The Business of Medical Marketing

Marketing is an information resource. It is not art nor entertainment. Its function is to educate consumers and get them to buy goods, products and services whose ads promise them value.

The same is true for medical marketing. Patients "buy" medical services from ads that promise to relieve or cure their problems. This can be anything from relief of symptoms or suffering to the promise of enhanced beauty, better cure rates, improved procedures, faster recovery, less pain, speedier return to every day normal activities, and so on.

Every great marketing campaign, be it medical or other has, at its heart, a real and true promise which attracts customers (patients). Their feeling about the service, technique, procedure and/or physician in the marketing materials directs their response and decision making in favor of one practitioner over another. In addition good medical marketing pays attention to two basic elements. One, the "essence" medical needs of the patient and two, the "essence" of the business needs of the practice itself. The patient's needs are improved health - but the business needs are improved practice health with more money, more prestige, more validation, a better life for the doctor.