Difference Between Healthcare Industry and Other Service Industry

When we talk about different service industries globally, there is one thing that we notice. The Healthcare industry is entirely different from any other service industry. So when we talk about the elements of the healthcare industry and how marketing works for it, we notice that a few factors make it different. These factors are:

1. One can not create demand in the healthcare Industry

Yes, it is true. Unlike other service industries, we can not generate demand in the healthcare sector. The Healthcare sector works by providing health services to people who get sick. The number of sick people is natural that no one can control.

For instance, the number of patients who need bypass surgery is limited, making its demand fixed. By no means can we create or increase demand in the healthcare business. It also means that when we can not generate demand, it becomes limited, and so does the revenue of the healthcare sector.

2. Healthcare is a Loss Aversion Industry

Loss Aversion is a psychological phenomenon where humans feel more deeply saddened about loss than happy about the gains. For instance, if a person loses and gains 100 dollars, his loss will deeply sadden him. In short, loss affects a human being on high levels between a loss and again of the same thing.

Similarly, Healthcare is a loss aversion industry where even if a critical patient survives, his medical expenses and recovery period affects the relatives on high levels. People complain about losses like high medical bills, medical bills, days of hospitalization, etc. These losses affect a lot more than the gain of the patient survivalpatient’s survival.

3. Decisions based on incomplete information and lack of knowledge

In the healthcare sector, almost every treatment starts from a doctor’s consultation. A patient goes to a doctor and tells him about his problem. In return, a doctor consults him and decides possible treatments. Unfortunately, some doctors do not have enough time for a detailed consultation in most cases. It is why patients get confused and decide based on incomplete information.

In such cases, patients are left with no other choice and take irrational decisions about the same. For instance, if surgery has an outcome of 40% deaths and a patient has not enough knowledge about it, he regrets it more.

Apart from these three key differences, other differences drive the healthcare industry. But unfortunately, many doctors and healthcare providers cannot understand these differences. So, with the help of our methodology at Circadian, we use our Healthcare Business Anatomy to address all these concerns and differences of the healthcare industry.

Healthcare Business Anatomy

According to our methodology at Circadian, our primary goal is to grow your healthcare business. When we talk about our goal of expanding your clinical practice, we consider multiple things like the above three main differences. 

So, we have divided our Healthcare Business Anatomy into two segments: a Tap and a Pipe. Through this tap, demand flows and comes into the pipe, which is the universe of the healthcare business. Within this anatomy, different elements help us achieve our outcome. 

Now, if we talk about the tap, its lever (a part of a tap that controls the flow) is completely locked because we can not create or increase demand flow in the healthcare sector. 

Second, the pipe has to be at the right place where the demand from the tap comes in. It is where our first element, TARGETING, comes in. 

• Perfect Targeting

According to this element, it is crucial to understand that providing certain healthcare services in an area with no needs is useless. Your compliance pipe should be where the demand is. For instance, opening a dermatology clinic in a village is useless and will bring out zero profit. It happens because the people in that area do not care about such problems and require dermatology services. On the other hand, it would be beneficial to open up a dermatology clinic in a metro city with a demand for the same. 

Now, this compliance pipe is divided into different elements that are marked as red and green elements. So, to begin with, we will talk about the red elements that are different stages of our healthcare marketing funnel.

These stages are as follow:

• Awareness

After setting up a healthcare business at the right place, creating brand awareness is the first and foremost thing. Brand Awareness is the process of advertising your brand between people. We can create awareness for the healthcare business through newspapers, magazines, hoardings, TV ads, events, conferences, and digital marketing tools like websites, SEO, social media handles. 

• Lead Acquisition

Once we have successfully created awareness, patients will start contacting you through DMs on Instagram, messages on Facebook, comments on YouTube videos, questions on Quora, etc. We will acquire these leads through multiple forms, and once this is done, our next job is to convert these leads into clinic walk-ins.

• Conversion Phase 1 

When these leads show up at the clinic, conversion phase one comes in. It is the first conversion phase in which the patient comes to the clinic and gets a consultation. Here, a lead converts into a patient and comes to the clinic for his problem. After this, conversion phase 2 tells us about whatever a patient decides after Phase 1.

• Conversion Phase 2

After consultation and during conversion phase two, a patient decides whether to take a consultation and go back, take medicines or get admitted for his concern. Sometimes, when a patient gets converted, it is not enough for your business. For example, healthcare services like dermatology and cosmetology require multiple treatments. Here, we try to retain converted patients to increase business revenue. For this, we need our next element: Retention. 

• Retention

Through this phase, we try to retain a patient for the long term. This way, a patient will visit you in future if something concerns him again. We spent something to bring that patient to the clinic through awareness, so we need to make sure that he becomes a loyal customer. Retention is the process of staying in touch with the patients through different means. It is about making efforts to maintain long-term satisfied patients.

• Revenue

Our fundamental goal is to make sure that a lead turns into conversion and retention. Starting right from the awareness and coming up to the retention phase, we need to gain the maximum possible revenue from a single patient. This phase focuses on increasing revenue by cross-selling and upselling other related services.  

• Referral Cycle

When a patient goes back after the treatment, the second last thing is establishing a referral cycle. Through this cycle, we make sure a patient leaves good reviews on Google, Practo, and Justdial. He must also spread word of mouth and refer your business to his friends and family. This way, if some other patient shows up at the clinic because of the review or recommendation from a loyal patient, you add something to your revenue.

• Throughput (Profit/Growth)

After all these stages, we get what we get at last is the actual profit we gained from a patient. This is a last yet important stage of healthcare business anatomy as it is directly related to our primary goal of brand growth. 

Now, how do we do this at Circadian?

• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

After creating awareness for your brand, patients will contact you through various means. If a brand can not acquire leads, there is no use in doing brand awareness. The main motive of brand awareness is to get leads, and it will be a waste of time and money if you can’t acquire those. 

We at Circadian use CRO marketing strategies to increase the percentage of website visitors and take desired actions. For example, we try to convert the maximum number of visitors into leads that turn into clinic walk-ins. 

• Sales Pitch Optimization (SPO)

After doing brand awareness and applying CRO strategies, there are high chances that your brand will get a higher number of leads. Unfortunately, sometimes after getting so many of them, you cannot acquire them, and not even a single patient walks into the clinic. It is where Sales Pitch Optimization is required. 

We make sure that the sales department of your healthcare brand tackles these leads carefully. Proper communication skills, tone of communication and full engagement are required while communicating with the patients. 

• Drip Campaign 1

Once we optimize the sales pitch and acquire all the leads, some show up as clinic walk-ins. For instance, out of 100 leads acquired, ten patients will show up, and the other 90 may not. To gain these 90 patients back, we will run the first Drip Campaign for your brand. We will try to stay in touch with these patients by sending sequential automatic emails.

The first drip campaign is a direct messaging method that can be done in various ways to make sure your brand is in touch with the patients. 

• Drip Campaign 2

After the successful first drip campaign, there are chances that 30 patients out of the 90 may walk into the clinic and increase the chances of revenue. Now, there are chances these 30 patients get only a consultation from the doctor and go back, taking no treatment. In such cases, we run the second drip campaign for your brand.

The patients who came to the clinic but didn’t get any treatment may have reasons for the same. They might have some concerns or doubts in their head. So knowing these concerns and issues, we run another drip campaign. Like the first campaign, we contact customers through different means and know what went wrong. 

• Drip Campaign 3 and 4

After the successful second drip campaign, there are high chances that some patients will come back and get a treatment done. But as mentioned at the starting, conversion is not enough, and we need to retain patients in the long run. So, we will run a drip campaign after a patient gets his first treatment done, so he comes back for another treatment. Similarly, we run the last drip campaign to make sure patients keep coming back to the clinic in the future.

The message and purpose of each drip campaign will be different and based on what stage the is patientpatient is at.

• Service Design

During this process, another factor is to gain the maximum profit level for your brand. In the beginning, when leads are acquired, we make sure that the service design of your healthcare brand is top-notch. No matter if you are an excellent doctor and receive enormous leads, it will be of no use if the receptionist doesn’t communicate with the patient properly.

Through service design, we improve service quality by providing the best services to a patient from the beginning to the end.

• Business Intelligence: Although The Last Step Yet The Beginning Of Analytics Process

After all of this is done, we set up a Business Intelligence Program called MIS. It is where we track everything related to your healthcare business. This setup helps us find out various things about the brand’s growth. It includes what stage a patient is dropping down, how much revenue is generating, which treatment is working well, where the money is coming, where we are investing, etc.