Back to the basics: Health Care Marketing Revisited

What about your customers?

When developing marketing communications plans, most of the thinking—whether strategic, creative, media—involves the prospect. The target audience is identified, analyzed, prioritized and otherized to help determine the most effective way to communicate with those most likely to buy your product or service. Then it is segmented into primary, secondary, tertiary and as many discrete groups as possible, with tactics to communicate to each.

And that is as it should be.

But, in all this, it is important to remember another important market segment: existing customers.

Besides convincing and persuading prospects to try your product or service, advertising and other communications methods can also serve to remind present users why they chose you, and validate that wise decision. Usually this requires little in the way of additional spending or communication—but it might require some. A reminder of the features and benefits that drove their decision initially also reinforces that decision, and helps establish and maintain repeat use, loyalty, and satisfaction.

The more pricey the product or service, the more costly the investment for users, the more important this reinforcement becomes. They are likely to be living with the relationship, or the results, for a long time.

They might as well be happy about it.

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