Healthcare is deeply personal. At some point, every single individual is impacted by it - whether as a patient, caregiver, friend or family member, or industry professional. These experiences can significantly impact the way people perceive healthcare – and even in the way they engage with companies in the space.
Given the nature of this industry, it’s critical for health technology companies to build deep, authentic relationships with their end-users. One key way to do this is by using humanized messaging in your marketing. According to Healthgrades’ 2024 Healthcare Marketing Trends Report, humanized messaging is a top trend for companies this year, as “emotional marketing and narratives that emphasize stories of resilience, hope, and patient success better resonate with target audiences, ultimately leading to stronger connections and brand loyalty.”
By leaning into humanized messaging and storytelling, marketers can more effectively convert audiences into customers, and customers into advocates.
Here are three tips to achieving success:
Put yourself in your audience's shoes. You need to know your audience inside and out before you can effectively speak to them. What motivates and triggers them? What are their preferences and pain points? What language will elicit an emotional response? This requires digging deeper than traditional market research. While persona profiles, surveys, interviews, focus groups, and conducting competitor analysis are all good tactics to consider, to truly understand your targets, you must take it one step further. Spend a day living your audience’s life. Shadow your customers and their patients for a day (or two!) and learn directly from them. Observe how your technology is used in a real-life setting, learn their workflow and integration processes, and watch how the technology impacts patient care and interactions - and where there may be frustrations. This is a tactic well-used in many other industries, and should be better adopted by healthcare. In doing this, you’ll bridge a large gap between customer and vendor, and make greater strides in building authentic relationships.
Get personal and showcase compassion. Messaging is the main component of any marketing effort. To solicit an action or interest from a desired user, you must captivate them immediately. Leveraging a deep understanding of your audience, be authentic and showcase compassion. Ask yourself, “What would inspire me when reading about this?,” and “Does this truly speak to what my audience cares about?” If you don’t feel inspired by the messages you are writing, neither will your audience. Consider leveraging customer and patient stories to further support this effort, as people are often inspired by hearing from others like them.
Test your message. To know if your message is hitting the mark, factor in time for a soft launch. A/B test how slight variations in messaging - in ads and thought leadership content, to organic and paid social media content - performs from a reach and engagement standpoint, and make pivots where necessary. Trial, error, and trial some more. Getting your message right is crucial, so taking the time and steps needed to ensure success will provide valuable insight into understanding just what it is that moves and inspires your audiences.
At Alloy, we’ve helped numerous health technology brands create personalized campaigns and reap success.
We recently worked with client RetireeFirst to rebrand in order to better articulate the company’s value proposition, engage its target audiences and secure market leadership. Our initial research found that much of the messaging being used in the market, including by competitors, was dry and unemotional, focusing on services and solutions rather than outcomes for members and health plan sponsors.
We knew this was a white space opportunity to differentiate RetireeFirst. Leaning into the company’s mission to advocate for members and customers, we created a more human-centric brand, from tone of voice to product messaging and customer-focused content, that showed empathy for the fact that retiree healthcare benefits are personal and stressful to navigate. By positioning the company as the caregiver in a maze of product-focused competitors, RetireeFirst’s new brand resonated immediately — delivering increased Share of Voice and new SQLs within the first week.
If your HealthTech brand is seeking to drive measurable results and make more meaningful connections with its audiences, let’s talk.