How to Define Your Target Market in Private Healthcare: A Practical Framework

In private healthcare, understanding your target market isn’t just a strategic nice-to-have — it’s essential for saving time, focusing your sales effort, and driving conversions. For manufacturers selling into clinics, success often hinges on knowing which providers are most likely to buy, and how to cut through the noise to reach them faster.

And yet — despite best intentions — we see a common challenge: many manufacturers don’t have a clear, shared definition of who their target market really is. Different teams often have different views, which makes it harder to align efforts, prioritise outreach, or scale effectively.

That’s why we use this framework — to give commercial teams a common language and a structured way to identify and prioritise their true market.

Framework for defining the private healthcare market

1. Total Population

Start here. If you’re trying to figure out where to place your product in the private healthcare sector, the first question to ask is: what’s the health need my product addresses, and who has it?

This isn’t about everyone who could possibly benefit, it’s about clearly defined populations you serve. There are many sources to consider, for example NHS stats, ONS population data, or consumer behaviour insights to scope the market size.

For example if you were considering the private weight management market, you could think of anyone with a BMI over 27 as being viable. This would be a useful proxy to understand the size of the potential market amongst the population.

2. Potential Market

Now we pivot from people to providers, for example, what types of clinics or pharmacies actually offer services that are relevant to the population you serve.

This is your potential provider base, ie. those who could, in theory, carry your product or service (but are not yet qualified to do so).

For example in diagnostics, this could be GP high street pharmacies that have the potential to offer health screening.

3. Available Market

From that potential list, who are the providers that could afford your products or are in a position to offer it.

This is your available market; clinics or pharmacies with the budget, operational capacity or commercial capability to offer your services. Its important to note that the available market is not yet qualified to buy (see below) but are interested in offering your product.

Knowing this helps you avoid pursuing accounts that don’t have the ability to act, even if the interest is there.

4. Qualified Available Market

In healthcare, manufacturers are only allowed to sell to those with the right qualifications and meet the current standards set out by the different governing organisations. This ensure patient safety.

This stage is about filtering out any providers that aren’t qualified to offer your product, whether that’s due to training, licensing, or clinical governance.

For example if a clinic was interested in offering botulinum toxin injections then they would need to meet the regulatory guidelines to administer.

We think about this definition of the market different to the available market. The reason being is that those in the available market could one day meet the standards set out by the regulators. however it is essential for all manufacturers to have clear definitions for these to ensure that patient safety is at the hard of the approach.

5. Target Market

From that qualified pool, where are you choosing to focus?

This is where your commercial strategy kicks in. Your target market should reflect not only eligibility, but fit with your sales model and likelihood to convert.

Examples:

• Corporate pharmacy groups over independents (better scale, procurement structure)

• Clinics with digital booking and patient acquisition systems

• Clinics in London or Manchester, where demand is higher due to population density.

This is the step where most teams go wrong — they confuse qualified available market with target market. But your target market is about positioning and choosing which part of the qualified available market you wish to target.

6. Penetrated Market

Finally, who have you already converted?

Your penetrated market is the segment of your target market where you already have traction. This is how you measure your market share, identify white space, and monitor saturation over time.

We use Rare: Monitor, a dataset that profiles over 100,000 UK healthcare providers, to help manufacturers see:

• Which clinics are using their products

• Who hasn’t converted yet

• Where the biggest growth opportunities are

Why We Use This Framework With Clients

One of the biggest challenges we see with healthcare manufacturers especially those operating in redemption models, is how they define the private market.

Ask five people on the team who your target customer is, and you’ll probably get five different answers. That creates noise in the business. Sales and marketing aren’t aligned, strategy becomes reactive, and growth feels harder than it should be.

This framework solves that by putting tight definitions around each stage of the market. It gives your business a shared language so everyone’s talking about the same thing — from your total population, right down to the prospects you're actively targeting.

It’s particularly useful for manufacturers who haven’t had to think too much about the private market before. Maybe you've been focused on NHS or distributor channels, and now you're trying to grow into self-pay clinics, private pharmacies, or direct-to-provider sales. This helps you structure that transition and go to market with clarity.

It gets everyone on the same page and stops you wasting time.