Audiologie - hearing-instruments-market

Developping the business: the People

noreply@hautetfort.com (clesan) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:13:00 +0200

The People

We are talking about people in terms of patients. So to define these patients, we can use a picture divided in Existing Patients, Potential Patients, or Referral Source (that is from other patients, medical community, third party, or managed care). In that part, we should know about the lifestyle demographics and psychographics of the population involved. Usually this point could be considered in the “place” category in a marketing budget.

Please read below an example of strategies supporting a goal. You will poi tout the relation between the specific strategies and how the objective was quantified:

Objective: increasing profitability

Strategies:

Eliminate unprofitable activities
Increase prices
Sell premium priced products
Emphasize cost reduction
Sell more products and services
Add point-of-purchase products
Decrease spending
Improve effectiveness of patient service
Cross-train personnel

First of all, the objective is price related, the strategies cover a range of product mix elements: products, price, promotion, and people. The critical element is to ensure that the strategies proposed help achieve the overall objective with which they are associated.

The hearing instrument profesionnal, the patient, and the third party

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Developping the business: the Price, the Promotion and the Place

noreply@hautetfort.com (clesan) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:06:00 +0200

The Price

As mentioned previously, marketing, positioning and methods are based on the price in your shop. And the price is linked to your product offering, high prices for low or mid segment products could create a distortion in the customer perception, but should give you the way to survive, to grow and match the financials goals to sate in your business plan. So, as you can read, the price is a very important point so we will discuss about it later in special issue. But don’t forget that it is the basis to establish the success and the image of your practice.

The Promotion

Media advertising, publicity, brochures and literature, personal selling, sales promotion, direct marketing (including mailing, telemarketing), patient education, sales incentives. Advertising is not the only way to promote.

The Place

Also called the location of your shop. It reflects your target (city, country, and region) but it reflects also your strategies on terms of design clientele, with new technologies integrated. So this point is very important too as the price. It is a part of your practice image. We will suggest a few examples later.

Above: the Appel Store lacated in New York

Below: A pet shop "pourri" somewhere

The location reflects your ambitions and your target

Developping the business: the product (part 2)

noreply@hautetfort.com (clesan) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:27:00 +0200

Understand the market

When you’re on a market where the new technologies is an important point, so don’t hesitate to position your shop as a leader in this area. This position will be clear through your offer in terms of new and sharp products. For example, you will show and offer a strong port folio with the best brand in the digital hearing aids market. These brands will support you image. In contrary, if you work with brands not supporting this point will be a weak in your communication.

Focus on intangible positioning factors having to do with quality

It’s still important to keep an eye open on services, and of course mostly when the new products become obsolete. And in the hearing aids area, this obsolescence can occur rather quickly.

Focus on specific audience and serve it better than anyone

You could be specialized on home service or in retirement institutions where the population is the main target of the hearing instruments target. Another good target and specialization for a dispensing audiologist is the children area and the paediatric fitting thanks to the national health coverage and in addition the need of top product for this target. It’s also a good way to develop a positive image toward a large public and to the ENTs network.

Experiment and pay attention to market reaction

Change you preconceived though about facts like the CIC is not consistent for elderly people. That’s not true! This population can mange these products and actually they prefer this invisible solution. Matching the primary demand of this population is well viewed by it and result in a good patient driven image.

Developping the business: the product (part 1)

noreply@hautetfort.com (clesan) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:49:00 +0200

So now, please take a moment for considering the product. The product refers to the overall nature of the goods and services provides to one's patients. Product strategies involve the selection of products, the number and brands managed (including also product skill, knowledge, and expertise), hearing analyses,outcome measurments, services, warranties, and return policies. Which products to use are often decided by the image, profit margins, investment, technology, reliability, and by what the supplier is able to help the audiologist with professionaly and personnaly. This decision appears to be made on the basis of both product performance and business realities. For example, most dispensing audiologist have come to grips with the initial euphoria of the expense coverage and recognize that persons with hearing loss are not beating a path to their door to purchase assisitve listening devices. Most find that their practices are sifficiently inventoried if they have alerting devices (especialy for the doorbell or phone), something for TV use, a phone amplifier, and a hard wire remote mic to earphone communication device. Suggestions for deciding how to position a product in the marketplace will follow in the next article soon with the understand market trends, intangible position factors, the specific audience and the market reaction. This analysis come from the one of McKenna, though in 1986.

"It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another" (G. Gekko -WallStreet)