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Between government restrictions and heart-stopping prices, medical advertising can be a minefield. Rachel Macdonald discovers the easy route to a bigger practice profile.

Fifty years ago, the thought of advertising medical services to consumers would have been met with horror by many of the professional healthcare fraternity. In the case of general practice, patients were local; and specialist services were traditionally sourced through referral.

Today, however, faced with increased competition, a progressive increase in elective procedures, and the burgeoning alternative therapies market, a healthcare business plan that doesn't cover advertising won't make the grade. The questions it needs to answer are largely shared by other service-driven industries, though government-led restrictions on medical advertising do throw a curve ball into the mix.

Spot the difference

A good business plan is a working document that will tell you where you want to be in the short to medium term. Your marketing plan is the road map that will show you how to get there. And this is both an essential and exciting aspect of business in what is still a relatively young market, says Paul Matsen, chief marketing communications and planning officer with the Ohio-based Cleveland Clinic.

"Healthcare brands in the UAE are still being established, and this presents a great chance to really define your offering," he says. "The regional marketing we're starting to see here is impressive - it's maturing fast."

The first issue to be addressed by a new enterprise trying to establish itself, or an existing one hoping to increase its profitability, is to identify its point of difference. This is the key factor that any business plan must set out to exploit.

What is it that makes your service offering specific to you, better, or worth more than that of the next chiropractor or plastic surgeon? Do you have a specialty not offered by the others? Are you particularly skilled or experienced in a certain procedure? Does your suite or hospital offer top-end day-stay facilities, domestic follow-up, or some other value-add component that might sway the consumer's choice?

"At the Cleveland Clinic, our mantra is ‘people first', and so it's vital to us that this is reflected in every aspect of the experience," says Matsen. "It dictates the culture, the care structure...even the design of the gowns."

This process of differentiating your service is essential, because it will provide the central theme of the story your marketing will tell. So, if you struggle to find something innovative to say about your business at a social function, it's time to identify your strengths.

You can use a questionnaire to ask your patients why they choose to use you, talk to an advertising or marketing agency - although bear in mind that you'll be paying premium price for what is largely common sense; or take time out with a business coach for another third-party view of what you do.

Once you have defined what you do that's different, you must establish who your perfect clientele are. This is your target market and provides the critical next step towards establishing your budget. If you're a family practice specialising in paediatrics, for example, why even consider advertising in a fitness magazine alongside a sports physiotherapist practice?

Rules of play

Ask: what demographic cohort best describes your patients? Will you be focusing on attracting a few older, wealthy clients, who can afford to pay a premium for your services; or will you be aiming affordable medicine at the middle market? Are your patients likely to be locals, expatriates, or even tourists attracted by unusual or cost-competitive procedures, or quality of care? Will they have insurance - and if not, how much discretionary income will they have at their disposal?

The answers to such questions will feed into your estimation of how much you want to spend on advertising and marketing. Your business plan will state your expectations in terms of income and how much work you need to turn over in order to achieve this. The question is: what media are you going to have to support in order to get your advertisements seen by the right market? And how much are you going to have to put aside out of your total earnings to support that?

The basic rules of advertising have really changed very little across time. As any agency will tell you (and not just because they clip the ticket on concept, design and placement costs), the secret is a consistent message; repeatedly presented to a carefully selected consumership; via a medium that is best aligned to prospective clients, and offers good value for money in terms of circulation and reach.

In contrast to careful rifle-shot marketing, of course, many firms end up throwing good money after bad in a poorly assessed scatter-gun approach. This might consist of one full-page advertisement, placed in a national paper, rather than four quarter-page insertions in a magazine with a very clearly defined and appropriate dedicated readership.

The full page is certainly likely to achieve significant impact if it's for a national company with a wide client demographic, going into a once-a year-sale. However, it would be money ill-spent by a niche practice delivering travel vaccinations to students, that may have been better spent on informative flyers to be distributed by GPs.

Product choice

You know what makes you different; you've created a strong, consistent message; you know who you need to tell; and how much you want to spend doing it. The next big question is ‘how'. While the tenets of promotion may not have changed over time, the means of spreading the word certainly have.

It's very hard, depending on your niche and target market, to rank one medium - print, radio, television, internet, direct mail, etc - over another. Too much depends on your vision for your business and the deliverables you expect under your marketing plan. There are, however, two things to bear in mind:

Sales reps will always talk up their product, and some sales contracts are more user-friendly than others. Make sure you know exactly what you're up for, what you've been promised, and for what price, before you sign anything and that your medium is registered with a respected regulatory body.

Building a response mechanism into your advertising is probably the only way you'll ever know whether your profile came close to justifying its spend. "For more information..." on the bottom of an advertorial or web listing is a good way to start. A freecall number can be very helpful in tracking responses, as can a ‘hit' monitor on websites or a ‘10% off' coupon in a magazine.

"All of our enquiries and bookings come from medical referral or are channeled through a call centre, which allows us to establish exactly how each client came to contact us," says Matsen. "This kind of information is invaluable when it comes to planning the next round of marketing."

Red tape restrictions

For medics in the UAE, regardless of what media they choose to carry their advertising, they are going to run into the restrictions on advertising imposed by the Ministry of Health last year. Such regulations are not unusual - most western markets, for example, have content and veracity standards to which advertising must conform.

Few, however, have a watchdog body that screens each insertion - even of existing material - and charges every time to do so. The sheer cost of this exercise - in addition to creation and placement charges - has raised the hackles of many in the UAE healthcare sector.

In such an environment, one thing to remember - and it's critical, even in less constricted markets - is that conventional advertising, from brand ads to advertorial, is not the be-all and end-all of marketing and promotion. As consumers have become more savvy worldwide, and more informed - thanks to ready sources of data such as the internet - so marketing has become more subtle and aligned to quiet self-service.

Architects, city planners, dentists, economic analysts and lawyers - among many others who have regular TV and radio spots, or newspaper columns - have rapidly recognised this on an international scale over the last few years. You will benefit more from positioning yourself as an opinion-leader in your industry, than simply coming across as someone who can buy a brand ad.

"For example, we work to show patients their safest route through medical education, conference presentations, and direct community outreach and participation," says Matsen.

Dr Alya Ahmad, co-director and director of paediatrics at the American Primary Care Clinic in Dubai's Healthcare City, agrees.

"We undertake several levels of advertising, with the most successful being PR. This is especially important as there is still a lot of mistrust in the healthcare system, simply because it is not yet fully established," she says. "We carry out public health campaigns and plenty of information sharing, which allow us to personalise our message. And this is essential in such a diverse population, where healthcare solutions have to be tailored to meet specific needs.

Another approach is to get yourself quoted, as an expert in health-oriented consumer publications, and in other channels: radio, television, internet editorials.

"In a market where every article you write gets vetted and sometimes factually changed, at a cost every time, the best solution - we find - is to have a presence in somebody else's story," says Ahmad.

And if you can build good relationships with editors and producers, the benefits run both ways. Their media - whether it's print, radio, television, or the web, benefit from your expertise when it comes to building content credibility. You, of course, are the specialist with comprehensive, locally relevant knowledge, and a finger on the pulse of international research, trends and developments.

The more you are perceived to be a leader in your field, the more likely patients will come knocking on your door. So each such quote can go a long way towards substantiating your brand.

"We also find the internet invaluable," says Ahmad. "An attractive website full of quality information, which ranks high in the search engines, is a vital marketing tool in today's electronically aware market.

Spread the word

In health - as in most business - there is great advantage to be gained through cultivating personal contacts, networking, and colleague and client education. You don't want people talking about the size of ads you take; you want them discussing the latest article that quoted your opinion, the paper you gave at the last regional meeting, or your last great procedural result.

There's a limit as to how long the people you meet at a social function will want to talk about you and last week's ad, but they'll invest real time and energy in listening to you talk about the way the market can help them invest in their health...and then they'll tell the proverbial 100 others.

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