AMI PODCASTS
Successfully running a healthcare practice is no easy task.
Janice Wheeler, the President and her team share their insights on what healthcare practice owners can do to help their business grow without sacrificing their work-life balance.
Whether you own a health care practice or just want to learn more about practice management, these are the podcasts for you!
Check our new podcasts out at the links below!
Practical Marketing: Part Two
More On Marketing Your Practice
This is the second in a series of Practice Quick Tips addressing proven marketing concepts for expanding your practice. Here are a few more simple but effective ideas that you can implement to improve your marketing efforts and bring more business in the front door. (More to follow in subsequent issues.)
Good Will Ambassadors:
Enthusiastic patients/clients who love your care can become good will ambassadors for your practice.
What is a “good will ambassador”?
Per the dictionary, “good will” means: “an intangible, saleable asset arising from the reputation of a business and its relations with its customers.” And, an “ambassador” is: “an authorized representative.” All you have to do in your practice to create this “good will ambassador” is deliver perfect, caring service to your patients/clients. (Easier said than done – we will cover this in a future newsletter.)
We are certain that you are willing for a fair number of your clientele to be good will ambassadors for your practice and for them to go forth and tell other people to come and see you, right?
However, these enthusiastic patients/clients often don’t know how to promote you and you need to give them some direction.
Directions:
In getting to know who your clients really are, you will find out many important details, such as where they work, what clubs they belong to, what teams they play on, and so on. These are all marketing opportunities for you. For instance, in their workplace there may be a bulletin board where the patient/client could (as a Good Will Ambassador) put up your practice newsletter. Or do they have “lunch and learn” discussions in their place of work where you could be invited in to speak? Do the clubs they belong to have bulletin boards or places to put up your business cards, etc.?
Community Newspapers:
In your area, there are usually one or more community weekly newspapers published and circulated. These papers tend to be read front to back far more frequently than daily papers, and are generally cheaper to advertise in. Plus, ads in these papers usually have a higher frequency of response. Any ad placed in a newspaper should be big enough to grab or draw attention to it, and a splash of colour to draw peoples’ eyes to it is always good. Be sure to run your ad more than one time as it often takes 3 insertions before you see the results. Therefore, the Rule of Thumb is to run an ad at least 3 times before you judge the results. Have fun with this!
>Click here to read Practical Marketing: Part Three
Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to The Art of Management Inc. and a clickable link back to this page.
Practical Marketing: Part One
Marketing Your Practice for Doubling Your Number of New Clients
This is the first in a series of Practice Quick Tips addressing proven marketing concepts for expanding your practice.
Very simple concept.
Yet, we have met with over 6000 healthcare providers to analyze their practices and found that many of them relied almost exclusively on referrals as their main source of new patients. Getting referrals from your patients/clients IS a good thing — keep it up. However, if you want to double the number of new patients, all you have to do is add on some effective external marketing.
How Many Patients or Clients is Enough For My Practice?
There is a certain attrition in any practice as patients/clients move away, pass on, go away to school, and so on. Therefore, there is a need for an ongoing inflow of new patients on a weekly basis.
In the 1,400 practices we have consulted over the last 25 years, most of our clients found that the minimum number of new patients needed is rarely ever less than 7-8 per week per provider in the practice.
If you do very little promotion and marketing, then you will have very few new patients per week coming into the practice. Marketing is both an internal and an external affair. There are many hundreds of ways you can market a practice.
Here are the first couple of simple but proven, effective things that you can implement to improve your marketing efforts and bring more business in the front door. (More to follow in subsequent issues.)
Networking Both Initiates New Alliances and Rejuvenates Older Ones
Healthcare practitioners in your area will be uncomfortable referring their patients to a provider they don’t know. When was the last time you or your staff made a point of contacting the local MD’s, Optometrists, Chiropractors, Dentists, Vets, etc. who have patients/clients who may need referring to you?
Make a list of these professionals who you feel would be good network partners to work with, and if you don’t already have a good relationship with them, start one. Call them up, have a lunch together, build an alliance and grow.
Business Cards: Simple, Yes, but Effective Nontheless
This may seem too basic or simple, since everyone has a business card. The question is: Do patients ask to take them and give them out and do you get new patients from this activity? If the cards are dynamic and “unforgettable” in design, they will be given out. Make them jazzy and unique. Test several sample designs on 30 or 40 of your patients to find “the” one that is most memorable to them. Some of the worst marketing ideas in history were developed in a vacuum without checking for feedback from anyone else. Don’t make this mistake.
>Click here to read Practical Marketing: Part Two
Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to The Art of Management Inc. and a clickable link back to this page.
How To Increase Your Patient Referrals
One of the keys to a successful practice is having an abundance of new patients calling in and walking through your front door.
How do you do that without racking up a heavy advertising budget that could eat away all your hard-earned profits?
Oddly enough, the answer is right inside your practice! Namely, word of mouth from your already existing clientele.
Patients who are extremely happy and enthusiastic about the service they have received from you and your staff will readily refer family, friends, neighbors and co-workers, without much prodding or coaxing.
In many instances, they will go out of their way to get someone else to come to you because your team delivers fantastic service and results.
Contrary to popular belief, satisfied patients do not refer. Patients enthusiastic about your service do refer.
To illustrate this point, here is an example:
Let’s say that you are hungry, in a hurry and don’t have much money in your pocket. You might run out to a burger joint, taco place or chicken hut – something very fast. In a short amount of time, you are no longer hungry and it didn’t cost you an arm and a leg. So you could say that your criteria have all been met and you are satisfied, right?
Now let’s take the opposite scenario. Let’s say you go to your favorite upscale restaurant where it’s very expensive, takes several hours to eat and, if you’re like me, you eat it all because it is so delicious, and then you leave the restaurant with a bit of pain.
Question: If a friend asks you for the name of an excellent restaurant where they really take care of you and where he and his wife will have a great experience, which restaurant are you going to refer them to?
Answer: You most likely picked the second one. Why? Because you are enthusiastic about the ambience, top level service and care – even though it cost a lot, took longer and you hurt!
Now ask yourself: Do you want your practice to be like a fast-food restaurant or do you want to be a class act? If the answer is “a class act”, remember this: When referrals are not coming in the door in sufficient quantity, focus on improving service and this in turn will increase the number of enthusiastic patients leaving your practice.
Here are some of the ways that it might be possible to improve the service and care levels in your practice:
There are probably several thousand other ways to show you care. But there is no substitute for really caring.
When a patient is getting ready to leave the practice, do an “enthusiasm check”. For instance, ask “Is there anything else that we can do to be of service to you today?” or “Is there anything we could have done better today – we’re always looking for ways to evolve our practice to a higher level of care.” The key point here is that the staff must be on the lookout to ensure that the patient is in fact enthusiastic about your service.
Fact: The patient who is enthusiastic about the service they received in your practice will bring in 2 to 8 new patients to you – at no charge! A patient who is only “satisfied”, or worse yet, upset, will talk negatively about you to 10 to 12 people. Factually, they may keep coming back to you, but they won’t refer other people to you.
So take these simple steps to increase your patient referrals:
And there you go. Simple but powerful steps which will lead to increased referrals, simply because you took the time and effort to improve your service level in all areas of the practice. So remember, when referrals are not coming in the door – focus on improving one area: service. Satisfied patients do not refer others to you, only enthusiastic patients refer.
Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to The Art Of Management Inc. and a clickable link back to this page.