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UK Patient Focused Panel Discussion: How to Reach the Female Consumer?

In this UK Building Better Businesses in Healthcare panel

How to reach the female consumer? She is more assertive, she intends to make her own choices, and she actively seeks out information prior to any consultation with a healthcare practitioner, and when she goes into the GPs office, she wants an active and equal dialogue with the practitioner. Compare that to 20 years ago. So how do we engage her? Consumers are exposed to 1,500 commercial messages per day. The aim for any healthcare practitioner is to engage with the female consumer in her own world, on her own terms, talking to her about her interests. It is a blend of art and science. Art is in the message, science is how you reach her (what media channel?).

20 years ago the target female consumer was over 50 and affluent. Increasingly, you need to find out more about her - is she single, married, divorced, with children, urban or rural. Start to build a profile of your target consumer at her micro level. What will attract her attention and arouse a response. What is the response you want? Awareness of a condition? Or for her to pick up the phone?

How does she consume media? Does she pick up the newspaper, read a magizine, watch TV, go to the movies, use the internet, run into out of home media such as billboards, hand-dryers?? What is your budget? Can you afford a national poster campaign? Or a regional TV ad? Is PR your best route? Do you want broad awareness? Today’s media landscape is undergoing rapid change.

Patients are willing to pay more if they think they are getting value. Consumers are becoming medical entrepreneurs. Consumers are feeling more empowered - finding information, making decisions and acting based on perceptions of cost and benefit.

Access and referral are the conventional drivers of the clinical pathway. What are the new drivers? That question is answered in this panel.

The Building Better Businesses in Healthcare Conference was organized by Harley Street Direct.