Healthcare Marketing

Marketing health related products and services. Health care promoters are often nonprofit organizations or associations such as the National Cancer Institute or the American Heart Association, and their advertising message is typically produced and presented to consumers as a community service by agencies and the media. Health care marketing is carried out by large associations, hospitals, and clinics and is primarily focused on preventive medicine and good physical or mental health.

Study of the requirements specific markets the acceptability of products, and methods of developing and exploiting new markets. Various strategies are used for healthcare market research: past sales may be projected forward; surveys may be made of consumer attitudes and product preferences; and new or altered products may be introduced experimentally into designated test-market areas.

Marketing to health care providers takes four main forms: gifting, detailing, drug samples, and sponsoring continuing medical education (CME). In Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States 80-90% of physicians see pharmaceutical representatives. Of statements made by pharmaceutical representatives 11% are false and of the false statements all are in favor of the representatives' drugs. While very few physicians consider themselves susceptible to detailing,

Large size of the pharmaceutical sales force, the organization, management, and measurement of effectiveness of the sales force are significant business challenges. Management tasks are usually broken down into the areas of physician targeting, sales force size and structure, sales force optimization, call planning, and sales forces effectiveness. A few healthcare companies have realized that training sales representatives on high science alone is not enough, especially when most products are similar in quality. Thus, training sales representatives on relationship selling techniques in addition to medical science and product knowledge, can make a difference in sales force effectiveness. Specialist physicians are relying more and more on specialty sales reps for product information, because they are more knowledgeable than primary care reps.