A Guide to the Scientific Career. Группа авторов
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that many of them fear unnecessary surgery or inappropriate surgery with outcomes worse than the initial concerns. Many local primary care physicians describe how they field patient questions about geographically distant surgeons who have a strong online presence and marketing. They are often unsure who to recommend in the local area.
Our surgeon puts a lot of energy into staying up to date with the latest techniques and warranting surgery through accurate diagnosis. He does not wish to build a practice around handling direct patient calls at this time. He builds his positioning around the specialist and primary care physicians and his ability to offer discerning and appropriate surgery, expertly performed. In this way, he sets himself apart because he determines a need or a problem in the community, thereby accepting the values of his target audience. He has appropriately positioned himself in relation not to what he himself wants, but strategically in line with the values he has assessed in his target audience.
When preparing your positioning, consider three key components: your target audience and the problems that they value solutions for, your attributes that solve their problems, and some acknowledgment of the competition (how you uniquely qualify). This is expressed as a “promise” to your audience and provides the basis for your brand. Your brand promise is how you capture this in writing. It is ideal for you to have only one or two brand positionings. Consider the case study of an academic physician who wants to advance her career and learns that her value to clinical research organizations may also be valued among her institutional administrators.
15.3.1.3 Case 3: A Clinical Oncologist/Researcher at an Academic Hospital
A clinical oncologist/researcher is inspired to become an expert in designing study protocols after participating on a drug manufacturer's advisory board. Through that experience, she learned that the manufacturer's medical directors need insight into current treatment paradigms and patient characteristics. They need oncologists who understand the drug discovery, clinical study process, and how to anticipate potential problems that can arise with study protocols. They simply cannot readily find individuals who specialize in this. Our oncologist has experience in designing local clinical trials and collaborating with colleagues at her institution. She has collected a wealth of literature regarding clinical study design and in particular within oncology.
That same clinical oncologist is an active researcher who is interested in moving up a career ladder within her academic institution. She begins researching how promotion decisions are made, who decides, and what attributes are important to those decision makers. She uses her network and mentors to gain a better perspective on how she measures up and what attributes she has or can build to make her a standout candidate.
She creates her positionings separately based on her unique attributes that solve the problems already identified by her audiences.
A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis is another exercise that can evaluate your positioning with respect to time and movement toward a goal. To conduct a SWOT analysis, simply label a sheet of paper with four quadrants representing each word of the acronym (Figure 15.3). Then list qualities in each quadrant as they relate to your positioning(s). Weaknesses can reflect how you need to build skills or credentials to support your positioning. Opportunities and threats can capture how you may want/need to evolve your brand in the future. For instance, threats can represent how a negative incident can affect your brand image. By performing a SWOT analysis, you can acknowledge threats while focusing on the big picture and the value of your brand.
Figure 15.3 The SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats).
15.4 Creating Your Brand Elements
Once you have determined your one or two key positionings, you should think about your brand elements for each. When branding a company or product, brand elements include a name, logo, tagline, colors, etc. For personal branding, visual elements may not be necessary. Here is where you can begin to articulate your brand promise, though. True personal branding will often include a résumé or curriculum vitae (CV), headshot photo, and various length biographies. All of these materials need to clearly support your positioning. You may want to include other information, but the theme should be consistent. You may also want to consider writing a tagline or catchphrase, even if it is not communicated verbatim externally.
If you have more than one positioning, you may need to build two sets of personal branding elements to clearly communicate with different audiences. Additionally, if you are a physician working in the community, you may want to consider your personal brand as more of a small business brand and include a company name, logo, etc. This is particularly useful if you expect your business to grow and intend to hire other healthcare providers.
15.4.1 Brand Elements Examples
15.4.1.1 Case 1: A Community Pediatrician
For years the community pediatrician's practice referenced above has not had a particularly unique or memorable logo. They have called themselves Pediatric Associates. Half of the partners have professional photos of themselves on hand. Working with a brand strategist, he creates a new, more memorable company name and unique, appealing logo. All of the partners work on their personal branding to ensure that they have resumes, bios, and photos at the ready that support their company positioning. Their new company name becomes Parents' Choice Pediatrics Associates with the tagline, “providing prompt, leading‐edge care.” By creating a unique name that doesn't just describe their general service, they take advantage of the opportunity to describe what sets them apart − their understanding of what matters to parents. And it implies far more than just excellent care.
15.4.1.2 Case 2: A Community Surgeon
The neck surgeon ensures that his CV is in order as well. He obtains testimonials from his mentors (other healthcare professionals) and patients, especially those that mention his unique and valued skills. He arranges professional photos (headshots, during surgery, and with happy, health‐looking patients taken at follow‐up visits). He collates statistics about his performance that are accurate and truly reflect his skill. He prepares short videos answering commonly asked questions. And he ensures his practice and staff are ready to educate and facilitate the surgical process.
15.4.1.3 Case 3: A Clinical Oncologist/Researcher at an Academic Hospital
The clinical oncologist/researcher mentioned earlier knows that her CV will be an important part of her brand elements. For her external audience, those individuals and companies who organize early stage advisory boards, she will highlight her work in designing clinical trials and her department's infrastructure that allow her to recruit, enroll, and monitor trial subjects. To her internal audience, she ensures that her CV is kept current with all necessary information to support tenure and promotion. Through networking with her institution's communications office, she hires a writer to write a biography to keep on hand. She also arranges for a few professional photos to be taken, including some that show her working with patients, giving presentations, and working with colleagues. She collaborates to prepare articles (both peer‐reviewed and white papers) that can help build her reputation as an expert in designing clinical studies.
15.5 Strategizing Your Tactics
Once you have determined how you want to be positioned and have some clear ideas for how to communicate this to your target audience(s), you are ready to strategize your tactics. Simply, this means how you will reach your target audience and let them know about who you are and what you do. This exercise also works