by Katie Kennihan | Feb 19, 2024 | Blogs
The benefits of customer insights – from brand positioning to product development and marketing campaigns.
What are patients and healthcare providers’ priorities when it comes to choosing a treatment or pharmaceutical option? And why does it matter now more than ever? Questions like these are exactly why healthcare customer insights are so important.
In a sector where understanding patient needs and preferences is paramount – customer insights provide a deeper understanding of what matters most to your audience.
You can use this information to inform many aspects of your brand. From messaging to product development to marketing campaigns.
This article explores the benefits of healthcare customer insights – and how to gather them.
- What Are Healthcare Customer Insights?
- 5 Key Ways to Leverage Customer Insights
- How to Gather Healthcare Customer Insights
- Tap into Customer Insights With a Market Research Agency
At The Link Group, we specialize in helping healthcare and pharmaceutical brands gather customer insights to power their brand and marketing. This guide leverages our decades of experience in market research to show you the benefits of customer data – and how to get it.
What Are Healthcare Customer Insights?
In short, customer insights refer to customer needs, behaviors, and preferences. Within the healthcare and pharma sectors, these might be the patients, doctors, or healthcare providers that would be the primary recipients of your offer.
But customer insights go a layer deeper than simple customer research.
Insights are gathered by speaking directly to your customers, and understanding what’s important to them on a deep, personal level. It involves conducting interviews, surveys, and focus groups to learn their needs and preferences in their own words.
This is particularly important in the healthcare sector given the nuanced needs and preferences that patients and healthcare providers hold. Tapping into their insights enhances the success rates of your project – whether you’re launching a new product or refining your messaging.
Here are the key benefits of gathering your healthcare customer insights:
- Patient-Centric Product Development. Understanding patient preferences for treatments, ease of use, side effects, and overall health can help you develop more effective and well-received healthcare products and medications
- Identifying Ideal Patients. Assists healthcare professionals (HCPs) in pinpointing the right patients for specific therapies, which increases the likelihood of prescription and success rate of medications.
- Enhancing Sales Rep Performance. Equips sales representatives with tailored strategies to effectively communicate with physicians – addressing their questions and concerns about treatments.
- Targeted and Effective Marketing Campaigns. Create marketing campaigns that resonate deeply with your target audience. Customer insights allow you to go beyond surface-level traits and understand what’s deeply important to your audience.
- Improved Patient Adherence and Outcomes. Discover the roadblocks that prevent patients from following their medication or treatment regimens. This enables you to create strategies and support that improves adherence and outcomes for patients.
- Strategic Decision-Making and Forecasting. Customer insights help you predict future trends and patient needs. Having this foresight allows you to stay ahead of the curve in innovation and address emerging health concerns proactively.
- Personalized Healthcare Experiences. Gaining insights into individual patient journeys is key to offering personalized healthcare experiences. By understanding specific unmet needs and identifying barriers to treatment, healthcare providers can tailor treatment plans and wellness advice more effectively.
- Competitive Advantage. In a highly competitive market, understanding and addressing patient needs better than competitors can lead to increased market share and a stronger brand reputation.
- Regulatory Compliance and Risk Management. Insights into patient experiences and feedback also helps healthcare and pharma companies navigate regulatory requirements more effectively and anticipate potential risks.
- Cost-Effective Resource Allocation. By knowing what really matters to patients, companies can use their resources smarter. They can focus on the things that make a big difference and not invest in the areas that don’t work as well.
Imagine a healthcare/pharma company as a gardener and its patients as a unique garden.
Just as a skilled gardener understands that each type of plant requires specific care – the right amount of sunlight, water, and nutrients – to flourish, the company must understand the specific needs and preferences of its patients to nurture their health effectively.
Customer insights are gathered from careful observation and feedback. They guide a company in providing tailored care like healthcare services and medications that ensure each patient thrives and impacts the entire healthcare landscape for the better.
5 Ways to Leverage Customer Insights
As a healthcare brand, leveraging customer insights can significantly enhance most aspects of your brand lifecycle – including brand positioning, product development, and marketing.
Unfortunately, many companies overlook the importance of engaging with their audience before developing these critical touchpoints. You can achieve greater success by shaping your business or offerings based on the actual needs and preferences of your audience.
To illustrate the impact, let’s explore six key areas where you can tap into customer insights to substantially benefit your brand.
- Marketing Campaigns
Consumer insights are helpful in all stages of marketing – from developing the strategy to testing the creative. It’s crucial to have a deep understanding of who you’re targeting and the context that you’re operating in.
Example: Let’s say you’ve created a marketing campaign for a new medication. Before launching, you could conduct a test via in-depth interviews that represents your target demographic to see how they react to the campaign.
Feedback from this test group would help refine your message, ensuring it resonates with your audience and addresses their concerns, increasing the campaign’s effectiveness upon the launch.
- Segmentation & Targeting
Like they say, when you talk to everyone, you reach no one. Segmentation allows you to break up your audience into different groups based on their behaviors and attitudes. Once segmented, you can then send them targeted messages that are hyper-relevant and therefore much more impactful and successful.
Example: Let’s say that you’re launching a new allergy medication and you want to create a series of emails that speak to the pain points of this experience. By segmenting your audience you can reach the ones who are motivated to pursue treatment and are significantly impacted by their symptoms.
When your audience groups are segmented, you can also receive more nuanced feedback and follow-ups from each group.
- Product Development
Product development is about understanding and balancing customer preferences. How much does a specific feature matter to your customers? How can you ensure the product delivers on its promise and remains user-friendly? Consumer insights enables you to get the product into the hands of real users, gather feedback, and refine.
Example: Imagine you’re developing a new fitness tracker. By placing prototypes with a diverse group of users and gathering their feedback, you discover a high demand for a hydration tracking feature.
This insight allows you to prioritize this feature in the final product, ensuring it meets customer expectations and stands out in the market. Continuous refinement based on real user feedback is an effective approach.
- Brand Creation
Creating a brand is about making a memorable first impression. Our approach involves identifying disconnects and unexplored areas in your market, allowing your brand to connect deeply with your customers’ core values and aspirations.
Example: For a new eco-friendly skincare line, we help identify the emotional connection customers seek with sustainable products.
By tapping into these insights, the branding can emphasize environmental responsibility, clean ingredients, and ethical sourcing, aligning the brand with the values of its target audience and making a strong initial impact in the market.
- Brand Evolution
Brand evolution is a continuous journey that adapts to new market challenges and opportunities. It involves understanding your existing brand equity and effectively leveraging it for repositioning, creating line extensions, or exploring new indications.
Example: Imagine a pharmaceutical brand branching into a new therapeutic area while aiming to maintain a unified brand strategy. The challenge is to resonate with distinct patient groups for each disease state – while retaining an overarching brand identity.
By leveraging customer insights, the brand can fine-tune its messaging to appeal individually to each patient group’s needs and concerns. This ensures the expansion is perceived as an authentic extension of the brand.
Your evolution strategies can be informed by market insights but are also continually refined and aligned with your customers’ evolving needs and preferences.
As your brand navigates the ever-evolving market landscape, a key to success is your ability to adapt and grow. Embracing change, while staying true to your audience’s needs and what they expect from you helps you exceed the shifting expectations of your customers.
How to Gather Healthcare Consumer Insights
At this point you likely understand the full benefits of gathering customer insights. But how do you actually go about talking to your customers – and making sure that you get a response?
Here are a few examples of the research methods and practices you can pursue, or hire a market research agency to help with:
Immersive ethnography is a research method where researchers are immersed in the environment and daily lives of the study subjects to gain a deep and comprehensive understanding of their behaviors, motivations, and cultural contexts.
Example: Let’s say you’re launching a new health tracking app. Observing users in their daily environment can be enlightening. For instance, maybe you learn that users forget to log meals, leading to the introduction of push notifications for better engagement.
Executing this type of research well takes expertise given it requires a level of comfort with the audience. At The Link Group, we’re meticulous about earning your customers’ trust in the process as they let us into their space and dive deeper into their lives.
- Quantitative and Qualitative Research.
Combining quantitative and qualitative research methods provides a comprehensive understanding of healthcare customer insights. Quantitative research involves collecting numerical data through surveys or questionnaires, offering a broad view of customer trends and preferences.
Qualitative research, on the other hand, includes methods like interviews and focus groups providing deeper insights into the ‘why’ behind customer behaviors.
Example: In a study for a new medication, quantitative research could reveal how many patients prefer oral pill form over injectables, while qualitative research might uncover the reasons behind this preference, such as ease of swallowing or perceptions of effectiveness.
Focus groups are a vital tool for gathering healthcare customer insights. By bringing together a group of individuals from your target audience, you can facilitate discussions that reveal their thoughts, feelings, and reactions to your products or services.
Example: For a new wellness program, conducting focus groups with potential participants can reveal what aspects of wellness they value most, such as stress reduction or physical fitness, guiding the development of the program’s components.
This method allows you to speak directly to your audience and create a safe space for them to offer feedback and insights.
It may feel intimidating at first to get feedback from your customers and the marketplace. But it’s so much better to empower yourself with this information – so that you can make changes and evolve in a way that matters to your customers.
The good news is you definitely do not need to conduct your customer research alone. There are market research agencies that can conduct every piece of this process for you.
If you’re ready to take this journey of continuous evolution and want a trusted partner to guide you, The Link Group is here to provide the expertise and support you need.
Tap Into Consumer Insights With a Market Research Agency
Want to tap into your customer insights, but don’t know where to start? Every research methodology this article covers is a practice that The Link Group specializes in.
We understand that healthcare customer insights are absolutely essential for your success in reaching your customers – whether you’re serving a B2C or B2B space.
Our approach includes strategizing the best way to get the insights that you need – and spearheading the process in getting those insights. So you get the data while saving confusion and time on the actual research process.
Are you ready to tap into the potential of deep customer insights for smarter decision-making and better campaign results? Get in touch with The Link Group today, to get a customer plan tailored to your needs.
by Katie Kennihan | Dec 28, 2023 | Blogs
A market research agency helps you gather insights that make your campaigns and go-to-market plans more profitable.
Do you want to increase the profitability of your next product or marketing launch? Don’t overlook this essential element: engaging in conversations with your customers.
Too many companies make the mistake of diving into campaigns, offers, or business strategies without ever seeking input from their audience. But tapping into your customers enables you to tailor-fit your offer to their desires and needs – making it much more impactful.
This is why a market research agency offers invaluable support.
A market research agency expertly handles the customer research process, freeing you to stay focused on your work while harnessing the insights to supercharge your next campaign. This article dives into everything you need to know about working with one.
- What is Market Research? Explanation and Benefits.
- What Does a Market Research Agency Do? 10 Examples.
- Qualities to Look for in a Market Research Agency
At The Link Group, we’re proud to have helped hundreds of companies utilize market research to execute successful campaigns. Whether you’re a Fortune 500 corporation or a small startup, this approach helps you achieve more profitable, impactful results.
Looking for a top market research agency? Contact The Link Group to connect directly with one of our team members. We’ll discuss your needs and create a custom plan for you.
What is Market Research? Explanation and Benefits.
In essence, market research is a structured process for gathering and analyzing information about your market or target audience. This involves the collection of data and insights to gain a deeper understanding of consumer preferences, behaviors, and emerging trends.
Market research encompasses a spectrum of methods – including online surveys, interviews, observational studies, and analysis of both qualitative research and quantitative research.
The best market research agencies create a custom approach and plan for your research based on your specific research goals and the nature of the project at hand.
The core objective of market research is to serve as a guiding compass for your business, facilitating well-informed decision-making. By harnessing the power of market research, you can tailor your offers to align perfectly with the desires of your customers.
Here are a few clear benefits of engaging in market research:
- Customer-First Strategy: Instead of making assumptions about what your customers want, market research helps you understand their actual desires and needs. Build your strategy on solid, customer-driven foundations.
- Effective Messaging: By listening to your audience, you can create messages that deeply resonate with your audience. This ensures that your communication not only reaches them but is also genuinely comprehended and valued.
- Seamless Customer Experience: Market research helps ensure that every interaction with your brand is smooth, enjoyable, and memorable. This commitment to a seamless customer experience can turn one-time buyers into loyal customers who come back.
- Cost Efficiency: Effective research can prevent costly marketing mistakes. It ensures that resources are allocated efficiently to strategies and campaigns are more likely to succeed.
- Marketing Effectiveness: Research allows for the evaluation of marketing campaigns, measuring their impact and ROI. This enables you to fine-tune your marketing efforts for better results.
Market research substantially enhances the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives or business strategies, in turn delivering meaningful benefits to your organization.
But as a busy company, it might be challenging to allocate the necessary time and resources to conduct this research in-house. This is where a market research company steps in.
A market research agency consists of a team of seasoned experts who take on the research workload, distilling all the findings into a manageable and actionable plan for you.
What Does a Market Research Agency Do? 10 Examples.
Picture this: you’re gearing up to launch an advertising campaign to promote a new product. But before you unveil it to the world, you want to test it on a small group of people.
Your market research agency puts together a focus group that represents your target market. This group takes a first-look at the campaign and shares their feedback. Maybe they point out certain elements that don’t resonate – or suggest that you put more focus on certain areas.
You revise your campaign based on the audience’s feedback. And when your campaign launches, it’s 10x more successful than it would’ve been without their insights.
This is just one of the many examples of projects that a market research agency assists with. And it demonstrates the power of speaking to real people in your audience.
Market research allows you to directly tap into your audience’s opinions and preferences with advanced analytics. From large-scale projects like major ad campaigns to smaller-scale projects like message testing for ad campaigns.
Here are a few of the many types of projects a market research agency can support you with:
1. Understanding Your Target Customer.
You’ve often heard the advice to “define your ideal client,” but what does that truly entail? A market research agency does a deep-dive into your customer, going beyond the surface-level of demographics like age and gender.
They immerse themselves in activities like conducting surveys to identify behavioral patterns, holding interviews to grasp what truly matters to them on a personal level, and analyzing market dynamics to understand their behavior.
2. Learning How to Effectively Message to Your Customer.
Building upon the above, the insights gleaned from research on your target customer become the bedrock of your messaging strategy. This comprehensive process takes you from surface-level observations like “family-oriented” to profound insights like “they value engaging in morning conversations with their kids as they prepare for school.”
A subtle adjustment in messaging has a huge impact on your campaign’s success. Customer research empowers you to experiment with and refine your messaging based on their valuable feedback.
3. Ensuring a Seamless User Experience.
A market research agency excels in unraveling the intricacies of user experience. They delve into the finer aspects, seeking to comprehend how your customers navigate your website or app, identifying favored features, and uncovering pain points.
This comprehensive examination goes beyond the surface. It entails capturing user feedback, scrutinizing behavioral patterns, and conducting usability tests to ensure your digital presence seamlessly aligns with your users’ needs and expectations.
4. Testing Advertising Campaigns.
A market research agency helps you conduct comprehensive testing of advertising campaigns. They employ various methods to assess audience reactions, measure message resonance, and evaluate the campaign’s ability to evoke the desired actions.
This meticulous testing and refinement process can be the difference between a campaign that fizzles and one that ignites. With consumer insights from market research, you can fine-tune your campaign for optimal engagement with your audience.
5. Informing New Product Development.
Launching a new product requires a deep understanding of market dynamics and consumer preferences. Market research agencies excel in informing product innovation and product development.
They dive into market trends, conduct competitor analysis, and gather feedback from potential customers. This multifaceted approach ensures your new product aligns with market demands and consumer desires.
6. Competitive Intelligence and Analysis.
Understanding your competitors is essential for developing effective business strategies. Market research allows you to analyze your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, market positioning, pricing strategies, and customer perceptions.
This data collection helps in crafting strategies to differentiate your business, identify opportunities to outperform competitors, and make informed decisions about market entry or expansion.This offers you an extreme competitive advantage.
7. Price Optimization.
Setting the right price for a product or service is critical for profitability and competitiveness. Market research helps in assessing price sensitivity among potential customers.
Pricing studies, surveys, and competitor analysis can reveal insights into how consumers perceive different price points and the willingness to pay. This data guides businesses in determining optimal pricing strategies, helping you balance the need for profitability with the need to remain competitive.
8. Customer Segmentation.
Not all customers are the same, and market research aids in identifying distinct customer segments based on demographics, psychographics, behavior, or other criteria. These segments allow businesses to tailor your marketing efforts and product offerings to specific groups.
By recognizing these distinct customer segments through market research, you can create marketing campaigns and product promotions that effectively resonate with each group. This level of personalization enhances your chances of capturing the attention of both segments and ultimately leads to increased sales and customer satisfaction.
9. Brand Health and Perception.
A brand’s image and reputation can significantly impact customer loyalty and purchasing decisions. Surveys, one-on-one interviews, and focus groups can uncover the emotions, associations, and values tied to your brand.
By analyzing brand perception data, you can take steps to improve brand positioning, messaging, and customer engagement, ultimately enhancing brand loyalty.
10. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty.
Satisfied and loyal customers are crucial for any business. Regular surveys and feedback help gauge satisfaction and identify areas to improve.
This data allows you to make necessary improvements, address concerns promptly, and build stronger customer relationships. High levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty often lead to increased repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals.
Maintaining an active connection with your customers is crucial.
Continuously diving into their needs, asking for genuine feedback on your offerings, and staying attuned to the latest industry trends empowers you to tailor your products accordingly.
But it’s understandable that you may not have the time or expertise to adeptly engage your audience in this manner. This is precisely why market research agencies can offer immense value and impact. But remember, not all market research companies offer the same benefits.
Let’s dive into the factors to consider when selecting one.
Qualities to Look For in a Market Research Agency
Now that you understand the significance of partnering with a market research agency, the next step is selecting the ideal collaborator. In a landscape filled with numerous options, you might be wondering: how do you make the right choice?
It’s crucial to consider several essential qualities when evaluating potential market research agencies. These qualities will not only influence the effectiveness of your research but also determine the overall success of your endeavors.
Here are some best practices to consider when searching for a market research agency:
1. Strategic Thought Partners
While data is essential, it’s the insights and recommendations that come from that data that truly propel success. Select a market research agency that positions itself as a strategic partner, turning raw data to deliver actionable recommendations.
2. Full-Service
Seek a market research agency that offers a complete array of services. Simplify your process by avoiding the need to juggle multiple agencies for different research aspects. Look for one capable of managing everything – from surveys and one-on-one interviews to statistical analysis and comprehensive reporting.
3. Global Insights on a Personal Level
In today’s interconnected world, a global outlook holds immense value. Your selected agency should provide insights that transcend borders, understanding the intricacies of diverse markets and cultures to empower you to tailor your strategies effectively.
4. Continuity of Team
The constant personnel shuffle in some agencies can be frustrating. Opt for an agency that assigns you a dedicated team of 2-3 individuals who will remain your consistent points of contact throughout the project. This ensures clear communication and a deeper understanding of your business requirements.
5. 100% Custom Research Approaches
While some market research agencies offer a one-size-fits-all approach, it’s important to recognize that companies come in various sizes and cater to diverse audiences, each with unique requirements. Opt for an agency that customizes your research plan to precisely match your specific needs and objectives.
It can be confusing to differentiate a comprehensive market research agency and a panel or database provider. A database vendor primarily offers you a potential audience for testing.
In contrast, a market research company not only accesses the audience but they also design and carry out the tests – and then meticulously analyze the data for you.
While a market research agency partners with a third-party database to recruit respondents for research, the agency itself should plan the strategy, execute the tests, and carefully examine and communicate the findings. So, make sure you’re working with a genuine, full-service market research agency for your needs.
Get in Touch With a Market Research Agency
Looking for a dependable, versatile market research agency?
At The Link Group, we’re deeply committed to providing you with custom market research services that meet the unique needs of your business. We partner with clients of all different sizes to deliver the insights they need to have more successful, profitable endeavors.
We’re proud to offer:
- Committed and consistent teams.
- A strategic partnership approach.
- 100% custom research approaches designed to meet your goals.
But that’s just the beginning. We take pride in being a strategic partner, translating your research results and data into actionable insights and recommendations that serve as catalysts for your success.
Ready to harness the power of data to make informed decisions and amplified results?
Connect with a team member today to learn about partnering with The Link Group as your market research agency.
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