It may have been borne out of necessity to contain the Coronavirus, but telemedicine is evolving fast, and it is here to stay. According to Definitive Healthcare, over half of all hospitals in the United States have rolled out some form of telemedicine. Access to medical care has always been a challenge to many Americans, but considering the pace providers and patients are embracing the new advancements, it is only a matter of time before telemedicine is the new normal.
Market Reorganization Presenting New Opportunities
The true potential of telemedicine lies in its opportunities to organizations in the Medicare industry. Aside from being convenient for patients – both in urban and rural areas – it also presents an opportunity to develop new ways to deliver medical services. On top of the list of innovations, telemedicine is projected to evolve are virtual healthcare and remote patient monitoring.
So far, healthcare institutions and stakeholders, including insurance companies, have incorporated various forms of new telemedicine technologies in their product offerings. This move clearly shows that the market is evolving, and new opportunities are already available for the early birds.
Much like any other technological advancement, the opportunities created by the evolution of telemedicine will not benefit everyone. Only forward-looking medical device companies, medical labs, healthcare providers, insurance companies, specialty clinics, and pharmaceutical companies that quickly recognize these opportunities will reap the most out of them before the innovations go mainstream.
How to Build an Effective Buyer Persona for Telemedicine Services
One major challenge these companies face is how to promote their telemedicine products and services to their clients effectively. Despite starting in the early 1960s, telemedicine marketing will always appear new to prospective patients.
Therefore, companies marketing their services in the industry will have to get creative in overcoming the barriers that hinder their marketing. These challenges include privacy concerns, quantifying strategic value on offer, patient adoption, and promoting modern communication technologies.
Here are four of the most critical points every telemedicine company must consider as they create a buyer persona to capitalize on the industry’s new opportunity.
1. Define Your Target Market
As it sprouts afresh, the telemedicine market will be massive. An organization that seeks to capitalize on its growth must first carve out a niche they wish to target. The first step would be to understand the target market based on the organization’s product and services. The second would be to fashion its buyer persona around it.
Building a patient journey analysis is a great way to narrow down to a telemedicine target market. For instance, your organization may gather data it has on past clients and use it to define the circumstances and the traits that may bring patients to your front door. The most critical data in shaping a patient’s journey may include demographics, types of patients, employment status or income, etc.
2. Promote Your Telemedicine Products In-House First
One big mistake many telemedicine companies make is launching a product before it is ready or even tested in-house. Creating a banner and buying ads for a new service may be cheap today, but it can be costly in the long run if the team behind it does not wholeheartedly believe in it.
Therefore, even before reaching out to the target market, be sure to have a trial run in-house even before the final product is unveiled. Communicating with a test team and a clique of medical professionals is crucial to ensuring that your product is ready for the market.
The most successful products are those that in-house staff, doctors, health providers, and even volunteers have had a chance to review. Having an extended and exhaustive in-house trial run of the service will go a long way to shaping the direction of the new innovation and allowing the production team to fine-tune it and how they present it before it is rolled out.
3. Make Your Telemedicine Product Easily Accessible
Every innovator or marketer strives to give their new product as much exposure as possible. However, giving a product exposure is different from making it accessible.
To make your product more accessible, you must put yourself in the potential client’s shoes. While creating a buyer persona, be sure to consider the communication channels on which they spend most of their time and those on which they would choose to access the service.
For instance, your service must be accessible on the web via popular browsers as well as smartphone apps. In addition, the content must be simple and well-created, and they must have clear calls-to-action uniform across all platforms.
4. Establish Personal Connections with Personas
Medicine is a very personal field – particularly for the patient. The most effective way to connect with the patient, even as a potential client – is to establish a personal connection. Using demographic data to create a patient persona is not all it takes to pinpoint the kind of buyer you wish to connect with. In many cases, an organization will have to go deeper to establish the personal interests and aspirations of the patient, what motivates them to seek a telemedicine service, and what ‘trigger’ is necessary to win over their confidence.
Conclusion: What To Do With a Buyer Persona
You have created your new buyer personas. You have a list of diverse but ideal clients that could use your telemedicine services. What next?
Even if you have the ideal buyer personas on paper, you may discover that people are very different in real life. You will need tact and a clear understanding of the target persona’s pain points, values, and needs just to get them to consider your service.
There is a lot to learn about telemedicine personas before you make your move. Penrod can help you discover how the experts approach it and discover how you can get your new personas to embrace your telemedicine service.