Owners of highly successful healthcare practices have many things in common, and one of them is that marketing runs in their blood. It is a part of the practice that cannot be neglected or postponed or procrastinated on because it is how new patients find their way to you.
Often when we ask a new client, “What are you doing marketing-wise?” we get answers like, “What marketing?” or “We don’t do any marketing!” and so on. The funny thing is that they are all actually doing SOME marketing, it’s just a matter of awareness of what “marketing” is and also of quantity.
Marketing is multi-faceted these days between internal, external and on the world wide web. The basic concept is that there are people outside of your practice that could become patients or clients of your practice and they need to find out about you and your team and how great you are at delivering your service.
Internally, there are hundreds of different ways of marketing. Just to name a few of the simpler, more obvious ways: asking for referrals (takes a little training and practice), high level communication and service beyond what was expected, smiles from front desk to the back, care and attention to what the patient or client is saying and asking for, great treatment plan presentation skills so the patient/client accepts the care they deserve to have, games to encourage your patients/clients to refer, a monthly email newsletter to all clients of record with info and a contest in it with prizes (best recipe of the month or funniest dog picture or coolest vacation shot, etc.), Thank You for the Referral cards and enclosures, and so on and on.
Externally, there is your physical plant and how it looks from the outside, flyers, bulk mail (such as Val Pak), talks at different venues, cross referrals with other healthcare professionals you have met, opportunities to sponsor activities in your community, newsletters from your religious institution that you can support, TV and radio interviews (for most professions, as long as you are not paid), ads in newspapers, weekly column in newspapers, …. We could fill pages with the ideas our 1,400 clients have done over the last 25 years that work.
As to the internet, wow! The ways to market there are exciting and infinite, though many people feel a little daunted when confronting this type of marketing. There are websites to be designed AND KEPT CURRENT and there are many social media marketing avenues, there are “pay per click” ads on Google, and Facebook pages and so much more. Best plan here is to find a website you really like (search under your profession online) and look at the bottom of the website and it usually gives the company or designers name so you can call them and hire them too.
Do not overwhelm yourself or your team by trying to do a million marketing things at once. Start with a simple plan of what you can do easily and quickly and get those done. If done well, the practice income will go up about 5-6 weeks later and you can use some of the additional income to finance the next larger projects and get those done too. And so it goes.
Just NEVER STOP marketing unless you want to start losing ground and shrinking. Not a good idea as the practice will lose its value and the cash flow will dry up.
We can help you work out an effective plan and coach you on this if you are interested!
