Any successful marketing plan requires conducting market research on customers, analyzing their needs, and, based on the research, making strategic decisions about your service offering (or product), pricing, promotion and the distribution of goods or services. Simply put, the goal of marketing is to attract and retain a growing base of satisfied customers and satisfying those customers better than the competitors.
You should start with defining your target market. Then you must research and become familiar with the needs and wants of your market. Only then can you focus your marketing efforts where it makes the most sense. Setting objectives without understanding what the market needs and wants, and how competitors are meeting those needs, is a waste of time and marketing dollars.
Surgeons are the key to ASC success. Patients typically don’t decide where they are going to have surgery, their physicians do. So, if you do nothing else, focus your efforts on developing a physician relations marketing plan and maintaining a competitive advantage. In other words, concentrate on your target market: The physicians who bring their cases to your center. Here are several critical steps to take to help you achieve a competitive marketing edge.
Research the market. Begin by creating a comprehensive list of current physician users and physicians who qualify to refer to your center but aren’t currently doing so. Look at your hospital’s Web site for physician lists. Check the Web sites of practices in your area. Look at your competitors to see which physicians are affiliated with them. This list’s value will increase once you survey your current and potential surgeons and have identified their real needs and wants. Interview as many physicians as you can. Find out what they like or dislike about where they take their cases.
We may think we know what our clients want, but you’ll be surprised at what you learn. Perhaps they like the efficiency of the center. Sometimes it’s ease of scheduling. You may learn that a surgeon no longer brings cases to your facility because he lost his 7 a.m. block. Often, it’s something you haven’t thought about. Or worse, a physician didn’t tell you about the problem in time to remedy the situation. By doing a little research, you can identify an approach that will make it easier for physicians to choose your center.
Compare your facility with others. The next step is to identify your competitors (including all surgical options: hospitals, ASCs, and physician offices). Identify the strengths and weaknesses of those facilities through the eyes of your surgeons. What are the reasons they may choose your competitor’s facility, and what are all the reasons they may choose your facility? In most cases, the list of reasons will be quite varied, but it’s only through this process that you’ll be able to move forward and differentiate your facility from the competition.
Establish your brand and objectives. At this point, you have identified the needs and wants of the market and evaluated how competitors are meeting those needs and wants. Now you are in a position to identify both what’s necessary to become more attractive to physicians and to determine your objectives. For most centers today, the goal is to increase the volume of cases. Gathering good information, for example current physician volumes and a total capacity number, is crucial to making strategic decisions.
Identify your opportunities and leverage your strengths. Now that you have done your research, you should be able to determine your opportunities. For example, you may determine that your primary objective is to increase volume. How will you do that?
Through this process you will have also identified your strengths. Leverage these strengths to meet your objectives. Your strengths are your competitive advantages. For example, you may find that your center’s management and operations is your strength. After all, most physicians support surgery centers for two primary reasons. One, they are more efficient. For many surgeons, convenient scheduling — a quality of life issue for them — is their motivation for bringing their cases to an ASC. Time is often just as important as money for most surgeons. Two, their patients have a better experience than in a hospital which creates a positive image of the physician that recommended your center.
Focus on these two areas! Being more efficient and creating positive experiences for patients and physicians will not only improve your business, it will strengthen your relationships with your surgeons, which ultimately leads to higher case volumes.
Here are a few additional concepts worth considering that can help you spread awareness of your center and it’s physicians:
• Use patient promotional items (teddy bears, post-care kits) that include the surgeon’s name. Most centers promote the ASC’s name rather than the surgeon. See how much farther you’ll get by making the surgeon feel special.
• Share patient satisfaction stories with the surgeons. Surgeons should know, and like to know, when their patients are happy. Perhaps adopt a patient board much like the “new baby board” in the maternity department of hospitals.
• Create some friendly competition amongst the surgeons. Post monthly operating reports. (A word of caution: Make sure they all buy in, and make sure you make it “fair and achievable.” For example, have like specialties compete rather than creating animosity between the specialties.)
• Bring in new trial equipment for the surgeons to demo. All manufacturers offer this program. Offer trial blocks of OR time to try out or practice new technologies. This also keeps them on the leading edge. Another competitive advantage!
In today’s environment, it is becoming more difficult to find surgeons not yet affiliated with an ASC or ones not willing to take risks in today’s economy. If your plan does not include recruiting new surgeons, your opportunities for growth will have to come from your existing physicians and maintaining a competitive advantage in order to retain them.
Lynda Goodrich (lyndagoodrich@wininyourmarket.com) is principal of Healthcare Marketing Solutions.
