Market Segmentation in Healthcare Starts within an Organization

Market segmentation in healthcare defines your target market, tells you what is motivating for your targets, and therefore helps you create compelling positioning and messaging for your product. However, just as important is the creative approach that’s taken to activate and embed the segmentation among all stakeholders within the organization. This is a pivotal key for ensuring optimal success.

Science and Art

It’s also very important for market segmentation in healthcare to be agile and move with the times. Maximum success will be achieved through a mixture of science and art, with deliverables that bring the segments to life in a way that can’t be achieved with PowerPoint slides. Additionally, meaningful and actionable patient research needs to extend beyond attitudinal parameters to a more holistic approach. This includes identifying who the patients are and what beliefs, affinities and requirements shape their decision-making; determining who to target, how to talk with them and how to best tailor your communication strategy to resonate with them; and uncovering where to find these patients and the drivers of their current behavior.

BHBIA Awards for Kantar Health

I, and my Kantar Health colleague James MacLeod, recently had the pleasure of accepting two awards from the British Healthcare Business Intelligence Association (BHBIA) for excellence at training events. James won The Julie Stacey Award for Best Speaker at a Foundation Training Course with his work on “Introduction to Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence and Market Research”, while I received The Ian Burgess Award for the Best Paper at a One-Day Training Course for my work on “Optimizing Segmentation within an Organization”. With BHBIA’s core aim of  promoting excellence in business intelligence within the healthcare industry, and these two awards given to the facilitators and presenters who achieve the highest scores from attending delegates, James and I are very honored to receive this recognition from our peers. To close out with a few final words on market segmentation in healthcare, success is truly achievable if you commit yourself to going beyond PowerPoint, as new media will have much greater impact! Think carefully about visual content of deliverables. Focusing on key values or attitudes of the segment may be more impactful than what the segment looks like on the surface. Fully integrating the segments into your organization will maximize your success, as the segments need to resonate with every stakeholder that touches the brand and every customer should understand that their needs are the core focus of your organization. And remember, naming a segment is always the last thing you do! Richard Goosey Chief Methodologist, Marketing Insights Kantar Health