Engaging Your Patients: Personas 101

What’s the first question we ask ourselves when creating content for patients?

Some marketers believe it’s “What do patients need from us?”

And, well, that’s a good question. It’s an important question.

But it’s not the first question we ask ourselves. The first question healthcare marketers (and all marketers, if they wish to be effective) is “Who are these people?”

Who are your patients? What is their approximate age demographic? Where do they live? What language(s) do they speak? Where do they shop? What are their favorite brands? Why? What media are they listening to/reading/watching?

Where can you find this information?

This is the fun part. For the most part, you probably already have it. It’s in the data you collect with every new patient intake. All you need to do is put this data to use by creating personas.

What’s a persona?

A persona is a fictionalized, generalized set of characteristics and traits that embody an organization’s typical patient/client/customer. It includes all of the answers to the questions posed above, and more.

When we have a good idea of who were are talking to, we can customize the message around them and their needs. But first, we have to get to know them.

To do this, we ask more questions. We gather real live folks from this data set, and we interview them about what brought them to the clinic, why they chose it, what they’ve experienced, what they wish to experience, and more.

We can’t begin to talk to patients without first having a solid understanding of who they are.

That’s why all of our campaigns at KineticHealth begin with research (lots of research) to determine personas.

Next….we have our persona….now what? (See Persona 102 for ore details)