Peeling Back the Layers of the Onion

Before you decide to transition all your lead gen marketing from offline to digital channels, this article from CNET today points out the importance of understanding your targets and how/where they would like to communicate and interact with you.

The article states that younger doctors who have been raised on technology are more apt to embrace it in how they build their practices, treat their patients and communicate and engage with both patients and colleagues. Conversely, older doctors, not having been raised in a digital world, are reticent to embrace IT as robustly. Thus digital marketing platforms and vehicles may not be as effective with more senior targets.

This points to the importance of segmentation and micro-segmentation, with the need to delve further into what would seem like a homogeneous group (ie doctors) to decipher their specific needs, traits and habits.

Surveys and focus group research (not as formal as it sounds -- calling a dozen or so of your customers and asking some basic questions about how they like to engage w/your company, what they like/dislike, where they go for their info, etc) -- are absolutely critical for you to understand how to best communicate and market to your intended targets. It's a wise place to start when developing new messaging and outreach vehicles and as an ongoing exercise helps to supplement the valuable data and results you'll get from your campaigns once they've been deployed.