Doctors care about reputation not branding.

I used to think our agency specialized in building doctor brands. Now I know we help doctors build more trust with their patients, amplify their reputation, and attract more of their ideal patients.

We were a bit naive when we started FEED, a brand agency for doctors, in 2011 with the premise that doctors cared about branding and building a brand platform. Soon after we launched our agency we began to receive new projects such as redesigning logos, creating brochures, and building new websites. While these activities are an element of branding, they're not the strategic or business development brand activities we expected to be spending most of our time on. We were part of the problem. We didn't provide doctors with a definition of branding that might make them value branding and want to speak with us.

We applied the "so what" test and assessed what we were offering doctors and scrutinized the value it was having for their patients, practice, and business development.

Here's some lessons we learned along the way to help provide doctors with what they needed, even if they didn't yet know they wanted.

1. Trust between doctors and patients is the new currency. A Harvard Business Review study concluded that building an empathetic, trust-based relationship with patients is not a nice-to-have but a must-have. While this study may not be surprising to doctors, we've learned that most doctors don't have a strategy to build know, like, trust, and refer as the central thesis of their brand + marketing platform.
2. Managing a reputation is really about delivering on the promise that you make to your patients. We have doctors contact us and ask for our help in repairing their damaged reputation, but we receive few calls from doctors asking for our advice to help their patients communicate with others the quality of their experience. Does this make sense? Do you see the difference?
3. Doctors need an automated system that sends them real-time patient feedback, drives new 5 star reviews, automatically responds to patient feedback (either positive or negative), and compliantly helps avoid the negative feedback from becoming a negative public online review. In my experience, most doctors are depending on their front-desk team to manage their online reputation, and the results speak for itself.

Building a great doctor reputation not only saves lives but also money and time. It's time to build your reputation by building a brand platform.