We receive emails almost every day from health tourism hospitals and surgeons: “I’ve launched my business (or practice, or spa, or developed a new health tourism product) and I need your help marketing it.”
So, I ask, “What’s your plan? How much have you budgeted for it?”
Plan? Budget? They’ve been so immersed in pouring heart and soul into all the details involved in getting their project off the ground, they’ve given little thought to how they’ll spread the word about it.
Does that sound like you?
Whether you’ve already hung out your “welcome sign” and realize you need a lot more exposure, or you’re still putting the pieces together, here are some tips for raising up the performance of your marketing efforts.
Consider your audience.
To whom will your business or service appeal? You may have been considering Americans seeking cheaper healthcare, and the uninsured, but frankly, if you even allude to “cheaper” anything, culturally that’s an instant turn-off to an American. Americans are value conscious, so “cheap” is relative and has a very negative connotation in American colloquialism. Perhaps your product can give singles and couples an advantage, or 60-80 year olds seeking wellness and anti-aging services.
The Medical Tourism Facilitator Route
This hasn’t proven practicable by any standard business case indicators. And, if you feel that hosting stands at trade shows is the answer, read this message from the IMTEC to our CEO, Maria Todd, dated January 21, 2014:
Dear Maria,
In regards to an invite as a buyer, the US market is not our main focus for 2014 sorry. Therefore, we will not be offering to cover the attendance cost of US based candidates.
Thanks.
Jamie Hill
Exhibition Director
Most medical tourism facilitators depend on invitations as hosted “buyers” of health tourism to attend these shows, the proliferation of which has increased to a monthly frequency all over the world. Your strategy can’t be to participate in all of them, host a stand or sponsor events month after month if the people who buy medical tourism are not going to be walking past your stand. And let’s face it, as more and more conference organizers continue to pop out shows like candy mints, you may have to consider the value proposition that each one offers.
How can you best promote your offer?
You can buy advertising on the hundreds of medical tourism “directory” portals. Most charge a pay-per-impression, or pay-per-click, or pay-per-conversion. But, from the complaints we’ve heard, providers just aren’t getting the performance and closed sales that they anticipated. Do some due diligence before contracting for large monthly budgets for these channels.
Advertising
You can purchase advertising, promote yourself for speaking engagements as the authority on some treatment or procedure, in order to attempt to raise the interest of the media. To do this, you’ll want to have a strategy to spread your message via the channels that your target audience is using, not the industry channels. For example, day in and day out, we see boastful messages coming from newly hatched medical tourism facilitators in India advertising their services to facilitators, and not to the general public. If those facilitators are competitors, why would they have any interest in that message? If they have no business themselves, what good does it do to broadcast to them? These “announcements” don’t ever provide details of what they do that is different, just “We’re here, send us patients and we’ll send you a commission”. That doesn’t work. And in many countries, it is 100% illegal, USA and UK for starters.
Promotion and PR
If you are planning to handle some or all of your own publicity and promotional work yourself, time is your number one consideration. Especially for physicians. If you are actively doing publicity and public relations promotional efforts, you obviously aren’t busy in the operating theatre. It does’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out. The effect is met with the same skepticism of a hungry diner that drives by a restaurant at meal time rush hours, only to see no cars in the parking lot and no patrons at tables near the windows.
If you plan to hire professional help, then you’ll need to consider money. Research those costs and start budgeting for them. In the USA, marketing firms such as our are not permitted by health care compliance laws to market for healthcare providers on a commission basis. If you’d like the details and citations of the regulations, please give us a call.
Create a Fantastic Website
Whether you’re running a business or professional practice, selling spa or anti-aging therapies and stem cell preparations, or building your brand to develop a referral base, you need to have a top-notch website. A good website can collect the contact information of people who are interested in you, so you can interact with them directly. It can show, and tell, people what makes you different from your competitors. And it can increase sales by making it convenient for people to buy when they’re ready. If you’re going to spend money, this is a wise place to invest. Your website is that important. Ensure that you have proper English for the target market you have in your sights. Americans are culturally very unforgiving about bad grammar, poor spelling, and poorly developed sentence structure. Hire the help you need for idiomatic translation services and proper SEO coding. For example, you don’t want to use “cervicobrachialgia” as a keyword if the search term your target market will use is “arm and neck pain”. Or “haemodynamics” instead of “cardiac catheterizaton” for heart procedures. There are many such examples. The work to be done is not expensive, but it is crucial to your success in marketing your services.
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Once you have laid the foundation for your marketing plan, we’ll take a closer look at the next essential component: getting publicity.
