A Customer persona is a tool that a business can use to guide marketing communications and activities; by definition, its a description of characteristics that comprise the company’s ideal customer. These include demographic information like age, gender, and profession. It’s also essential for businesses’ to consider their target customer’s psychographic characteristics like interests, motivations, pain points, and dislikes. By understanding these qualities, a brand can determine the most effective way to communicate with their audience through preferred channels, using relevant language, and comprehending their needs. Since running a private practice is as much of a business as providing quality healthcare, an organization should be in tune with its equivalent of the customer persona- the patient persona. Traditional businesses can use data from consumer reports, google analytics, and Facebook insights to develop their customer personas. However, healthcare providers should analyze their patient data, patient care surveys, and patient interviews for overarching trends such as pre-existing health conditions and sub-groups within the specialty they serve.
Customer Persona Dimensions
The following customer persona are a few attributes should be considered when forming a practice’s patient persona:
Demographic- This is a basic level of information considered, like the age ranges of patients, gender groups, and income levels. For a medical office, this could also include the patient’s insurance provider or pay if they for services by cash.
Behavioral- These characteristics would include if your ideal patients are tech-savvy, do they use social media, how long they spend on digital channels, what websites they use, or if they use any at all. For instance, if your practice invests in paid digital ads, and you’re a geriatric medicine specialist, social media ads probably would not result in a high ROI.
Pain Points- What issues arise when your ideal patient is trying to solve their problems. This could be as simple as being a geriatric medicine specialist, and older patients preferred payment method is check. Accepting checks would be something that should be considered.
Motivations- Considering the emotional benefits that your services will bring your patients will help you understand what would drive them to select you as their physician over another doctor. A patient liking the calm feeling and experience that your office provides or the ease that they feel as a result of your bedside manner could be the differentiator between you and a doctor closer to their home.
Next Steps
If you haven’t taken the time to analyze your patient data and truly understand your ideal patient attributes, your marketing efforts could be falling short. To take your practice to the next level, listen to your patients, and communicate in a way that engages them and watch your patient load grow.
Check out my last blog on consumer responses.