And today’s health audiences are basing their definitions of radical convenience on brands outside health care.
It’s simple what today’s patients want: everything. And faster.
This isn’t a new trend. What is new is how high the bar is for health brands to satisfy the expectations of today’s patient population. Which is why we first shared this trend with you in our 2017 Health Care Marketing Trends Report.
And today’s health audiences are basing their definitions of radical convenience on brands outside health care.
For example: grocery store chains now offer delivery service. You can order your week’s worth of groceries on your phone and have them delivered to your house, or pull up in the store parking lot and have your bread, bananas and 12-pack of Le Croix loaded onto the back seat.
No checkout lines. No hunting for the right brand of cereal. Radical convenience.
Another example of radical convenience outside health care: the home sound system.
Not long ago, if you wanted to have theater-quality sound, you had to wire your house and hire a technician to program the remote controls.
With Sonos, there are no cords. The manual is a series of pictures. Installation takes minutes, not hours, for theater-quality sound in your home.
Radical convenience.
Health brands have a profound challenge.
Their products, services and solutions are not naturally radically convenient. It’s infinitely more complicated to develop a care plan for a lung cancer patient than it is to ping Uber for a ride to the airport.
And yet today’s patients have a high bar for convenience and a low threshold for any brand—including health care brands—that compromise their finite patience.
Health brands also have the unique challenge of engaging audiences who might be in massive pain or afraid they’re going to die.
The grocery stores taking part in home delivery have, by definition, an easier audience to please.
But that doesn’t change the fact that health brands are being measured by patients on factors beyond quality and expertise.
For your health brand to win, it’s time to decide how the trend of radical convenience will help your brand win.
Here’s a question to get you started:
How easy can we make it for our patients to get the care and resources they need?
How easy can you make it for patients to get an appointment?
How easy can you make it for your patients to know exactly how their care is coordinated among multiple doctors, offices, insurance companies and pharmacies?
How easy can you make it for patients to find the resources they need from your website?
How easy can you make it for patients to find a community of others going through similar health situations so they know they’re not alone in their journey?
Leveraging the trend of radical convenience begins with a simple question: “How easy can we make it?”
In health care, the bar for radical convenience is low.
Which either means your health brand has a lot of work to do…or has a lot of opportunities to give patients what they want.
As with seeing and leveraging trends, it’s all in how you look at it.
So how do you see the trend of radical convenience and how might you leverage it? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
And don’t forget to download your free copy of the Health Care Trends Report.
