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Jan 6, 2020    Burn Book

The Art of Supplementation, Not Always Revolution

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In selling a product or service, you probably already know it’s not a “build it and they will come” scenario. Even if you know what you offer and how much better it is than the current industry standard, this isn’t enough. Not with industry norms, cultural norms, and an unready zeitgeist on your hands.

Injection of Doubt

Our strategy, as a top marketing, branding, and design agency in Austin, starts with “introducing doubt” to your target audience. Even though it would be easier, you can’t just let your product fly and see if people catch on. That is a one way ticket to the third page of Google results and being undercut by a knockoff brand on Amazon.

Introducing doubt into the status quo turns eyes in your direction to begin with, and only after that doubt has been established should you dive into bragging about your product/service’s capabilities. Whatever norm reigns in your industry, there are gaps to fill, and that’s where new and improving products find a way in (and up).

More Complicated Than Playing Monopoly

Googling “buy new iPhone” doesn’t come up with Amazon and then Apple and then Best Buy just because they are competitors that all sell iPhones. They come up in that search because Best Buy needs you to know Apple and Amazon aren’t the only or best option. Looking up Prius prices is going to come up side by side with a Honda hybrid. What looks simply like competition in capitalism is actually a carefully crafted ad (sometimes direct, sometimes indirect) designed to inject doubt into someone who thinks they’ve made up their mind.

But there’s one industry that’s got brands and marketers scratching their heads more than usual, that’s telehealth (technologies allowing communications in the healthcare field) and telemedicine (the virtual delivery of services from doctor to patient).

The Art of Supplementation, Not Always Revolution

In the healthcare industry, doubt already flies rampant about quality of care. And introducing a telehealth product or service, especially to older generations, automatically has its own set of inherent doubts and mistrust (i.e. does virtual care allow more misdiagnosis, unnecessary prescriptions, lapses in insurance coverage, etc).

Basically, you hardly need to inject any doubt because it already exists so heavily. What the bigger problem for telemedicine marketing, telehealth business plans, and any and all products/services involving technology and patient care, is why your product is the perfect supplement to the status quo, not necessarily a revolution.

While the pros definitely outweigh the cons in the telehealth industry (like convenience, long distance care, easier follow-up, and lower costs for both patients and providers), the main con of not knowing if you can receive the best care virtually as opposed to in-person is a HUGE one. Is a picture of someone’s tonsils high quality enough for a doctor to diagnose over FaceTime? Is a Zoom conference follow up about a prescription personal enough to get the full picture of its effects on the patient?

What is put at risk for the sake of the pros? At what point can the line safely be drawn between what requires an in-person visit, and how do you balance that with barriers like remote areas or low-mobility patients?

The doubt is there, which is why in this case, as much as Rock Candy Media LOVES a daring or outcasted rebel, supplementation might be better for your product rather than attempted revolution.

— A telehealth call for a doctor to follow up with a patient getting over a sinus infection to make sure it hasn’t become pneumonia, without the still-sick patient having to come into a facility again

— A SaaS or platform allowing appointments to be made and short questions to be answered between provider and patient so all information can be gathered in all ways

— Extended access, for both patients and providers, to specialist consults

All in all, increased patient engagement and decreased healthcare costs for all parties puts ideas like virtual healthcare, telemedicine apps, and even biotech companies in the limelight — but only as a killer (excuse the irony) supplement to otherwise necessary in-person care.

Revolution for this industry is less so turning it on its head and flipping the script, and more so providing such intelligent virtual care that your target audience feels unfinished without it.

Trust us, we’re a sucker for rebellious, industry-flipping brands, and strategies that make even us nervous. But we also know where our love for something won’t best serve our clients, and no ego ever served anybody.

Sit down with our CEO if you want to see how your telehealth product can change the industry for the better, by supplementing what people already understand. Sometimes revolution happens slowly.

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