Persona Development Agency for Healthcare Buyers

Knowing who your audience is doesn’t necessarily tell you what motivates them. Each prospective buyer has very different goals, concerns and decision-making criteria.

At Elliance, we develop ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and audience personas to help healthcare companies understand these differences. An ICP defines the types of prospective customers that are the best fit for an organization. Personas bring those audiences to life, revealing their motivations, aspirations, challenges and decision-making criteria.

The result is a more informed foundation for positioning, messaging, content strategy and digital marketing.

Our Process for Creating Healthcare Personas

For an At-home Physical Therapy Service provider, we recently applied the same research and synthesis process to three distinct audiences: patients, physical therapists and health systems:

1. Research: Develop audience hypotheses. Survey patients, physical therapists, health systems and industry insiders. Examine relevant appointments data, CRM, search and paid-media data.
2. Synthesis: Identify patterns in audience motivations, aspirations, barriers and decision criteria. Develop personas and translate the findings into positioning and messaging.
3. Messaging & Optimization: Apply persona insights to content, campaigns and digital experiences. Test, measure results and refine the approach.

For this three-sided marketplace, we developed various personas for these groups:

1. Patients: Life stage, acute vs chronic conditions, insurance coverage and ability to pay (self-pay vs. Medicare) and care setting (at-home vs. in a clinic). Motivations may include convenience, extending health span, maintaining independence and improving quality of life.
2. Physical Therapists: Career stage (early career, family stage, and mid-career), professional goals, workload and employment preferences. Motivations may include professional autonomy, ease of doing business, growth in earnings, and job satisfaction.
3. Health Systems: Decision-makers such as program managers, CFOs and CAOs, motivated by clinical outcomes, operational efficiency, financial performance and patient satisfaction.

Turn Audience Insight Into Marketing Results

Irrespective of the person who comprises the committee of buyers, the principle is the same: understand what the person needs to accomplish, what stands in the way and what evidence will influence the decision. The resulting personas inform not just messaging but also content strategy, website experiences, search visibility, and conversion paths.

The better you understand your audience, the better you can shape your strategy, sharpen your message and improve your results.

Elliance helps healthcare companies and providers turn audience research into actionable personas, strategic positioning, and more relevant marketing.

Let’s identify the audiences that matter most to your healthcare organization and develop a strategy around what motivates them.