Pinball Wizard or Bowling Alley Marketing

In the late 1900s and early 2000s, the standard way to create a website was to electronically convert your trifold, colored, patient brochure and put it up on the Internet. This type of website is no longer an effective method of marketing and promoting your practice.

Traditional marketing resembles bowling: a practice uses traditional marketing techniques (the bowling ball) to reach and influence patients (the pins) (Figure 1). Mass media (the bowling alley) function as mediators for marketing content. Medical marketers throw the ball as hard and straight as they can, in the hope that it will hit the target. But the marketing journey isn’t a straight line anymore and neither should your marketing be. Marketing today is actually more like a game of pinball (Figure 2).

Figure 1. Traditional marketing resembles bowling.

Figure 2. Marketing today is more like a game of pinball.

Social media has changed the picture. Marketing is now more closely aligned with a pinball machine. “Pinball marketing” is an environment in which marketing instruments (the balls) are used to reach patients (bumpers, kickers, and slingshots). In the new pinball environment, patients have much more control than they had in the old bowling alley atmosphere. Empowered patients receive regular messages and actively participate through social media by sharing their experiences with doctors and their practices. The “slingshots” and “bumpers” of social media further increase the unpredictability of the marketing dynamics by multiplying social media episodes and providing the basis for future pinball activities. To continue the pinball metaphor, the pinball machine is our current environment, the balls are marketing instruments, and the audience are the spinners, bumpers, and flipper bats that propel the ball away from the hole that ends the contact with that ball (Figure 2). Unlike bowling, where the “pins” had no power to make an impact, the audience in pinball marketing can actively take part, redirecting the ball or causing it to speed up, slow down, or even stop. But be careful not to shake the machine too vigorously or you will have the dreaded tilt message and your game will be terminated.

The dramatic growth of social media has affected medical practices in ways we are just beginning to understand.

Since its introduction in 2006, Facebook has grown exponentially. By 2013, it was one of the top three websites, along with Google and YouTube. One out of seven persons on this planet is an active member of Facebook,(1) in spite of limitations to people under 13 years of age and the fact that it is not accessible in China, the world’s most populous country.

This dramatic growth of social media has affected medical practices in ways we are just beginning to understand. This article offers an overview for those physicians and practices interested in digital marketing and how social media has changed the playing field between physicians and both existing and potential new patients.

We have to go where our markets are (e.g., email, Facebook, Twitter) and create relevant content, experiences, and platforms where they can engage with us.

As a marketer you can no longer simply roll a bowling ball and wait for it to hit your target—you must actively take part. You must interact with your existing patient or potential new patients. It is important to test multiple digital media options, run multiple campaigns, and measure those campaigns to see how audiences are responding to your content or your message. It is essential to identify what works and continue that marketing method, and also to find out what doesn’t work and delete it from your marketing mix. The days of just having a webpage or a blog and considering that effective marketing are over. You must provide fresh content on a regular basis and you must have multiple social media outlets such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

Bowling is like playing American baseball or standing over a pot of water and watching it boil. Pinball, on the other hand, is played at high speed; you have to continually monitor and tweak the vast multimedia options, and you must take action based on your findings. But your job doesn’t end after you’ve uploaded a new social media post or issued a new press release—you have to follow its course carefully, measure its impact, and then identify any trend or crisis.

If you don’t move fast enough in pinball, you lose—and it’s the same with healthcare marketing.

If you don’t move fast enough in pinball, you lose—and it’s the same with healthcare marketing. Monitor your audience and be ready to respond to what attracts or deters your audience. There is a world full of potential patients who have access to social media platforms, where they can share both their positive and their negative experiences about a practice’s services. Negative comments can quickly escalate into a crisis that threatens the success of the practice.

In this chaotic, interactive world, your marketing approach needs to move from bowling to pinball. This not only will help you recognize the increasing power of the consumer and embrace the cocreation of brand stories, but also will enable you to develop a deeper engagement with your market and your patients. When you see the value of a multichannel campaign and start understanding how each component complements the others, you will start to reach that top score!

If you are not connecting with your patients like a pinball player in this era of social media networking, then you will fail to connect to potential patients who may want to avail themselves of your services.

Your community of potential patients is the lifeblood of your social networking. It’s essential to ensure that this community is full of potential patients who are actually interested in what you have to say or the services you wish to offer. You want to target those people in your community who are interested in you and your practice, not the fact that you friended them first and not the fact that you use a certain hashtag in your tweets. Those actions seldom result in new patients. One of the methods you can use to identify those targets is to consider psychographics.(2)

To reach your ideal patients, you must know what or who they value most, where they get their medical education and medical information, and what content appeals to them.

Psychographics focuses on the interests, attitudes, and emotions of a segment of potential patients—exactly the things practices need to understand to best promote their services to the particular segment of the population that the practice wishes to attract. To reach these ideal patients, you must know what or who they value most, where they get their medical education and medical information, and what content appeals to them.

Psychographics is like demographics on steroids. Psychographic information might include your patients’ habits, hobbies, health-related experiences, and values. Demographics explain “who” your patient is, whereas psychographics explains “why” they become part of your practice.

Your message must be engaging to anyone who accesses your material. Your social media pipeline must be full of information that highlights the physicians and the practice. For example, if you write an article on your urinary incontinence program, and your title is “The Diagnosis and Treatment of Urinary Incontinence,” that probably will not entice readers, even if they have incontinence, to read your article or to make an appointment with your urologic or gynecologic practice. However, a title such as “Urinary Incontinence—You Don’t have to Depend on Depends!” is likely to attract readers to drill deeper into your message and perhaps contact your office, ask questions, ask for more information, and, hopefully, make an appointment. You are actually having an electronic conversation with a potential patient and you want to receive a response that starts the conversation. Remember that it’s social media, and you must be social with it.

Today, in an Internet world and with social media having become ubiquitous, the bowling metaphor no longer fits. Now it’s time to play pinball. Now medical practices release a ‘‘marketing ball’’ consisting of the practice brands and brand-building messages, which are then diverted or bounced around and often accelerated by social media ‘‘bumpers,’’ which change the offering’s course in chaotic ways. After the marketing ball is in play, those who are in charge of marketing and practice promotion attempt to guide the marketing with agile use of the “flippers,” but, unfortunately, the ball does not always go where it is intended. Those who receive the marketing message now can respond, provide their opinion, decide to receive or reject the message, or ask for additional information. Also, potential patients can initiate their own discussion by bringing up topics that are important to them and look for the healthcare profession to respond. Marketing in the pinball era involves the player (the practice) launching the ball into play by feeding engaging and useful content into the game area, where it is moved around by those online. Occasionally, it will come back to us via email or through physician review sites that affect our online reputation. At this point, we can use the flippers to interact with patients and potential patients and pass the ball back into the social media sphere.

If our practice does not feed the social media sphere by flipping communications back, the ball will drop through the flippers, and the longer-term, two-way relationship between the patient and the practice will cease to exist.

Bottom Line: Practices have to start a conversation, listen to what the patients want, and then respond in a timely fashion. Medical practices have to learn how to maneuver the pinball in this new environment or the ball will slowly slide down between the flippers and be out of play—meaning the practice won’t gain new patients or maintain the loyalty of existing patients.

References

1. Hennig-Thurau T, Hofacker CF, Bloching B. Marketing the pinball way: understanding how social media change the generation of value for consumers and companies. Journal of Interactive Marketing. 2013;27:237-241.

2. Baum NH. Patient profiling using psychographics: demographics vs. psychographics and why culture matters most. J Med Pract Manage. 2020;35:234-236.