The Multi Media Pitch

by Jack Evans

Consumers are buying scooters on TV, lift chairs from radio ads. Sound crazy?

Think again. The home health care marketplace has evolved dramatically from the traditional senior patients who walk in with prescriptions for HME from local medical referral sources. But have you and your business ever changed the way you operate? According to the annual surveys conducted in our marketplace, maybe 10 percent of HME providers have become successful retailers. Think of the opportunity! But is anyone really listening?

Consumers who are caregivers and patients themselves need home health care products on a regular basis. But they rarely know where to go to buy them. Retail businesses that advertise educate their communities, building brand and product awareness. Read on if you would like to learn how.

The home health care professionals and companies profiled below advertise, sell volume and are very profitable. What are they doing differently?

For starters, they believe:

• Advertising is a long-term commitment, not a short-term expense;
• Successful mass media advertising is a direct result of saturation and frequency; and
• Television enables independents to compete successfully against the chains.

Formulas for Fame and Fortune

To be successful, mass media advertising requires a strategic plan. Following are the elements to consider when advertising on radio or television.

1. Show & Sell

Advertising in the mass media such as TV, web and radio can have two radically contrasting objectives. The first is to create a brand that is easily recognizable by the consumer. The second is to sell product at a price. Both objectives can be achieved successfully. But they each reflect different demographics, advertising campaign strategies and corporate philosophy.

TV advertisers of HHC products usually talk in numbers: 1100 canes in 3 minutes, 80 scooters in 30 minutes, 40 walkers per location per weekly run-of-station spots. They are pitching the right product at the right price at the right time to the right audience. Their sale is a proven formula that works for a particular TV medium, whether it is home shopping, infomercials or commercials on cable and network stations.

“We start with a mission statement or philosophy before we create an advertising campaign,” explains Scott Purdy, CEO of MEDIchair and helpmom.com, Alberta, Calgary, Canada. “Then we create a storyboard and commercial. Finally, we develop impactful point-of-purchase displays using still photos from these TV spots. The minute our customers walk into one of our locations, they are able to identify our TV-advertised products.”

2. Build Brand

In contrast, other advertisers focus on building a name instead of selling specific products. Developing a brand name, or an image in the mind of current and potential customers, is definitely a long-term commitment in advertising.

“Are you the guy out of Greeneville who has those great radio ads?” Floyd Harwell was just asked by someone he met at a funeral 75 miles away in Knoxville. Harwell, president of Home Medical Services, Greeneville, TN, says that this person recognized his voice immediately.

“When I went back to the office and looked up his name, I found that we had sold and dropped-shipped his family two lift chairs – and they have never been to visit our store! We never sell product at a price. We simply talk about our company and our service and hope people remember who we are when they need us. I guess that after eight years our advertising must be working!” Many locals call Harwell the “Motel 6” pitchman of Tennessee.

For a five-location regional HME in southern Oregon, Andy Boesl, marketing director for Home Medical, wanted to develop “top-of-mind awareness” in the community about their company. “We don’t have the dollars to provide steak barbecues for all of the physicians in town, but we still need to educate people about the products and services our Home Medical offers. Television has been our great success story, because the chains just don’t advertise on TV.”

“Now when a discharge planner reads the list of HME providers to a patient, most patients tell us they picked us because they heard about our company on TV. Plus, whenever we visit referral offices, nurses and physicians tell us that they see our ads on the local news hour. Both our sales and credibility have soared.”

3. Know Your Demographics.

How do you know where and when to run your spots? “We begin with a station’s demographic ratings,” says Purdy. “We specifically look for the convergence of two high-frequency viewer groups, the influencers (caregivers) who are between 46 and 60 years old, and the end-users who are over 60,” says Purdy. If you watch Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune, look out - you fit right into this target audience!

“We also focus our spots on the early morning news programs when the influencer is watching. This triggers the ‘permission cycle’ in which Mum won’t buy until her daughter (or son) gives her permission. The mother says she really doesn’t need the lift chair or walker, but the daughter explains to her why she really does need it. So Mum goes ahead and signs the check because she now has her daughter’s approval.”

Boesl of Home Medical utilizes ongoing customer satisfaction surveys and their ORXY surveys to know where and when to advertise. “We constantly ask our customers which stations and programs they watch. As a result, we only advertise on the local evening news programs and now reach the majority of our customers 55 years and older who caregivers or patients.”

Almost every radio and TV station offers a demographic profile (just ask for their media kit) that outlines their core respective listeners and viewers. Compare this data with your own customer base until you find the closest match. Or simply have your customer service representatives ask your current customers for their favorite radio personality or television show.

This demographic information will help you target the station, program and time for placing your spots. Note one significant difference between cable and network TV: on cable you are able to select a station which appeals to a particular demographic, such as Lifetime for women 55+, and all spots – including the run-of-station freebies – are targeted at your specific age group. However, on network TV stations, each show appeals to a different age group, so spots need to be clustered around specific demographic time blocks (such as AM national news and noon or evening local news for adult children and caregivers).

4. Sell The Pitch.

Canes were one of the first home medical equipment products sold on QVC. “Now viewers can buy reachers, back braces, lift chairs and even scooters on cable shopping networks such as QVC and HSN,” says Pam McGregor, president of Creativity Plus and PAMed, Naples, FL. “Who would have thought we could sell a $2,000 scooter on TV without touching or riding it? And sell 80 units on one segment alone? Once $20 was the magic number for selling products on TV, but now the more expensive the product, the better it sells.”

On TV, successful HC advertisers “say and show” their product’s benefits as many ways as they can. They show the product in action to hook your viewer, while using a voice-over narration to repeat the personal benefits. Their ads are glamorous, captivating - and repetitive. These spots succeed because they stimulate memory, action and sales.

On radio, successful advertisers talk personally one-on-one with their listeners to avoid being tuned out. Many promote active listening by using a known radio personality and don’t write a set script. These advertisers let their announcer talk naturally to listeners and play off their familiarity with that program, radio personality and station.

“We only advertise on Maxine’s local news program,” explains Harwell. “When I first moved to Greenville and went to work at the hospital, at noon everyone flocked back to the lunch room to listen to Maxine’s news program on the radio. The first time this happened, I thought that a disaster must have happened. And do you know what the feature news story was that day? The fire department was called to someone’s house to put out a fire and the damage was confined to their pot of beans. I knew right then that if burning your beans makes the local news in a small town, then this was the place to advertise!”

5. The Medium.

Television has become the “golden” medium for selling HME. Why? Viewers can see you demonstrating the personal benefits they or their loved ones will enjoy from these products. Whether they are watching a simple commercial, a longer infomercial or a segment on a cable shopping network, consumers can instantly see if and how they will benefit from buying what your are selling.

“On cable shopping networks, viewers know they won’t have a second chance to buy,” says McGregor. “They can fold over a catalog page and never go back to order the item. The can watch an expensive infomercial but not act because they are unsure about who is taking their credit card number or whether they can return the item if they don’t like it. But on cable, viewers know and trust the program hosts and believe they are being offered a once-only opportunity.”

Boesl has refined Home Medical’s advertising program to utilize different media for specific goals. “We have learned that print and radio work best when we are holding events such as diabetes health day or a wheelchair tune-up day. To simply sell product at price, we use stuffers in our invoices and mail order shipments.

“Television is the medium that has successfully built our community image. Our customers are always coming in and complimenting us on how we are doing. We show real patients with real testimonials in our TV ads, and customers keep telling us ‘That’s exactly how Home Medical is!’ Our customers know that we truly are the way others say we are.”

6. Frequency & Saturation.

The next step in successful media advertising is to negotiate contracts with the stations that run the programs most watched by your customers. Advertisers on contracts usually buy “ROS” (run-of-station) spots at discounted or two-for-one rates, because these spots are run anytime the station needs filler which most often is during the late night and early morning hours. MEDIchair’s Purdy “pulses” their TV advertising, running 30-second spots heavily for four or five days, and then is off the air for an equal number of days. “If you work with a station’s salesperson, you can usually negotiate to get most of these ROS spots at good times instead of at 1 or 2 AM.”

Home Medical’s Boesl runs their image spots continuously year-round. Frequency and cost vary, because the first half of the year is busier while the second half is quieter and affords a better buy. “We pay between $8 and $12 per spot and run our image ads once per day per station during the evening news every Monday through Friday,” reports Boesl. “Consistency and frequency are the core of our TV advertising and the reason why we have become a known commodity in the communities we serve.”

Home Medical spends approximately $1,000 monthly on image ads and another $2,000 per month when they run product spots with their vendor co-op partners. The TV advertising is spread over four stations, one cable and three network affiliates, to reach customers in their five geographic markets. “Our “Premier Partnerships” co-op program for TV advertising with companies such as Nova, McKesson, Pride and Bayer has helped us greatly increase our sales. We grew our blood glucose meter business 600% in one year alone.”


Annual HME Marketing/Advertising Budget = 5% of $1Mil gross sales

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