Ophthalmology Patient Portal and Online Communication Editorial

Tire Gizmos, Patient Portals, and Marketing Advantage

It doesn’t matter what your company sells, understanding your customer’s needs is critical to your success. Timing is equally important. Add the ability to deliver the marketing message when the customer is receptive and you have created a significant competitive advantage. This is just as true for selling discretionary services such as LASIK, or premium IOLs as it is for any product.

A Tale of Two Tire Stores

Before wading too deeply into the specifics in ophthalmology, I want to look at a tale of two auto tire stores and their respective approaches to marketing. Classic Tire takes a traditional approach. It allocates a huge marketing budget and initiates heavy spending on billboards, cable TV and promotional discounts. Classic Tire increases its sales, but at a cost that fails to improve profits. Classic Tire’s approach is not cost effective because its message falls largely on deaf ears. Buying tires is rarely the first thing someone thinks about each morning. In fact, based on rough calculations of average tire life, less than 1% of car owners may be thinking about buying tires on any given day. Classic Tire has no way to

 Paul C. Seel, MD, MBA
 Vice President & Medical
 Director
 
 Sophrona Solutions
 Minneapolis, MN

optimize the timing of its blitz. Its expensive promotions and ads will be ignored by all but the handful of people consciously aware they’re in need for new tires. This is not a good value proposition.

Custom Tire, in contrast, profitably uses a new technology to target its marketing and promotions. It spends nothing on traditional media and bases its marketing on a new technology, the tire sensing gizmo. It places one of these in each set of new tires it sells. This gizmo is able to transmit real time information on the owner’s driving characteristics and tire wear to the store. The customer and Classic Tire also get notified when the tires need to be replaced. Custom Tire’s gizmo allows it to understand its customer’s needs based on driving patterns and to know when he or she is in the tire market. Rather than broadcasting broadly to reach the tiny minority of car owners thinking about tires, Custom Tire approaches only those that actually need tires.  Additionally, by understanding customer driving patterns it is able to propose a suitable replacement product. This creates a huge advantage. Custom Tire increases sales and profits and exceeds its customer’s expectations at a much lower cost. It's delighted customers send their friends and family members to Custom Tire.

Classic Tire’s ads and promotions are poorly timed for all but a tiny minority. It’s approach is costly, inefficient and increasingly regarded as annoying background noise as the competition for our attention becomes increasingly fierce.

Forget about tires! What about knowing patient needs in an Ophthalmology Practice?

Needless to say, there is no tire gizmo. Tire outlets have neither a way of determining their customer’s needs nor when they might show up to shop for tires. There is, however, technology available to allow ophthalmology practices to create a similar advantage as the tire gizmo. Ophthalmology practices can use patient portals to create a similar marketing coup as Custom Tire’s did—here’s how.

In addition to allowing patients to make appointments, re-order contact lenses, pay bills, and communicate securely from their work or home, around the clock, a patient portal enables on-line registration prior to their scheduled appointments. Registration can be configured to collect information about what patients want but more importantly, identify current and future candidates for products such as LASIK and IOLs, the benefits of which, they may not be consciously aware. This creates a tremendous advantage. The ophthalmology practice understands its patient’s needs and just as importantly the optimal time to approach the patient. Just as a car owner is unlikely to think about tires except around replacement time, a patient’s attention on eye care needs will be focused on the handful of days leading up to his or her appointment. As with our tire buyers, predictably a very small percentage of the population will be thinking about eye care needs on any given day, mostly those with an upcoming appointment. The rest of the population will ignore unfocused marketing. The patient portal efficiently enables the practice to craft and deliver a targeted and customized marketing message for a product that will improve the patient’s lifestyle. It is more likely to resonate as it is pertinent and timed when the patient is listening. The patient can receive print and/or video material via the portal and will have a better understanding of the product, treatment, or surgery and its benefits before the appointment.

In summary, the patient portal is the vehicle to understanding the patient’s needs, both conscious and latent, and creating an advantage for the practice over its competition very similar to Custom Tire’s imaginary tire gizmo. It’s worth repeating this for emphasis. This advantage is unique and not available in any non-healthcare related retail opportunity. The practice knows what the patient wants and it knows this in advance of the appointment, creating the opportunity to orchestrate the right message and make its best case for the merits of products or services. The portal creates the opportunity to deliver print and video materials when the patient is listening.

So although there are no tire gizmos, the patient portal is an exciting new technology that enables a much more efficient and targeted marketing approach to reach your patients.