Opening the Medical Marketing Door
Marketing is an essential part of growing a medical practice: it helps retain current patients and drives new patients through your doors. As practices in medicine face new and increasing challenges, marketing effectively becomes all the more important. At GMES/2D Global, we offer a deep dive analysis and step-by-step review of your practice.
First, it’s helpful to know what a great medical practice marketing program actually looks like. Effective practice marketing means you have a coordinated plan in place to reach both current and potential patients online, through local referral sources, through your database of contact information, and through community outreach and advertisements. Your website is well designed and easy to navigate, packed with educational information about the conditions you treat. It’s also updated regularly with new articles or blogs. Your social media is branded for your practice, shares content from your website, and engages people in your community. You’re staying on top of online reviews of your practice and all your online contact information is up-to-date and accurate. At the same time, you go around to local referral sources like shoe stores, other medical practices, fitness centers, and more to build those relationships and provide them with referral materials. You’re also maintaining a list of your current and potential patients’ contact information so you can reach out to them regularly, whether through follow-up campaigns, e-mails, newsletters, or other marketing resources. You also regularly reach out to the community through health fairs, local events, and even traditional advertising at times. As a result, people recognize your name and can find your contact information easily when they need to. They recognize you as someone who is trusted in your community and who really cares about people’s health and well-being. Your current patients remember you, like you, trust you, and refer you to their friends and family. You have a steady stream of returning patients and new patients who found you online, or through a referral, or because they saw you at an event. Your waiting room is full of the kinds of patients you want to see, your bottom line is increasing, and you no longer have to stress about your business. The unfortunate reality is that most practices don’t have this kind of effective marketing. Instead, they’re all making similar costly mistakes.
Plain and simple, the health, growth, and sustainability of every practice require a steady flow of high-quality patients. This includes current patients “reactivating” and returning to you as well as new patients finding you. Counting on word-of-mouth recommendations from your current patients isn’t going to cut it when you need your patient base to grow. Without a sustained and intentional effort to grow the base, your practice will ultimately begin to slow down, level off, or follow a downward trend. By understanding marketing better, you put yourself into a position to see more patients that match your “perfect patient” profile.
In addition to the operational, clinical and administrative service offerings of 2D Tech USA, we leverage our roots at Global Marketing Empire Solutions (GMES) in bringing forward a strong presence in marketing. There are several marketing program shortcomings for many medical practices. We work with our clients to dive deeper into analysis and understand these potential shortcomings:
We review these items in great detail and dissect the current system in order to overcome and adapt. We can not review each of these in this article; however, we can unveil and few key items related to one of my favorite topics: the identification of trends.
If you look at all the practices that are trying to market their services online or through some kind of advertising, they all pretty much sound the same. There are certain trends that stick and everyone ends up copying. The problem with this, though, is that everyone sounds alike and seem interchangeable. There’s no reason for patients to pick one over the other.?
Identify the trends that service clients, help them feel genuinely special and creates differentiation from your competitors. Build YOUR platform from this data.
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Patients, your clients, expect their treatment to be personalized and compassionate. Practically every practice accepts “most” insurances. For example, fact that a podiatrist treats and performs surgery on the feet and ankles isn’t a revelation to anyone. As for being board certified, while you and other professionals know how hard you worked to earn that certification, most patients aren’t sure what it means and don’t really care, anyway. The point is that all practices should be able to make the above statements. Listing these as “benefits” for coming to your practice on your website, social media, ads, and everywhere else tells people nothing about you. The statements become meaningless. So how do you differentiate yourself? How do you stand out in the crowd? How do you reach patients through every possible venue while targeting your message to the kinds of patients you want to see in your practice?
The Four Pillars of Marketing are the four ways you can target and connect to current and potential patients. They are the only four ways patients find you when looking for someone to help solve their problems. They also enable you to tailor your message and differentiate yourself from the crowd. These four pillars are:
We help our clients understand the separate and integrated benefits of these very different marketing directions. Each pillar has an independent purpose, vision and strategy. Each area encompasses a different deployment and messaging strategy, such as a blog, versus an educational section. Careful integration of these programs can be POWERFUL.
Put together, these four pillars allow you to reach out to your community and target your ideal patients: the people you want to see more of in your office who really would benefit from your services. As you do so, though, there are a few tips to keep in mind:
We have only scratched the surface. Each of these posted sections could expand to pages of valuable information and example. Take the first step to greatness. You can transform your marketing to transform your practice. Our many other programs can help you quickly implement strategies in the four pillars, particularly where you may struggle, such as with internet or internal marketing. In a short time, you won’t even recognize your practice and your marketing plan. The previous frustrations and headaches of practice marketing will be far behind you.
Remember, you were born an original, so don't be a copy.
We invite you to visit us @ www.2DTechUSA.com