Marketing a healthcare business is tough! the Healthcare Industry is a unique field because while you deal with the very sensitive nature of your patients’ treatment, which often frighten you, make you vulnerable or confuse you, you also work in a very scientific and avant-garde industry where treatments, tools and systems in constant evolution. Today, healthcare providers are rarely caught up in the new health marketing strategy and sales processes or respond to technological advances.The healthcare marketing landscape has shifted dramatically the past decade with the increase of technology tools, social media, and digital devices. A recent article for Socialnomics quotes Tricia Wilkerson, Senior Marketing Specialist at Conifer Health Solutions, on the state of B2B Marketing in the Healthcare industry: “Healthcare is notoriously behind other industries when responding to technological advances and audience expectations, so it remains important that marketers push the industry with smart trend adoption.”Here are some important stats to consider as you begin planning out your marketing strategy:• As of 2016, there were more than 326 million people in the U.S. Each one of them with their own personality and each one of them a potential patient.• 52% of smartphone users gather health-related data from a smartphone.• 91% of adults have their smartphone within arm’s reach 24/7.• According to recent Facebook data, the number one most asked for recommendation is a doctor or a healthcare provider.• There are 8.2 billion health-related video views on YouTube.As in many B2B industries, long sales cycles can mean change comes slowly to marketing strategy. So, to make it a little easier for you, here are some essential truths we’ve discovered about healthcare marketing. Here are the three healthcare marketing secrets and how they can rejuvenate your business:#1 Research and Define Your Ideal CustomersWhen you try to reach a particular audience, your success depends on how deeply you can guide them. Focusing on a certain segment of the market to generate and attract potential customers will not only help you polish your marketing, but also ensure that the customer association you get from your sales and marketing operations will have a better success rate.How to Reach Your Target Audience in the Healthcare Industry?If you are looking to improve your health care marketing, you may have realized that not all messages will be adapted to all audiences. Partnering with a marketing professional with health care experience is always a smart strategy. Before doing anything else, you need to consider your audience:• For whom are you creating this report?• What do they want to know?• What will they do with the information?For any organization and practice of medical care of all kinds (hospitals, manufacturers, doctors and surgeons, dentists, pharmacists or groups), the more specifically the target audience defined, the greater their capacity to inspire a positive response.Once you have identified your targeted audiences, it is helpful to gather some information about them. This information can help you determine the information needs of your audience, how you can communicate with them more effectively, and where and how you can contact them.#2 Create Valuable ContentHow do healthcare marketers develop and promote relevant content? First, they must understand the needs of clients by building insight through primary research, syndicated sources, and behavior analysis. Next, they need to create content that meets their needs, such as video, blogs, articles and supports brand objectives. Finally, promote content in the media where customers interact and share.According to a new report, 85% of healthcare B2B marketers have a content marketing strategy, but only 4% believe their programs are extremely effective.For a healthcare marketer focused on a pediatric service line, creating helpful content could mean writing an educational article on the merits and concerns of pediatric psychology. When planning to increase content production when the vast majority does not believe that their content marketing efforts are highly effective, B2B marketing specialists are potentially prepared for failure.Content marketing nurtures a long-term relationship with customers, which is critical in the medical industry.3 Tips to Grow Your Healthcare Company with Content Marketing:1. Know what your customers want to learn2. Be a healthcare industry leader3. Capitalize on current eventsThe following tips will set you up with the knowhow you need to produce better content for your readers. Content marketing is an excellent way to both position your healthcare company as a thought leader and to generate new leads and customers for your business. Be creative and offer information that provides real insight for your customers.Target Ideal Buyers with ContentCreating and sharing successful Healthcare marketing content is all about your audience: who you’re speaking to and what you’re trying to say. To make the most out of your healthcare services, you first have to define the group of people you’re creating your content for and what they’ll find useful about it. Content marketing involves creating and sharing quality content that is specifically designed to attract your target customers. If you’re not sure how to get started with your content marketing strategy, we can help! Here’s how to target your buyer persona through content marketing.• Defining And Developing Buyer Personas• Consider The Buying Team• Mapping Content To The Buyer’s JourneyThe beauty of the specific content is that it was created with a specific group in mind to enjoy and learn from the way they prefer to consume content. Without a persona-based content marketing initiative, you run the risk of allowing your competitors to influence buyers by talking about their needs and addressing uncertainties through specific content, which increases the consideration of purchases as along the road.That’s especially true for B2B healthcare marketers, many of whom face more complicated, longer sales cycles, making their challenges with consistent and compelling content creation all the more problematic. With that in mind, there is a lot for B2B marketers in other industries to learn from the world of health marketing. Be sure to always involve a specific target audience through different channels and remain relevant.

It is not uncommon for small businesses with limited resources to be challenged at the thought of facing their bank manager to apply for business funding. The reason is simple; regardless of how long you have been with your bank, you will still have to comply with formalities when it comes to funding your business start-up or business growth. Fundamentally, you will be asked to write a business plan for funding which must be presented with your application form. You may wonder why you need to present a business plan to lenders or investors. Let’s think about why banks want you to prepare a business plan and then you will fully understand why investors ask for this precious document that will cost you some time and money to put together, but ultimately, if done well, will help you raise the much needed finance.Some Reasons Why Banks Need A Business Plan1. Banks are taking a risk on you and your business and they need to understand that risk and compare it against the expected reward from your business. Have you ever thought about how banks make their money for their shareholders? Well, they do so investing their capital (money – usually investors’ funds and borrowed funds) in your business with full expectations of earning higher returns than the costs they must pay for borrowing or raising their own capital. If you fail to deliver the returns on their investment from your business, they will end up being a victim of your problems which will cost them their business. In short, your risk of business failure becomes their risk too.2. They want to gain a better understanding of your management team who will be responsible for managing the funds invested in your business. This is a concept many small businesses and start-ups, don’t grasp fully. They may think their business ideas or wonderful products are sufficient ingredients for business success. Nothing can be further from the truth. A business is an organisation of integrated functional activities designed to accomplish a desired objective. These integrated activities must be managed competently by different people inside or outside the organisation for successful results to be accomplished. The bank manager reviewing your application must be satisfied that your team possesses competencies both at the level of technical knowledge and correct attitude – the critical ingredients for success when present and vice versa. A business that is poorly managed will fail irrespective of the quality of its products and benefits offered to its target market. With this in mind, you must be aware that when you apply for funding from a bank (or any other types of funders), your management team’s quality will have to be judged based on past performance. They also want to know if your management team possesses industry, business and market knowledge. Of course, if you are a one man business, you need to ensure you put in place a team, virtual or physical that brings the balance of expertise critical to give assurance to the bank that your business will not expose them to unmeasured risks.4. They want absolute assurance that your business model is robust. That you have thought about the pros and cons of each option and have a viable business proposition that is not devoid of reality. This will be tested with questions in areas where gaps are detected and you will be expected to give answers that are credible to ensure their funds are not exposed. Banks want to see positive returns on their investment in your business, they won’t make any compromise for your own short-comings and the sooner you address the weaknesses in your business plan the faster you will be able to raise funding for your business.Taken together, irrespective of whom you wish to raise funding from, if you want to successfully fund for your business as a start-up or an existing business seeking growth, you must address all the four areas mentioned above in your business plan. I have merely summarised some of the key points for you to bear in mind and you can find more of my articles to learn about the subject thoroughly. In my experience of writing and reviewing hundreds of business plans for funding, a clearly written concise 10-15 pages business plan is sufficient. This should include 3-4 pages of financial information and may I also caution you to stress-test your financial plan for variation in assumptions underpinning cash-flow projections to ensure you have plans to mitigate risks revealed by the tests, as the bank will do so as part of their own due diligence test. This is referred to as sensitivity analysis.Good Luck