Understanding The Psychology Of Patient Acquisition For Doctors

Psychology-Of-Patient-Acquisition

What is Neuromarketing?

Neuromarketing is the science that provides us with valuable insights of what influences human decisions.
How to Leverage Neuromarketing?
Medical studies have shown that without emotions we cannot make decisions.

The limbic system is our emotional brain where love, compassion, optimism, pride, joy, happiness, as well as anger, fear, anxiety, guilt, sadness, and embarrassment, are focal points of these parts and influence our decisions.
That’s why when people have strokes they can have difficulty making the decisions. Their limbic system is affected.

So, what makes a consumer buy?
People make buying decisions based on their “connection” to a product or service therefore it is necessary for businesses to create a great value proposition that connects with the buyer emotionally.
Businesses don’t pay enough attention to what influences decisions.
So what influences buying decisions?

  • Needs
  • Wants
  • Wishes

Take the view of your audience for a minute.

  • Perspective Taking is taking on the view of another person.
  • Visual perspective is the Perspective of the magician.
  • Emotional perspective is the perspective of the audience.

Why is there a high failure rate with new medical practices?

Doctors typically don’t identify with the patients and most lack business and marketing acumen. They rarely put themselves in the patient’s position. Companies that do traditional marketing typically fail to pay attention to the buyer’s unconscious habitual behaviors.

Have you seen Google ads before?

Of course, you have but there is a science behind it; the ad links are colored in blue. Color impacts our emotions and behaviors. Google wanted to figure out if a change in color influenced a user’s behavior. They tested 50 various shades of blue in the ads.

One shade of blue did generate more clicks and by adopting that color google increased revenues by about $200 million annually and it has grown even more from there. If you know what clicks with a user’s unconscious pattern of behavior you can apply that knowledge and substantially enhance the customer experience.

Another example:

Amazon tested and recognized if they increase loading page speed by just 1/10 of a second it increased sales by $1.7 billion. Apparently, users unconsciously noticed it. Improved customer experience leads to better outcomes like more sales. 

If Google’s color changes and Amazon’s improved loading page speed time result in more sales what does that tell us about our decisions? Are we in control of our decisions and why do small subtle changes change buying behavior?

There was a study in 1975 about the “Effects of supply and demand on ratings of object value” that compared the demand for cookies in a jar. One had 10 cookies the other had two. The results showed that the jar with 2 cookies was in higher demand and more desirable, mostly influenced by the impact of supply and demand.
That two cookies in the study were rated higher in price and quality because more people wanted them even though all the cookies used in the study were exactly the same. It implied that when an item is wanted by more people it must be good and valuable even though that isn’t always the reality. The cookies were exactly the same.

Our decisions can be designed by uncertainty and there is a natural bias in our brains to favor what the rest of the crowd likes hence, influencers can impact the decisions of their followers along with social networks or community ecosystems.

We all ask questions but do we all LISTEN and respond to the question with actionable initiatives?

So what should you do? 

As you analyze how your product or service addresses a customer’s needs, wants, and wishes or touches their hearts and minds you want to find game changers that create some emotional attachment where you can.

For example, if you are a doctor and you want to attract patients between the ages of 60-80 years old you might consider targeting their children because there is plenty of data that will support the fact that Generation X’ers are helping their parents more and more with managing their health and medical conditions. If you educate them and provide information and data that takes their parents’ circumstances into consideration they will want to have their parents meet with you. 

If you understand what influences buyers’ decisions and find those game-changing ways to pique someone’s interest with proper implementation then you can influence them toward the primary goal which is to become a patient in this case.

Bridging the gap between marketing and potential patients.

Mark Twain said, “the two most important days of a man’s life are the day on which he was born and the day on which he discovers why he was born.”

Why was your business born? 

What problems were you trying to solve and what were the value and benefits you wanted to deliver to your patients? 

Create a Sphere of Influence by demonstrating your expertise and talking about specific medical issues that arise in this patient population.

Tips for Doctors:

Create a 30 second video of why I became a doctor or what your process for treating patients is or how you help patients with a specific medical condition.

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