There was a time when the marketing of healthcare products and services - from prescription medications to hospitals to medical devices - focused on influencing health professionals and opinion leaders. In some cases, messages were conveyed indirectly to target consumers, but in others, the consumer never got the message - he or she just got the product in the form of a doctor's prescription.
This "top down" approach, in which information flows in a one-way direction from the "influentials" to the media, and ultimately to the consumer, is no longer accurate.
The past few years have brought about an entirely new type of healthcare consumer, who seeks out information, asks questions during doctor visits, and makes informed decisions based on the assertive gathering of facts. This new generation of consumers may even be vocal activists, working to influence public policy.
What is giving millions of people the confidence to take on the responsibility for their own well-being?
One reason is their increased access to health-related information from a variety of sources. Healthcare consumers not only are hungrier for information about health, they also have more health-related information at their fingertips than ever before. An explosion of interactive communication technologies has put vast banks of information in the hands of a public that once relied mostly on their doctors for this knowledge.
The shift in consumer interest - and power - also is the product of a growing public preoccupation with personal health and well-being. Every women's magazine on the newsstands today is chock full of health information for a hungry public, and a whole new category of men's health magazines has sprung up to match this trend.
Many television news shows have dedicated segments about health as well as physician-reporters to deliver healthcare news, and articles on the benefits of exercise and good nutrition fill many newspapers' health sections.
The effect of this trend on healthcare public relations is profound. For example, in many cases, it is often the consumer who alerts the clinician to a novel treatment or new use for a medication that he or she has learned about from the media, the Internet, or direct marketing. Through advocacy groups, consumers are influencing where research dollars are spent, and increasingly, how the research should be conducted.
Harnessing the power of these new consumers requires far more than simply reaching them; it requires motivating and mobilizing them. The traditional healthcare marketing approach is not designed to achieve these goals.
Healthcare marketing today increasingly calls for a melding of the creativity and mass appeal of traditional consumer marketing with the credibility and professional focus associated with ethical pharmaceutical marketing.
This combination, which our firm calls Convergence Marketing, is an evolutionary, not revolutionary, approach. In addition to medical symposia and dissemination of materials to medical trade media, savvy healthcare marketers are using the approaches that have been most successful in the consumer public relations arena.
For example, target publications for a new hypertension medication might include Redbook; for a new infertility diagnostic technique, GQ; and for a cholesterol drug, Bon Appetit. A program venue could be a hospital health fair, but marketers also should think bigger and broader, to sites such as sports events, day care and senior centers, shopping malls, even airports.
The key audiences that influence consumers now reach far beyond doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, and include coaches, hairstylists, co-workers, mothers-in-law, and so on. In addition, consumer advocacy groups have grown in number as well as influence, and building relationships with these opinion leaders now is as important as forging alliances with physician thought leaders.
New technology serves a dual purpose in efforts to reach these new consumers. Computer games and surveys can be popular attention-grabbing program tactics. On-line services, electronic bulletin boards and seminars, and home pages are powerful communications channels.
However, marketers need to avoid the pitfall of shifting their focus completely to new technologies and the consumer. The health professional still must be respected and included, particularly in light of the fact that consumers will be asking more questions of them - and will be expecting informed answers.
The Balancing Act
In this new era, successful healthcare marketing calls for a careful blending and balance of specialized industry knowledge and consumer marketing techniques.
Consumers are willing to accept the responsibility of seeking out healthcare information and taking charge of their own health and well-being, and they are intelligent enough to be entrusted with this task. If marketers embrace and address this self-care movement, consumers will be empowered to gain the control they seek, and marketers will improve their ability to reach consumers with their messages.