In a previous post to Marketing Monday Bart did an excellent
job of identifying the most attractive segment of the orthodontic market. In his blog post Bart pointed out that through
extensive research and real world experience working mothers aged 35-45 years
old is the best segment of the market to focus your advertising and promotional
efforts.
In a much broader perspective identifying the target market
is one part of an overall marketing plan.
Technically speaking developing a marketing plan is a 6 step process
resulting in a plan that effectively communicates the value of your services to
customers, builds a relationship with your customers and differentiates your
organization from competitors. The most
critical step in the marketing planning process occurs in step 3; segmentation,
targeting and positioning (STP).
No orthodontic practice or business can be all things to all
customers. It is in the STP process
where you focus your marketing efforts by identifying the best customers for
your practice and creating a way to differentiate yourself from your
competitors. Here is a brief overview of
what happens during each step in the STP process.
Segmenting – the process of grouping customers within a
market according to similar needs, habits or attitudes that can be addressed
through marketing.
Targeting – this
is the process of selecting the segment of the overall market that you choose
to pursue.
Positioning –
this is the process of giving your brand or services a distinctive and
meaningful place in the mind of the target customer.
Segmenting the orthodontic and selecting the target market
was discussed in Bart’s earlier post. In this blog post I
focus on the positioning step in STP.
The thrust of positioning is to differentiate your practice
from your competitors. Positioning strategies
vary along 4 different variables; physical attributes of orthodontic services,
service attributes orthodontic services, channel attributes of the orthodontic
services and pricing attributes of the practice’s services. The key is to identify how your practice is
different from other practices in your area along one or more of these
attributes. Below are some examples of
different positioning strategies based on the different attributes.
Physical attributes - offering lingual braces, Invisalign or
colored bands, state of the art clinical facilities, patient education
software, case presentation software.
Service Attributes – office hours, immediate scheduling of
consultations, accepting assignment of insurance, waiting room amenities.
Channel attributes – multiple office locations, convenient
office location, proximity to other retail businesses, parking availability,
handicap access.
Pricing attributes – lower pricing, no down payment, free
consultation, discounts on ancillary services
An effective orthodontic positioning strategy will use one
or more of the (or other) attributes listed above to convey value to the target
market and set the orthodontic practice apart from the other orthodontic practices.
Let’s look at a couple of examples of positioning in action
in the orthodontic industry. A quick
search on the internet for “orthodontic practices” resulted a large number of
links to web pages for orthodontic practices.
For this example, I simply clicked on the links for two of the practices. Below are the tag lines from those sites.
Site A: “Finally,
Pediatric and Orthodontist in one location”
Site B: “Where Advanced Orthodontic care and a beautiful
smile meet.” (This site also went on to
describe different orthodontic treatment techniques).
Site A is using service attributes to differentiate
themselves from their competitors by stressing the convenience of having a
pediatric and orthodontic practice in one location. Site B, on the other hand, is positioning through
the physical attributes of their orthodontic practice services by stressing advanced
orthodontic care that can handle a wide range of orthodontic treatments
(technology). Note, neither of these
sites incorporated pricing or channel attributes as part of their positioning
strategies.
The positioning strategies in the examples above use one or
more factors that convey value to their customers and differentiate those
practices from the competitors in a sustainable way. Perhaps your practice has a convenient
location, has office hours that start before 9:00 A.M., and you charge no down
payment and offer free consultations. If
the combination of these service attributes differentiates you from other
orthodontic practices in your area then that should be your positioning strategy. Thus, your advertising and promotion efforts
should stress those values to your target audience.
Marketing is all about creating value in the minds of your
target audience through a process of segmentation, targeting and
positioning. In his earlier post Bart segmented the orthodontic market and identified the most prosperous target market. To complete STP process you should take some
time to identify how your practice is different from your competitors. Ask yourself, “How does my practice create
value in a different way from other practices?”
The answer to that question defines your positioning strategy. Incorporating that positioning strategy into
your advertising and promotional campaigns will effectively separate you from
you competitors.
As
always, if you have any questions about the process and how it works, please let us know.
Additional Reading
Positioning is a very powerful and challenging topic even
for seasoned marketing executives. For
additional reading I suggest, Positioning, The Battle for your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout.
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