to review your patient persona results – contact us for a free strategy call with our CEO. Click here to book an appointment.