Mixed Methods Research: A Better Path For Marketing Insights
An insights-first approach to healthcare marketing will set marketers up for success in developing strategies, content, and campaigns that are relevant and impactful. But if you’ve spent enough time in the marketing or market research realm, you know that quantitative insights and data have long ruled the roost… yet, not all decisions informed by purely quantitative data have a backbone of stakeholder understanding to support them. As a matter of fact, in recent years, there has been an increased focus on the value of qualitative data in healthcare marketing—and there is a movement at hand to leverage both approaches when planning strategy and creative.
The recent emergence of qualitative research as a foundational tool for healthcare marketers has significantly transformed the approach and effectiveness of healthcare marketing. And it makes complete sense. Tricia Wang, a qualitative researcher, ethnographer, and economist, says, “Some organizations believe that numbers are a far more superior form of knowledge than stories. This is short-sighted. All numbers still need interpretation and analysis. And if they want to be understood and actionable, they need stories.” Developing a thorough understanding of stakeholders requires marketers to take a thoughtful, systemic approach that doesn’t rely solely on the faceless data points that dominate quantitative insights. Instead, a multi-pronged approach—consisting of both quantitative and qualitative research—allows marketers to understand the problems faced by their stakeholders and the lived experiences that inform stakeholder beliefs, actions, and perceptions.
This perspective dissolves the boundaries between quantitative and qualitative research and opens the door to a more nuanced and powerful path for healthcare marketers seeking to leverage an insights-first approach. Healthcare marketing that champions a blending or qualitative and quantitative insights stands a better chance of being impactful.
Here, we will explore both quantitative and qualitative research and the value of melding the two in a mixed methods approach.
First, let’s level set. When comparing quantitative and qualitative research, I find that the clearest explanation is found in a simple visual: Think of the landscape of your stakeholders—their perceptions and actions. Next, consider research as way of exploring that landscape. Quantitative research is broad, covering a significant swath of your stakeholder’s lived experiences, but in a relatively shallow way. Qualitative research, on the other hand, goes deep, thoroughly exploring the needs, fears, beliefs, motivations, hopes, and other deeply held emotions, experiences, and interactions that inform your stakeholders’ perceptions and actions. Let’s look a little further at each.
An insights-first approach to healthcare marketing will set marketers up for success in developing strategies, content, and campaigns that are relevant and impactful. But if you’ve spent enough time in the marketing or market research realm, you know that quantitative insights and data have long ruled the roost… yet, not all decisions informed by purely quantitative data have a backbone of stakeholder understanding to support them. As a matter of fact, in recent years, there has been an increased focus on the value of qualitative data in healthcare marketing—and there is a movement at hand to leverage both approaches when planning strategy and creative.
The recent emergence of qualitative research as a foundational tool for healthcare marketers has significantly transformed the approach and effectiveness of healthcare marketing. And it makes complete sense. Tricia Wang, a qualitative researcher, ethnographer, and economist, says, “Some organizations believe that numbers are a far more superior form of knowledge than stories. This is short-sighted. All numbers still need interpretation and analysis. And if they want to be understood and actionable, they need stories.” Developing a thorough understanding of stakeholders requires marketers to take a thoughtful, systemic approach that doesn’t rely solely on the faceless data points that dominate quantitative insights. Instead, a multi-pronged approach—consisting of both quantitative and qualitative research—allows marketers to understand the problems faced by their stakeholders and the lived experiences that inform stakeholder beliefs, actions, and perceptions.
This perspective dissolves the boundaries between quantitative and qualitative research and opens the door to a more nuanced and powerful path for healthcare marketers seeking to leverage an insights-first approach. Healthcare marketing that champions a blending or qualitative and quantitative insights stands a better chance of being impactful.
Here, we will explore both quantitative and qualitative research and the value of melding the two in a mixed methods approach.
First, let’s level set. When comparing quantitative and qualitative research, I find that the clearest explanation is found in a simple visual: Think of the landscape of your stakeholders—their perceptions and actions. Next, consider research as way of exploring that landscape. Quantitative research is broad, covering a significant swath of your stakeholder’s lived experiences, but in a relatively shallow way. Qualitative research, on the other hand, goes deep, thoroughly exploring the needs, fears, beliefs, motivations, hopes, and other deeply held emotions, experiences, and interactions that inform your stakeholders’ perceptions and actions. Let’s look a little further at each.
Quantitative: Wading Into Statistics
Engaging in quantitative research provides your hospital, health system, or other healthcare-oriented organization a consistent and generalizable look into the overall perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and behaviors of your stakeholders, including patients, employees, and more. This is a great start, and one that definitely has value.
One of the most common approaches to quantitative research methods is a descriptive approach, in which stakeholders are surveyed to describe the current status of whatever is being studied. When using descriptive quantitative research methods correctly, healthcare organizations can expect clear, objective data allowing marketers to collect information from targeted stakeholders and providing statistically significant results that can be generalized to the larger population.
Straightforward Implementation
Quantitative research methods can be very simple to implement. A typical survey is generally easy to craft and is typically fielded (sent to respondents) through digital channels. Some organizations may implement a patient survey, in which patients are asked to rate the quality of their experience. Others may send more extensive surveys to targeted stakeholders after an appointment or other engagement with their provider to understand the patient’s views of that provider, office, and personal experience.
Reaching more diversified audiences beyond patients, such as caregivers or specific disease states and service lines, is straightforward. Numerous research organizations specialize in connecting hospitals with customers or stakeholders based on various characteristics such as location, propensity, economic classification, age, and health status. These groups, known as panels, are relatively easy to engage when collaborating with an established research partner.
Using Quantitative Research in Healthcare Marketing
Remember, the data collected in quantitative research, particularly the descriptive methods used by most healthcare organizations, provides basic, generalizable information about stakeholders’ perceptions, beliefs, and actions.
Collecting descriptive quantitative data allows healthcare organizations to track changes—both good and bad—over time. This is valuable when implementing new workflows or systems (“How are patients responding to the increased usage of online communication with a particular provider?”) or when considering long-term efforts to impact perception (“Is public perception of your organization getting better or worse?”). This longitudinal approach to quantitative research will provide reliable data that helps identify broad trends and patterns in patient behavior, preferences, and demographics—which are crucial for segmenting the audience and planning large-scale marketing strategies.
Qualitative Research: Diving Into Lived Experiences
Qualitative research typically takes the form of, at a minimum, a thoughtful conversation between a qualitative researcher and a participant. Qualitative researchers make heavy use of probing questions, designed to elicit deeper thought and additional input from the participant on a specific topic without guiding or leading the participant to the researcher’s preconceived ideas or biases. This conversational approach allows participants to feel at-ease, increasing the likelihood of effective engagement with the researcher and ensuring that researchers uncover the information and understanding they are seeking.
Learning from the Stakeholder’s Environment
Ethnography is a specific type of qualitative research that goes beyond conversation with a participant to the gathering of information through observation of the participant’s environment. In ethnography, information is gathered from what participants say, as well as what they do and the environment that they surround themselves with. I find that the easiest way to compare the two is found in this simple statement: Qualitative research relies on what the participant says. Ethnography relies on what the participant says and what the researcher sees. Both approaches provide value for different projects and research questions, but there are always considerations to be made when deciding on the most effective, yet efficient approach to research.
Ethnography does provide a unique benefit to healthcare marketers that is not accessible with traditional qualitative interviewing—video footage. Many ethnographers make use of video to capture observed insights for future reference, and this provides an exciting opportunity for marketers to make use of captured footage for future marketing and communications efforts and to share learned insights in a multi-dimensional way with key internal stakeholders and decision-makers.
A Flexible Approach
Qualitative approaches to research also require significantly less participants to achieve confidence in the findings than quantitative research. While the simplicity of quantitative research makes it highly generalizable, qualitative research deeply explores specific questions of interest within a specific cohort of stakeholders. With a detailed interview guide, qualitative research aims to achieve thematic similarity. Thematic similarity—or cohesive themes, points of interest, and consistent explanations for behavior or perceptions throughout a cohort group—often occurs with participant numbers as low as seven to twelve per cohort. Compare this to the number of respondents needed to achieve high levels of confidence in quantitative research—often reaching into the hundreds, if not thousands, of respondents. It quickly becomes clear that qualitative research has many efficiencies when engaging with qualified respondents or participants.
Furthermore, qualitative research is flexible in ways that quantitative surveying can never be. When engaging with participants, effective qualitative researchers will probe, revise questions, and explore new topics or points of interest that arise within an interview to ensure that they are able to gather the information or understanding that they seek. This flexibility allows researchers to make moment-by-moment decisions that improve the quality of data gathered, rather than sitting and waiting on data to come in from faceless quantitative respondents, who may or may not provide healthcare marketers with the information they really need.
Using Qualitative Research in Healthcare Marketing
As healthcare marketers, investing in qualitative research can provide incredibly valuable insight into the stakeholders who most impact the successful development of marketing collateral and strategies. Qualitative research can help marketers answer the tough questions they are presented with on a daily basis—”How can we increase utilization of a certain service line?” or “What will improve our customer perception in this region of our service area?” or, perhaps most importantly, “What can we do to improve the health and wellbeing of our community?”.
Qualitative research takes time—time to develop the goals of your research, the research aims or major questions you need answered, and the interview guides used by qualitative researchers to guide conversation with stakeholders. Beyond that, it takes time to engage with stakeholders, rather than asking them to take a simple survey. However, the benefits of this time often outweigh the detriments because it allows healthcare marketers to dive deep into the lived experiences that drive consumers’ decisions and perceptions, and to develop strategic plans to effectively address and impact those experiences.
An Example of Mixed Methods Marketing Strategy: Exploring Primary Care in the Appalachian Highlands
The Quantitative Component
The quantitative research portion of a LIFT insights project for a client based in rural Appalachia highlighted a key fact for the local health system: Only seven in ten area residents currently had a primary care provider, compared to nine in ten nationally. At the time, the health system understood that primary care acted as a key front door to the health system—a front door that many members of the community were unwilling or unable to access.
Quantitative survey respondents indicated that the primary reasons for not engaging in primary care were a lack of insurance, inability to find a care provider accepting new patients, limited or unavailable transportation, and, importantly, the perception that primary care was unnecessary for them.
Furthermore, quantitative research indicated that those community members without a primary care provider were much more likely to engage in emergency care, at an increased cost to both the patient and the health system.
Quantitative research not only confirmed the suspicion of health system leaders regarding the underutilization of the primary care service line—it also pointed researchers in the right direction as we sought to more deeply understanding the experiences and beliefs informing the actions and perceptions of those not engaging in primary care in a unique market.
The Qualitative Component
A qualitative research component was developed to expand and support the quantitative research performed. This additional component allowed researchers and the health system’s communications and marketing leadership, as well as primary care leadership, to identify key questions raised by the quantitative survey and more deeply explore the lived experiences informing the barriers to primary care identified by survey respondents.
Qualitative research interviews were performed with members of the community, including current patients and non-patients. This research uncovered that the barriers to primary care usage identified by quantitative respondents were informed by specific concerns unique to the consumers in this market. These concerns, informed by real, day-to-day negative experiences with provider communication, long wait times, and difficulties accessing important information, centered on fears that a health system of its size would be unwilling or unable to provide quality care, worries about the aging physician population in the region, and significant doubts about the capabilities of telehealth primary care options.
Qualitative research unearthed these specific, addressable concerns that informed stakeholder willingness and ability to engage in the primary care service line and allowed health system marketing and communications leadership to develop strategic steps to improvement.
The Power of Mixed Methods
How did this mixed methods approach improve the strategic thinking, campaign development, and stakeholder engagement methods of local marketers and strategists serving their local communities and health system?
Quantitative research confirmed system leadership’s assumption that the primary care service line was being underutilized and identified key barriers that resulted in stakeholders’ avoidance of primary care. Furthermore, the quantitative data gathered confirmed the need for further efforts and investments by the marketing and communications teams and justified current strategic plans to better support the service line and serve their community.
Qualitative research built upon the data gathered to provide specificity and thoroughness of understanding. By exploring the experiences and perceptions that contributed to the barriers experienced by stakeholders, the qualitative component of this project laid the groundwork for more specific, intentional, and effective engagement with stakeholders.
This mixed methods research heavily contributed to strategic planning and campaign development for the primary care service line—resulting in messaging that targeted the unique concerns of key stakeholder groups, tactics that increased campaign efficacy, and necessary buy-in and support from all levels of the organization. As a result, the health system saw an increased utilization of the service line and increased access to a vital part of healthcare—ultimately laying the groundwork for a healthier community.
Mixed Methods
A Holistic Approach to Research in Healthcare
Mixed methods research lends itself uniquely well to healthcare marketing research, which requires empathic, patient-centric understanding and strategic planning to be truly effective and to impact change in the healthcare setting. Relying solely on numbers—quantitative data—gives healthcare marketers the what. Qualitative research—stakeholder empathy and understanding—gives us the why. Without knowing why stakeholders engage in specific behaviors, have perceptions, or make certain choices, healthcare marketers cannot make informed decisions and strategic plans worthy of their effort and investment.
Benefits of Integrating Both Types of data
Comprehensive Insights: Combining quantitative and qualitative data provides a more comprehensive view of the target audience. Quantitative research offers breadth, while qualitative data provides depth.
Balanced Perspective: Leveraging the strengths of both data types to inform hospital marketing strategies ensures a balanced perspective that will inform better content and marketing outcomes.
Cross Validation: Using both data types allows for cross-validation of certain data elements and insights. Quantitative data can confirm trends suggested by qualitative insights, and qualitative data will explain the reasons behind quantitative trends or findings.
Robust Strategies: A validated approach will inform a more accurate strategy that is both evidence-based and deeply informed by patient perspectives.
Better Audience Targeting: Quantitative data helps identify broad segments, while qualitative data provides detailed insights into behavioral and cultural preferences of the segment—enabling highly targeted and personalized marketing campaigns.
More Relevant Messaging: Hospitals can craft a highly relevant voice that speaks to the needs and emotions of various audience segments, thereby enhancing engagement and content impact.
Deep Consumer Engagement: By understanding the statistical and emotional dimensions of an audience and related stakeholders, hospitals will create content that is compelling and that champions deep engagement—nurturing higher ROI.
Consumer Trust: Qualitative insights will help you humanize your marketing efforts, thereby building trust and credibility with the community you serve—a particularly important component in the mission of hospital marketing.
Conclusion
Integrating quantitative and qualitative insights is essential for a well-rounded understanding of the target audience in healthcare marketing. Quantitative data provides the scale and objectivity needed for broad strategy development, while qualitative data offers the depth and context necessary for meaningful engagement and personalization. Together, these insights lead to more effective, empathetic, and impactful marketing efforts.
Thank You & Stay Tuned
This is one small portion of a larger series of thought leadership pieces by LIFT Healthcare, where we delve into the transformative power of insights-driven marketing in the healthcare sector. In this piece, you’ve heard from Katie Clem, the Insights Practice Director, and David McDonald, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at LIFT Healthcare.
Up next: Hear from LIFT ethnographers about the intricacies of stakeholder empathy and successful insights gathering in healthcare marketing, including a key component of stakeholder understanding: the Five Dimension of Emotional Truth.