Unlock your service line’s potential with a data-driven marketing plan

In the competitive healthcare landscape, providers know that relying on guesswork or intuition to market their service line is a risky gamble. Today’s patients have more care options at their fingertips—and more providers vying for their attention. That means that patients can afford to be selective and hold healthcare organizations to a higher standard of care quality and customer experience.

To successfully promote your service lines, standing out requires a data-driven, strategic approach.

A service line marketing plan is the key to unlocking your service line’s full potential. By harnessing the power of healthcare data, you can gain valuable insights into patient activity and needs, enabling you to create targeted, effective marketing campaigns that drive patient acquisition and retention.

Let’s explore how you can transform your service line marketing with a data-driven approach.

How to leverage data to grow and market service lines

Expanding your service lines requires careful planning and access to the right kind of healthcare data and the tools to mine that data for insights. Success will hinge on many factors, but we’ve outlined a few areas you should focus on.

1. Understanding and predicting patient needs

A cornerstone of any successful data-driven marketing plan is a deep understanding of your patients. This involves more than just demographics; it requires a comprehensive view of patient behavior, preferences, and the factors influencing their healthcare decisions.

By leveraging predictive analytics and historical data, healthcare organizations can make data-driven decisions when launching new service lines, increasing the likelihood of success and maximizing return on investment. Some applications for service line marketing include:

Identifying target populations

Analyzing patient demographics, geographic location, health conditions, and other factors is useful for pinpointing ideal patient segments for a new service line.

Predicting market demand

Historical data you have on similar services or related conditions can help you forecast demand for the new service line, which helps allocate resources efficiently and capacity planning.

Optimizing marketing channels

Today’s patients interact with providers across many digital platforms. Predictive analytics provide a foundation for which marketing channels could most effectively reach your audience. We recommend taking an omnichannel outreach approach.

Tailoring messaging

Insights into past marketing campaigns and service line expansions can help your marketing team understand what messaging worked and what didn’t, and then create highly personalized messaging that resonates better.

In the past, bringing together the disparate data necessary to accomplish the above was exhaustive and time-consuming. Fortunately, the days of manually gathering data are over. Our Population Intelligence product combines the power of the Atlas Dataset with robust analytics and visualization tools so you can access intelligence on patients within specific markets and communities to focus your strategic planning and determine what services are needed (and desired).

Your marketing department can use Population Intelligence to find and derive insights from consumer-level data, medical and hospital records, social determinants of health, and more. With this intelligence, you can uncover hidden patterns and relationships and determine the best targets for outreach.

2.Leverage your physicians

To market and grow your service lines successfully, you also need the buy-in from your physicians.

Why? Simple: patients often place more trust in individual physicians than in healthcare systems.

According to a survey commissioned by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation, about 85% of recipients say they trust doctors and nurses more than hospitals, health insurance companies, and the healthcare system as a whole. This positions physicians as important assets in your marketing efforts. Their expertise, credibility, and patient relationships can help lay the groundwork for service line success, so it’s essential you gain their buy-in.

Here are some strategies for using physicians as part of your service line marketing campaigns:

Develop strong physician profiles

Start by creating detailed bios that highlight the professional’s medical education, board certifications, years of experience, clinical expertise, and relevant rewards. For example, you can promote a physician in an e-newsletter or on your website by discussing the latest advancements in their specialty, an article they published in a medical journal, or an award they received.

Showcase patient outcomes

When patients have spaces and opportunities to share their experiences with others, their stories can sway a new or current patient’s decision to use your services.

Online review sites, like Yelp or Healthgrades, can particularly impact a medical provider’s reputation and ability to attract and retain patients. According to one study, about 71% of patients surveyed said they use online reviews as the first step to finding a new doctor and 66% feel it’s very important for providers to publicly respond to online reviews.

I think there are two key takeaways we can gather:

1. A healthcare provider’s online reputation is often the first impression you make on potential patients.
2. It’s important to patients that they see providers addressing complaints and improving the customer experience.

To address these concerns, providers should be proactively managing and monitoring their online presence. Beyond this initial step, you can invest in a healthcare CRM system to support you in marketing your service lines and your physicians. Last, keep the patient experience in mind with every marketing touchpoint—consider placing successful treatment outcomes, positive reviews, and patient testimonials front and center.

3.Get the C-suite on-board

It’s no secret that if your organization is to grow existing or a new service line effectively, you need to get backing from the senior executives with decision-making power. Their support helps ensure that your marketing team can secure the necessary budget to execute the strategy and campaigns they’ve created.

Here are a few key considerations to focus on to gain that critical backing:

1. Communicate clearly and often regarding your plans, efforts, and successes with metrics that matter to the C-suite.
2. Demonstrate how the service line aligns with your organization’s overall strategic objectives.
3. Emphasize how the service line enhances patient care and outcomes, aligning with the organization's mission.

Of course, you won’t get very far without a strong business case. It should include a thorough market analysis to identify opportunities, risks, and challenges, and detailed financial projections, revenue forecasts, and ROI. Our comprehensive guide to leveraging healthcare data for sales and marketing success is a good starting point to help you gather the data and evidence you need.

Expand your service lines successfully with the right data

Understanding patient needs, leveraging physician expertise, and securing C-suite support are essential components of a successful service line marketing strategy. By prioritizing data-driven decision-making, you can position yourself for long-term success in a complex and evolving marketplace.

Looking for more insights and best practices on how to grow your service lines? Check out our whitepaper on service line grouping for real-world growth or learn the five tips for launching a new service line.

And if you’re a healthcare provider looking to get hands-on with our healthcare commercial intelligence, book a demo with Definitive Healthcare today to see how we can help your business grow faster.