“I don’t build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.” Howard Roark, The Fountainhead
When it comes to building a business, three fundamental questions emerge:
What are you building?
And, WHO are the clients you aim to build?
Understanding your Market is the springboard to building your health IT business.
Most businesses jump into tactics. They skip doing the strategic thinking and research to deeply understand and focus their market. As a result, the marketing messages lack the punch needed to build profitable clients.
Building enterprise level health IT clients in hospitals, healthcare organizations, and physicians’ practices is a complex, high-ticket sale. It involves many people in the buying process.
Let’s look at how to build buyer personas.
How to Build Health IT Buyer Personas
According to a study by TechTarget, “corporate IT buying is a team decision-making process with 95% of IT buying teams having more than 2 members. The majority work in teams of 2–7 with a significant number of teams having 10 or more members.” Certainly, this team decision-making process applies to health IT.
The first step is to define your ideal client profile at the company level. However, individual people buy health IT . You sell to people.
So step two, the critical step in defining and understanding your Market, is building Buyer Personas.
A typical Buying Decision Team for health IT consists of:
- Ultimate Decision Maker – Final approval of the decision. Only person who can say No when everyone else says Yes. Usually the CEO, or CIO who has full budget authority.
- User Prospect – Buyer(s) who will be using the solution. Front-line clinicians, nurses and physicians.
- Technical Prospect – Buyer(s) involved in evaluating the solution (Purchasing, IT,Finance,HR, etc.).
- Key Influencers – Anyone with input into the buying decision. Potentially biard members, or other staff.
Don’t shortcut on fleshing out all these buyer personas in written detail. Get a clear picture of all of these people. Do the buyer research and build all the applicable buyer personas.
One of the keys to successful health IT marketing involves customizing your content for all of your audiences. Many digital health firms now create content for early-, mid- and late-stage leads, yet miss opportunities to engage all of their buyers and purchase influencers.
You are the architect of your health IT business. You build a sustainable, growing business when you attract profitable clients. A key to understanding your market and developing an effective marketing message is building solid buyer personas.
Like Roark, the hero of The Fountainhead, you are a strong innovator. Don’t blow up what you’re building.
Get help in building and understanding your Buyer Personas.
Schedule a Digital Health Consultation to learn the thinking and steps required to focus your marketing.
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