Marketing Like A Doctor!!

Marketing Like A Doctor!!
- By Kartik Raichura .

Do you remember those days, when you were a kid and you used to play with the stethoscope, faked the doctor handwriting and prescribed people medicines, names no one had ever heard of?

You remember people saying "Yeh Doctor Banega" when they met a kid who always used to top in his class? Most of them did not become doctors, and the one's that did were damn intelligent.

The guy who became a doctor is not smart because he became a doctor, it's because he choose to be one. A person might survive without expensive eatables, without clothes, without shelter, but when a person is ill, he just cannot do without a doctor.

You might be thinking by now, what does management got to do with a doctor. Why is this guy blabbering about doctors, in an article that's supposed to be a management article?

A doctor is the only person who can tell you, "If you do not and get admitted, in this hospital after paying a heft admission fees, you might loose your life in the next 24 hours".

He is the only guy who can say, I don't know what's wrong with you, I don't know if you are having a mild heart attack, or if its your blood pressure or if its just some gas, but you need to pay me my fees, because I came here to tell you that I don't know the problem.

Now, which service industry gives this kind of returns?

Why does a doctor enjoy all these benefits? Why do we have to trust the doctor blindly? Why don't we care about money when our family doctor gives us a warning and asks us to pay a heft amount?

The reason is fear, fear of loss of life, fear of illness, fear of pain, fear of not fitting in with everyone, fear of rejection, fear of looking miserable, fear of not performing up to someone's expectations, fear of fearing the outcome, fear of uncertainty.

So, what's up with that, you might ask!!

Marketing of products is very much like the doctor making us fear the outcome. Most companies use fear as a tool in their advertisements to market their products. Let us see some hypothetical examples:

v If you don't use so and so deo, then you will smell like a pig or a goat and your girl friend will dump you.

v No matter how bad your personality, no matter what you wear, no matter how you talk, if you own a stupid so and so bike, girls will go crazy for you.

v If you don't make your child drink bourn vita, your child will be ye high as a dwarf.

v If you don't have a blackberry cell phone, you are not an effluent businessman.

v If you are black, then beauty DOES NOT lie in the eyes of the beholder. No one will marry you and you will be treated the way Indians were treated during the British Raj. UNLESS, if you use fair and lovely. Even if you are as dark as a Negro, you will turn into Aishwarya Rai after using it.

v You think you are the complete man? Then you got to wear Raymond's. If you don't, well that makes you an incomplete man, I guess??

v If you are an oldie and you are retired, you must invest in retirement plans, else your son is going to embarrass you by giving you a couple of hundred rupee notes so that you can buy your grandchild a bicycle on his birthday.

What am I trying to point out here?

Let us look at another aspect that we should learn from the doc.

Empathy and Sympathy are two different things.

Sympathy is where a doctor says "I have never seen such a case before, it's a really bad situation, I feel sorry for you, lets see what can be done"

Empathy is where the doctor says "This is something totally new, but don't worry, we will do the best that can be done to save you. You have my word"

Now, in either situation, no matter what the outcome, any person will always prefer the second doctor.

So what do we learn from this?

Your actions should be empathetic and not sympathetic.

Combine fear and empathy with satisfaction and you have a brand loyal customer.


If you can create fear in the unconscious mind of the consumer and then portray that your product is the best alternative to eliminate the fear, it works 99 times of 100.

So, go ahead, use your creativity, check out what fear can be manipulated to best promote your product, the road to success awaits you!!


 
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