How HealthTech Startups Can Target Their Perfect Customer

Health technology startups are full of talented people who are pros at finding innovative solutions to problems facing the industry. However, as previously discussed, the healthcare market is extremely complicated, with many stakeholders to consider.

It’s important to make sure that your sales process targets people who have the real power when it comes to purchasing decisions and who are ready to buy. And your marketing strategy needs to help them see the true value of what’s on offer. So in a competitive market, your marketing must speak to your audience better than anyone else in order to make an impact.

Here are a few steps you can take to target your ideal customer:

Identify your Service Available Market

The healthcare market is enormous. This is why it’s important to identify your Total Available Market (TAM) so you can then break it down into segments, or your Service Available Market (SAM). By doing this, you can ensure you reach the right people with your messaging.

You can work out who your SAM is by…

…Developing your customer marketing persona

Building a customer marketing persona is key if you want to convert customers. Face-to-face interviews are a great method of conducting research as you can get a proper understanding of how they feel and read their body language. If it’s too inconvenient to do in person, you could use videoconferencing or focus groups. Surveys are also an option if you can’t speak to enough people face-to-face or reach them by phone.

Preparation

Before conducting your research, consider the type and size of the organisation you’re targeting. Are you interested in reaching just one or two key decision makers or multiple tiers in the hierarchy? Who’s making the decisions, and are they the end-users? If they’re not, you need to make sure you reach them as well or you could be wasting your efforts.

Other things to consider include:

Outside influences affecting their decision — buying decisions can be directly affected by factors such as government regulations. Keeping across these will mean you’ll have a full understanding of the healthcare landscape and won’t be caught unawares.

How does your target customer make buying decisions — to make sure the sales process runs smoothly, it’s important to understand how your target customer makes buying decisions and how long it takes.

What’s their biggest pain point — often people don’t know what their problem is until it’s defined for them. By asking the right questions, you can help them identify their pain points. Here are some examples of questions you could ask your target audience to help them work out what their pain points are:

-On a daily basis, what is the issue most affecting your work/life/business?
-What stops you from changing this?
-How do you feel your personal values affect (name problem)?
-How do financial pressures prevent you from tackling (name problem)?
-How do you educate yourself about (name problem)- e.g. blogs, video content etc?

Create a marketing roadmap

Once you have this knowledge, you will be able to build a strong rapport with your customer base and increase the likelihood of them buying from you. You can use these insights to map out your ideal customer’s journey and understand touchpoints where they make purchasing decisions.

You can develop content to make their journey easier — remember that you now know how they educate themselves about their problem, so you can make sure you’re there with amazing content to inform and engage them.

This will also help you to persuade investors to invest in your startup, if you’re looking to go down this path. Showing that there’s a real opportunity in your chosen marketplace will help to convince them that your product or service is worth the money.

Once you’ve enough data, analytical insight means that you will be able to improve and refine your customer journey. Perhaps you will make new discoveries and your customer profile will change. The important point is that you will be able to make informed decisions every step of the way, and save valuable time by streamlining your marketing and sales strategy.