Research & Results: Know your audience – How to utilize “Consumer Pull” and “Healthcare Professional Push”

To optimize the uptake of medical foods for disease treatment or prevention, medical companies need to target both consumers (patients) and healthcare professionals. These two target groups have a different level of knowledge and different needs, and therefore require a different marketing approach.

Published on Research and Results , our Healthcare Client Solutions Manager – Robert Dossin, shared how you best allocate marketing activities to target patients and healthcare professionals.

The Consumer as a Key Focus

Major medical nutrition players used to focus on delivering medical nutrition for malnutrition (for example countering a lack of nutrients). As these products are covered by health services and insurers in most countries, medical nutrition marketers traditionally focus on healthcare professionals: the prescribers. Limited attention is paid to convincing end-consumers. With consumers as final purchase decision makers, it is crucial to understand their needs and perceptions and how to best convince them to purchase these products. Hence a new expertise is required: defining successful consumer marketing approaches.