To get the biggest bang for your marketing buck, identify and invest in your most loyal customer groups. To clear up common misperceptions on healthcare loyalty, Sachs Group Director Anna Clark Nowak posed two questions that every marketer should be able to answer: "Does consumer choice increase with loyalty?" and "Does satisfaction equal loyalty?"
The answers are not as obvious as they may seem: Satisfaction is not the same as loyalty: the former is an attitude created by met expectations, the latter is a behavior that governs decisions like repurchasing or renewing services. Consumer choice does increase with loyalty especially in the areas of renewal and retention.
Drawing on the Sachs Group's recent national survey of 90,000 adults, Nowak outlined key marketing links between loyalty and satisfaction at the Customer Based Marketing Strategies conference in Phoenix. Finding include:
- The best measure of healthcare loyalty is in actual repurchasing behavior.
- With a limited budget, identify where the most loyal members are-on a scale of 1 to 5 - and invest in direct marketing plans that target the top audience segment (the 4s and 5s). (Sachs Group, Anna Clark Nowak at 847/475-7525.