Marketing your private practice
Marketing is one of the most misunderstood and frustrating areas of practice development. Many doctors struggle with marketing and very few have an organized marketing action plan.
It’s easy to see why marketing can be difficult. It is rare to find physicians who are effectively using a practice development plan, and even fewer have a calendar of events and planned marketing procedures. Without careful planning and timing, your marketing may not proceed rationally or effectively. Scattered and unsystematic marketing attempts are ineffective and produce very little results. This lack of success may lead clinicians to conclude that attempts to market their practice will always have the same lackluster result, and may lead the clinician to believe that marketing is a futile or unnecessary exercise.
If you want your marketing practice to be successful, you need to make sure your efforts are part of a larger strategic plan. There must be planning and foresight. Your marketing approach needs to be organized, relevant, and clearly visible to both employees and patients. You must make an effort to create a linked series of marketing events. Marketing efforts must not only have an impact individually, but they must also have an impact when considered as part of a larger plan.
blueprint for success
Before you start planning your marketing strategy, you need to sit down and decide exactly what type of practice you’d like to have. Will it focus on occupational care? Chiropractic care during pregnancy? Sports injury? Will you have a combined approach? Visualize your ideal practice as you would like it to exist five years from now.
Think about the types of patients you would like to treat. Who do you feel most comfortable dealing with? Unless you can clearly define and target your market, you will have considerable difficulty developing and communicating a message that potential patients will understand and respond to. If you don’t know who your target audience is, how will they know?
Before you start actively working to reach your target market, take a look at your practice. Are your practice systems developed to the point where your entire team can process new patients in an organized and efficient manner? There is no point in spending time, money and energy looking for your new patients unless you can process and care for them once they come to you for care.
Once you’re absolutely confident that your practice will be able to effectively serve new clientele, you’re ready to work on the next phase of developing your marketing plan: figuring out how to reach your desired target market. Think again about the type of patient you would like to work with. Once you have the patient in mind, think about what types of marketing could reach and attract this type of patient.
Perhaps you would like to have a significant sports injury component in your practice. Where could I find these patients? You might consider things like speaking to the local PTO, hosting an injury prevention seminar for local coaches, sponsoring local teams, and buying advertising in the school newsletter and yearbook. Initially, you may simply need to show up and present yourself at local sporting events with business cards so people really know who you are, where you are, and what you do.
Taking the time to carefully consider each of these areas will help you develop a marketing plan that is much more likely to deliver the results you want.
do the time
Even the best marketing plan won’t be effective if you don’t spend time implementing it. Dedicate a minimum of one hour a week where nothing is taking place other than calendar development and marketing implementation. This time must be protected: it is not cancelable and must be considered essential for the development of the practice. Make sure staff know not to disturb you; no phone calls or interruptions should be made during this time.
Start planning your marketing efforts. Brainstorm marketing initiatives that make sense for your practice and target audience. Take a desk-sized paper calendar and schedule the exact days and times each step should be executed. Schedule only the items you’re sure you’ll be able to do completely and effectively, not halfway.
Plan your marketing to happen more or less simultaneously, and not necessarily sequentially. The reason for doing this is related to the principle of mass action, which is often neglected in the commercialization of private practice. This principle says that massive action equals massive results. In marketing, too many doctors try to take a random step here or there. When they fail to produce the desired results, they become frustrated and actually abandon their marketing program. A much better way to approach marketing is to make sure the linked steps are done simultaneously. You’ll be much happier with the end result by approaching your marketing this way.
Creating loyal followers
An essential component of private practice marketing involves maintaining close contact with those who have used your services in the past, along with members of the community you may have met at civic events and social functions. Keeping in constant contact helps ensure that all of these leads and referral sources translate into more patients for your thriving practice. Never forget that patients (and their families) who have used your services in the past are much more likely to not only refer their family and friends, but also to see you again. Make them feel valued by staying in touch. Seek to build long-term relationships with every patient and potential patient you come into contact with.
Create a database where you can keep track of each of these important people. On this list of days and ages, maintenance is simple and can be easily handled by a trusted employee. There are hundreds of different database tools you can use to track your clientele, and there are options available in every price range. You can also choose to work with a mailing house that can create and distribute newsletters and newsletters on your behalf. For example, you might decide that each month your list of coaches receives a newsletter focused on sports injury prevention, including tips and ideas to make their lives easier. Your marketing database can be used not only to cost-effectively send out newsletters and promotions, but also to inform your customers of practice changes such as hours, new partners, and more.
Every time you treat a new patient, find out how they got to your office. How did they find you? Where did they first hear about you? Who referred them? Enter this information into your database, so you have a written record of new patient sources. This tracking is essential to knowing in the short and long term exactly where patients are coming from and which marketing efforts are producing the best results. Periodically review the results and adjust your marketing plans as needed.
You should only consider spending money on outside marketing (such as extensive newspaper advertising) if you are confident that you have procedures in place that will ensure you can keep in touch with existing patients and referral sources, and effectively track your marketing efforts. . in results.
The implementation of an organized marketing program is essential to the success of any private practice. It may seem like a daunting task at first, but once you’ve established it, it becomes much easier in the years to come to maintain a thriving practice. You will have a strong base of loyal and repeat customers to build on. Paying attention to these simple principles will ultimately result in developing your dream practice.