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Marketing essentials for referral-based healthcare providers

Personal Relationships vs.
Brand Relationships

"Familiarity breeds contempt,” or so the old saying goes.  In healthcare marketing, familiarity breeds trust.  Doctors and patients prefer to work with those whom they know.  They might know you from a previous work place, church, or recreational activities, and this relationship gives you the edge when it comes to getting future referrals.  However, even in small communities, an average healthcare provider typically has 200 to 300 potential referral sources ranging from local doctors, to nurses, to case managers, to doctors on the fringe of the service area.  Not every doctor and nurse has a personal relationship with you or one of your competitors.

In the modern market place, inexpensive and reliable media such as color printing and mail give businesses the option of establishing brand relationships to either substitute for or enhance personal relationships.  Brand relationships entail a customer’s familiarity with a company’s procedures, services, and products.  This familiarity creates a comfort zone in which most referral sources prefer to stay.

The strengths of brand relationships include the following points:

• People who establish your personal relationships can one day leave the company and take that personal relationship with them.  Brand relationships have more to do with a company than with a person.  Brand relationships stay with the company even when there is employee turnover.
• Companies can establish brand relationships using mass marketing techniques.  On a per impression basis, this makes brand relationships less expensive than setting out to establish personal relationships.
• Some referral sources absolutely refuse to meet with reps until they understand what unique value is in it for them.  However, unobtrusive advertising messages can sometimes get through.  This gives you an opportunity to deliver an interesting marketing message and possibly open doors for representatives in the future. 
• Brand relationships facilitate and enhance personal relationships.  When a referral source is already interested in your brand, your representative will find him or her to be more receptive. 

Brand relationships and personal relationships both have strengths independent of each other but synergistic in nature.  Companies with robust marketing budgets of $30,000 or more should attempt to establish both types of relationships with referral sources, because the cost of establishing brand relationships is marginal compared to the cost of pursuing personal relationships.

How to establish brand relationships:

Project a brand personality.  Coke is traditional.  Pepsi is youthful.  Even Marlboro cigarettes managed to create the image that it is rugged and outdoorsy despite the fact that there is nothing rugged about a man with reduced lung capacity.  What human traits will you project with your brand?  You can be friendly, sophisticated, homey, traditional, technological, etc.  Considering that most AdVisor readers are healthcare providers seeking physician referrals, many of you will want to project a brand personality of being knowledgeable and reliable in addition to other human traits.

Use your logo.  Your logo is not just for letterhead.  Let your customers see it on fax cover sheets, orders, e-mails, and every other piece of paper or correspondence leaving your office.  The logo is the face of your company. 

Differentiate your company.  If possible, highlight positive features of your company that are different from the top competitors in your area.  Portray these competitive advantages in a fashion consistent with your brand personality.

Advertise your company.  Advertising delivers a message independent of the people working with the company right now.  The most effective advertising in home health and physical therapy will reach all the referral sources in your area directly (as opposed to broadcast media which only reaches a share of people in your area while only a very small percentage of that share happens to be referral sources).  This is where direct mail can prove very helpful.