'Healthcare marketing’s role is to not just drive sales but drive healthcare outcomes’

At the e4m Health and Wellness Marketing Conference 2023, Harbinder Narula, CEO, BW Healthcare World and BW Wellbeing World chaired a panel discussion on “Design Thinking: How to Create Innovative and User-Centric Solutions / Strengthening Healthcare and Wellness Ecosystem through Innovation”.

The members of the panel were Geet Rathi, Category Head - Man Matters, Mosaic Wellness, Samyukta Iyer, VP and Head of Marketing, Kaya Clinic, Sriram Padmanabhan, Marketing Director, Danone India, Subhadeep Dasgupta, Business Head, Gritzo, Pritish Mahadik, Growth Head Traya and Vinita Joshi, Marketing Head, Nyumi.

Narula started the session by talking about how post-pandemic, the healthcare space has been split into two parts, one being the illness-oriented industry, i.e. the hospitals, diagnostics and so on and the other being the wellbeing space where consumers are focused towards living a healthier lifestyle. 

He said, “The one thing that has really emerged very strongly out of this is the power of personalization beyond the messaging. We are in an industry where everything that we do is creating an impact. Whatever we are doing is creating personalized experiences which makes it imperative for all of us to start thinking how we can personalize the messaging so that people know what they can expect. That to me appears to be an important design thinking.”

He then moved on to ask Iyer her take on how the industry is actually embracing innovation, out-of-the-box thinking and technology, while they are strategizing for the marketing and messaging.

Iyer answered, “If I have to pick up examples of what we have done at Kaya, here we have actually leveraged the power of AI into our website to ensure that there is a lot of skin analysis, diagnosis that happens right there. We are working on creating a chatbot where you can schedule your own appointments because today, fewer and fewer people want to speak to the call center, fewer and fewer people want to wait for appointment booking. Even our food order today happens online, so why should it be any different when it comes to health and wellness?”

The session moved forward with Rathi talking about the impact that personalization can make in the health and wellness industry. He said, “Unlike normal marketing, when it comes to healthcare, the biggest difference is that here, the role of marketing is not that somebody is buying a product and your job is done. It is actually driving health outcomes. And health outcomes are not typically driven by just a person buying a product, you have to be with that person. You need to give personalization as an experience and not just as a marketing tactic.”

“Driving health outcomes requires a huge buy-in from the consumer. People are at different points in their healthcare journey, so we have to customize it and personalize it for them. Therefore, I believe that personalization is the only way to go about solving health outcomes for the users today,” he added.

Mahadik shared his insights on how healthcare companies can use data and analytics to better understand their target audience, tailor their marketing messages accordingly and build trust. He elaborated, “People come from various stages of life, various lifestyle problems, various genetic problems. Having a structured approach to first diagnosing all the problems that are there with the user and supplementing the solution as per their problems is what data analytics leverages. And that is how marketing is solving this in order to deliver results.”

“Based on the user pattern of using these apps and websites, we understand who is basically consistent on the journey, who is dropping off in the middle, or who got bored of the treatment. We match them using various messages and calls from the hair coaches so that they get back on the treatment and do not divert from their journey and help them achieve their results. That is how data analytics simultaneously plays a part with the whole product, tech, and marketing to provide the needed results for the customer.”

Next, Narula asked Joshi how healthcare companies can use social media to connect with their audience and promote their services. She replied, “From a healthcare perspective, social media is a great way to not only educate but also to learn. Because a lot of times when as marketer we build personas, it is based on who our ideal user should be. But you need to talk to people, engage with them, know why or why not they are buying. Social media can really bridge that gap to just kind of solidify your understanding of why the customer is buying from you or who you should target.”

Dasgupta touched upon some challenges that healthcare companies may face when implementing innovative marketing strategies. “How to present information is a big challenge with technology when it comes to the healthcare companies. The second thing is the plethora of information, the massive amount of information that we have to give because we have products and then 20-30 ingredients and then each ingredient has roles to play in solving some specific aspect of the health problem. So, how much information can you really pack with the current attention span of consumers which is less than 3 seconds probably. Why should anybody see your ad at all,” he enlisted.

Sharing from his experience, he said, “We figured out a method in which we drew a matrix of the key benefit, the key cohort and the key outcome. These three are triangulated and we do not launch with one content. We launch with multiple campaigns and in this three axes. And we solved the second challenge of providing information in an interesting way by experimenting with gamification and that really worked for us.”

Narula closed the session by asking Padmanabhan how healthcare companies can balance innovation with regulatory compliance in their marketing efforts. He responded, “Don’t see compliance and regulation as a barrier. Understand the laws of the land, understand the regulatory framework. That is where it has to start from. Secondly, when you are thinking about your campaign brief, involve them (people in the compliance, legal function), make them your stakeholders, make them understand your context and objective as to why you are trying to drive it. In many incidents, they come with solutions which are even better than what you have thought because they know how to navigate around.”