
By: Ira Pasternack
In an occupational medicine setting, you can use market research to understand the workplace health needs in your area. It can help you determine what services, products, or treatments to focus your efforts on. Additionally, it can provide insights into how those customers perceive your business, including their overall satisfaction levels with current offerings. Market research also allows businesses to better understand their competition and take action to stay ahead of their competitors.
Ultimately, market research is important because it helps you gain a better understanding of your customers and your market so that you can make more informed decisions about your marketing activities. It helps you identify areas where improvements can be made and new opportunities uncovered. Market research can be divided into two broad categories: primary and secondary.
What is market research, and why is it important?
Market research is the process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about a target market, potential customers, or products. The purpose of market research is to identify and understand customer needs and desires. Then, you can use that information to create a successful marketing strategy.
In an occupational medicine setting, you can use market research to understand the workplace health needs in your area. It can help you determine what services, products, or treatments to focus your efforts on. Additionally, it can provide insights into how those customers perceive your business, including their overall satisfaction levels with current offerings. Market research also allows businesses to better understand their competition and take action to stay ahead of their competitors.
Ultimately, market research is important because it helps you gain a better understanding of your customers and your market so that you can make more informed decisions about your marketing activities. It helps you identify areas where improvements can be made and new opportunities uncovered. Market research can be divided into two broad categories: primary and secondary.
Primary research is conducted from scratch using surveys, interviews, focus groups, and other methods to collect data directly from customers or prospective customers.
Examples of primary research include questionnaires, one-on-one interviews, observation studies, and online surveys.
Secondary research involves examining existing data, such as industry reports, government statistics, and already conducted market research. Examples of secondary research include studying annual reports and published material available online or in libraries.
How surveys are used in market research
Surveys are a way to get information from people, to find out what they want and need. Surveys can include multiple-choice, ranking, open-ended, and yes/no questions. Surveys are a great way to get detailed information from customers. They provide valuable insights into customer needs and preferences, which can help guide marketing decisions such as product development, pricing, promotions, and more. Surveys also allow you to track changes in customer opinions over time and compare responses across various demographic segments.
Using surveys to conduct market research can be a cost-effective way to gain insights while also providing an opportunity to engage customers directly in the development of products and services. Because they allow you to focus your research on the exact market you serve, surveys are an especially valuable tool in your occupational medicine marketing arsenal.

The benefits of using surveys for occupational medicine market research
The use of surveys in market research provides numerous benefits for your occupational medicine practice. Surveys can help you:
- Gather in-depth information about how people in your area perceive the need for and importance of workplace health services
- Determine what your competitors offer and how much they charge
- Measure customer satisfaction levels with current offerings
- Evaluate current services and products compared to customer needs and competitor offerings
- Identify opportunities to increase market share
- Develop new services or products for the practice
Surveys are also beneficial because they allow you to focus your research. When using secondary forms of research, you are generally limited to national or state-level data. This higher-level data can give us a good starting point for evaluating a market. Still, it will only give you an approximation of the real-world situation in the market(s) in which you operate. Primary research allows you to get a better look at the companies that might actually use your services. Among the types of primary research, surveys generally give you the most comprehensive amount of information.
Types of Occ Med Surveys
Depending on what stage of business you are in, you can use surveys in different ways. A great place to start is with a pricing survey of your competitors, since in most markets, pricing is far less consistent than you might think. By surveying the other occ med providers in your area, you can gain a better understanding of how these other practices both structure and charge for their services. Since the information you need is the same information that these practices need to make available to potential customers, a survey can be an efficient and effective process.
You can also survey employers in your area to determine who they currently use for occ med services and how satisfied they are with their options.

Tips for designing effective surveys
The most successful surveys are those that are well-planned and carefully constructed. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when designing your survey:
Ideally, a survey of employers should be divided by business category, so you can focus your questions on the needs of each industry. Based on the response to your survey, you can often find leads and generate initial sales meetings with employers who are not satisfied with their current options.
Once you have a client base, you may also consider customer satisfaction surveys. These allow you to gauge customers’ overall levels of satisfaction with their experiences at your practice. This helps you identify areas for improvement and drive loyalty among existing customers.
- Keep the questions simple and focused. Your goal should be to collect data that is accurate, relevant, and easily understood.
- Make sure the questions flow logically from one another. Warm people up with a question or two that is easy to answer, saving more complex or open-ended questions for later in the survey.
- Ask the fewest questions possible to gather the information you need – the longer the survey, the harder it will be to get people to complete it.
- Test your survey before sending it out to ensure everything is working properly.
- Analyze and act on the results promptly. Timely responses are essential for taking effective action based on findings from surveys.
Along with survey design, consider how you will get responses. If you are depending on email or other mass communication methods, expect a very low response rate. By following up with a call, you can ask your survey questions and document the answers while talking to someone, or at least prompt them to respond to the email that they received.
By following these tips and utilizing surveys as part of your occupational medicine marketing plan, you can gain valuable insights that will help you better understand your target market and refine your practice’s offerings. This will help ensure the long-term success of your practice by providing customers with what they need to stay healthy and competitive in their workplace.
And now, a survey for you!
This article about using surveys got the team that creates Visions thinking about how we can improve the content that NAOHP delivers to members. We’ve been considering options for increasing the readership of Visions, along with other ways to improve how the organization can help spread the word about what’s going on in the world of occupational medicine.
And so, we’ve designed a survey for you, our readers. Can you take 5 minutes to help us learn more about the content you’d like to see from NAOHP?
