Health care lags behind many other industries in marketing (as it does in patient experience, data interoperability, and other areas). According to Ty Allen, President of Patient Experience & Growth at RLDatix, these other industries have been using what he calls “guerrilla marketing tactics” to pinpoint good candidates for highly targeted marketing.
Allen’s firm, SocialClimb, was recently purchased by RLDatix. Using machine-learning data, his product can help health care providers determine who they should reach out to (“pinpointed marketing”), based on such factors as age, geography, and insurance type.
Hospitals and health systems can change their revenue mix and fill empty slots in their doctors’ schedules by reaching new types of patients. Ultimately, they can improve revenues in an age of “margin compression” caused by rising costs and decreasing compensation.
Allen distinguishes their type of marketing from brand marketing, which is more traditional. While he avers that the brand is still important, successful practices have to target the patients they want to attract as well.
He recounts how, when SocialClimb started offering its AI-based solution four years ago, it was adopted by small practices of 100 or fewer doctors—practices that recognized the need for creative, aggressive marketing. The big hospitals at first rejected his product because they thought that it wasn’t worth their while reaching out to one patient at a time.
One phenomenon that drives creative marketing is the recent “acquisition frenzy” of practices by large acute care facilities. Allen cites the statistic that 80% of doctors now work for big groups. Often, after the practice was bought, the staff was cut: marketing in particular. Naturally, results were disappointing. But now, the health care chains have started signing on to the strategies used by RLDatix.
The new tools can let you know exactly what patients were attracted by particular tactics, and how much extra revenue was generated. One hospital spent $70,000 and earned four million dollars from it by using these tools over the course of somewhat more than one year.
In our interview with Allen, we also discuss ways that web searches and AI are changing customer decisions. Allen says that potential patients—especially younger ones—want to know a lot about doctors before arranging a visit. A strong and complete web presence is crucial, but he doesn’t know yet all the ways AI will further transform patient choice and whether providers will have to adopt new strategies in response.
Check out our interview with Ty Allen from RLDatix to learn more.
Learn more about RLDatix: https://www.rldatix.com/en-nam/
RLDatix is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene
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