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Tag Archives: Marketing
3 Top Rules For Marketing Accountability in Your Medical Practice
One of the biggest sins in practice marketing is not being able to answer yes to the following question:
Is There Financial Accountability For ALL Of The Marketing In Your Practice?
Following are 3 of my top rules to make sure your answer to this question is a resounding, “Yes!”
Rule #1: Don’t Ever Spend Without A Plan
The majority of practices and businesses I’ve worked with have virtually NO marketing plan or strategy in place before implementing my systems. For the most part, everything they’re doing is scatter shot – some of the strategies getting results, some getting none. What’s interesting about this is that most of the time, practices without a sound strategy in place spend MUCH MORE on marketing and advertising, primarily because what they’re doing is not generating results. You must have a purposeful plan in place.
Rule #2: Don’t Do It If You Can’t Track It
If you’re considering spending money on something you really can’t track, then you don’t do it. Period. If you can’t track it, you’ll never know if it works so there is no point in spending any marketing dollars on it whatsoever. In reality, there really aren’t many things that can’t be tracked, it’s that most practices just don’t do it.
I recently worked with a plastic surgeon who had paid a lot of money to an advertising firm to have a commercial created for his practice which played on a big screen at a busy health club. Other than the fact that the commercial did not have a specific marketing message, any potential calls from this ad were not being tracked. He had no tracking identifier for the ad, and his front office staff didn’t know how to gather this information from potential new patient calls generated from the ad. The Result? NONE (except money down the drains). Which leads me to…
Rule #3: Track It!
Once you’ve spent hours and hours and a bunch of money on a marketing strategy, if you don’t religiously track it, you’ve wasted TONS of time, and TONS of money for nothing. Once you’ve created a message to your target patient, this is the most critical aspect of anything else you do. You absolutely must know where every call comes from, have a system in place to compile the information, so you can ultimately determine the return (or not) on your invested marketing dollars.
Tip: All of your tracking mechanisms must be in place BEFORE you initiate the marketing campaign.
Purposefully tracking all of your marketing efforts will allow you to follow your plan, focus on what’s working, and eliminating the waste.
Adam Arnette has been recognized as the “Master of Patient & Profit Maximization” for private medical practices across the country.
Medical Marketing Tips That Will Help Medical Practitioners Thrive During an Economic Crunch
Very few doctors will admit that making lots of money lies in their marketing and public relations abilities since it conflicts with their professional ego. However, most doctors can agree on the fact that attracting new patients, return patients, and patients with more disposable income is the key to running a successful practice. In order to achieve these goals, you must have a medical marketing plan. A successful plan will prevent you from wasting money on unnecessary advertising and get the public and media exposure you need in a cost-effective manner. Particularly during these difficult economic times, it is increasingly important to expand your practice using precise marketing strategies.
The Importance of Visibility
Visibility is essential because it helps to make you an authority in your field. For example, if you are a dentist with visibility in your local area, the first person people will think of when they need to go to the dentist is you. In order to create a positive reputation for yourself and establish yourself as an authority, you have to become a beloved figure in your community. This means that people come to trust you on a personal level. You can have the latest and greatest tools and all the credentials but they won’t mean much if you don’t have visibility. Professional qualifications are overrated, in fact. In order to survive an economic crunch, you must use precise medical marketing and PR techniques.
Many medical practitioners mistakenly believe that they are not affected by economic slumps due to the simple fact that people always need to go to the doctor. However, the fact of the matter is that many people will put off the medical care they need as their discretionary income shrinks.
How to Become More Visible
Be much more visible than any other medical practitioner in your field in the local market. Public relations are far more effective than advertising so focus your efforts on that instead. When you get third party endorsements from the media and community, it boosts your credibility substantially. PR is great since it is cost-effective. As many doctors are forced to cut advertising costs during grim economic times, they can take advantage of smart PR methods to survive and thrive.
The goal should be to become a beloved figure in the local community. This gives you positive press and more word-of-mouth advertising. People come to trust you on a personal level. Your level of expertise matters little if you can manage to get yourself known by sending out the right message to the right people, at the right time.
Developing an Effective Marketing Mix
There is not one single medical marketing method that works all the time so you need to mix the strategies you use. Use a variety of long-term and short-term messages and avenues. The first place to start when developing your marketing plan is to define who your preferred patients are. You then have to make sure you send your marketing messages out to wherever they are so anytime they require medical services in your field, they think of you and not your competitor. Learn the demographic and needs of your preferred patients. You can’t be everything to everyone so make sure you only send your message out to your niche market.
Keep Current Patients
Rather than focusing fully on attracting new patients, you should focus your strategy on keeping current ones because it is cheaper. Your current patients will refer you to others they know and come back to you time and time again for treatments. You can stay in touch with your current patients that are individually-oriented. Develop a database with your patients’ contact information and use sophisticated software to personalize your marketing messages.
Use Long-Term and Short-Term Strategies
Long-term strategies include branding, search engine optimization, community outreach and public relations. Short-term strategies include gift certificates, direct mail, in-house events, and internet marketing. Long-term strategies build awareness of your brand and practice whereas short-term strategies boost revenue immediately while you build your reputation. Let’s take a look at some of the most important strategies.
Branding – Branding is your image and it is what patients see, hear or read about you. It constitutes the feeling that people get about you when they hear about your practice. Fine tune your marketing message to ensure that you’re building the reputation you intend to.
Community Outreach – Get involved in your community through attending fundraising events and joining local charities. When you give off the image of being caring and committed to your community, it is highly beneficial to your PR campaign.
Direct Mail – Promote a product or treatment with persuasive direct mail pieces sent out to both prospects and current patients.
In-House Events – Hold an event at your practice and invite patients, telling them to invite their friends and family. Educate them about some of the treatments you offer and promote your products/services. Remember, your prospects may not become patients immediately. It could even take months for them to actually give you a call and set up an appointment. It takes different messages and avenues to connect with your target market so be sure your marketing strategy is constant so they know you are there to address their needs when the time comes.
Hi Heeman is a medical marketing expert who works full time with health care providers to increase their visibility on the web space to get people connected with the medical professionals.
Important Goals Of Medical Marketing
The goal of medical marketing is to ensure that all people who need medical services are going to feel comfortable with the doctors that they are doing business with. This can be done by working to make patients aware of all of the things that doctors can do for them. This can prove to be a very advantageous thing for anyone to work with when looking to get patients.
Medical marketing should work to allow people to see what credentials different doctors have to work with. These include such things as graduate degrees from various medical schools and certifications to work with a number of different technologies. This can be used to ensure that one’s medical needs will be properly met when working with medical marketing.
Details on the types of medical services that a doctor can be provided should be listed as well. Medical marketing can inform a person about all of the things that are working in a doctor’s office. This is especially important in the event that one wants to work with a good process that is safe and easy to handle. Remember, people will be more interested in visiting their doctors if they can be assured that a doctor is working with the newest technologies with patient safety and health in mind.
Details on the environment that one’s office is in should also be listed. A doctor’s office should be one that is not in a cold and thoughtless environment but rather in a caring and comforting environment. It should be something that a person will be more likely to feel comfortable in. Medical marketing can be used to ensure that one will feel comfortable in the doctor’s office. It can go a long way towards encouraging people to visit their doctors more often.
The last thing that a medical marketing campaign can do is to inform potential patients about the different financial assistance services that a professional can work with. This is important because a number of different insurance plans can be accepted by medical practitioners. Many people refuse to see their doctors because they feel that the expenses for doing so would be too high. However, medical marketing can be used to ensure that this problem can be avoided and to encourage people to visit their doctors more often.
These are all valuable goals that should be met in a medical marketing campaign. These are all used with the intention of getting people to understand how important it is for them to work with their doctors and to get the right types of medical treatment that they would need to work with. This can be one of the most important things for any person to deal with when it comes to one’s health.
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Tips For Marketing Your Medical Practice
Being a Doctor you have to accept the fact that you need to have patience as your base to keep things going for you. Being a good doctor is alone not enough to attract good number of patients consistently. In this modern era, each professional has become a commodity and marketing himself has become a crucial one as well.
Most doctors take a step back when it comes to market them as it may be because they chose this profession to serve humanity and not to earn money. To serve humanity patients must approach you but that is possible only by employing proper and effective marketing strategies. Unless a doctor market himself, he remains an unknown element in the society. Marketing is not always an expensive affair. Modern marketing techniques are far more effective and cheaper than conventional ways.
A common man always recommends his friends and relatives to consult his personal doctor. So this shows that a doctor needs to interact with his patients in a friendly manner. When you develop a good relationship with your patients that bond implies as a trust and loyalty in the patients. Apart from a casual interaction, there are many other marketing tactics that a doctor can follow. One of the most modern and efficient means is “internet marketing.” With the increasing popularity of internet you can get yourself known at number of homes through your customized websites. Providing modern facilities at your clinic, living up to your consulting fee, maintaining soft spoken staffs, keeping good rapport with patients, attending community meetings and awareness of market situations are few significant things that a doctor needs to take care of.
This is 21st century where you need to run at a good pace. Conventional means will only lead to your downfall. So adopt the best and most appropriate medical marketing strategy and get going.
Author owns a website of Medical Website Design and Plastic Surgery Website Design.
Why Content Marketing Matters to Medical Practices
We hear it all the time.
Content is king.
Content marketing really works.
Seriously, guys. It really does.
Marketing professionals are always talking about how effective content marketing is, but does content marketing matter to medical practices?
The short answer is yes, content marketing works just as effectively in the medical field as it does for all other consumer-focused businesses. According to NeilPatel.com, 78% of consumers believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships. That’s probably something you want to develop with your patients, don’t you think?
So let’s start at the beginning… what is content marketing and how can you use it to fill empty appointment slots at your clinic? Well, content marketing is the process of creating relevant, valuable content to attract new audiences. By distributing targeted content, you can clearly define your practice and establish yourself as a go-to source.
But wait there’s more. According to ContentMarketingInstitute.com, 90% of businesses currently use content marketing, and why wouldn’t they? Content Marketing Institute explains that content marketing leads to:
- Increased sales
- Cost savings
- Better customers who have more loyalty
So you see, content marketing does matter to your medical practice, but where do you start?
Where to Begin
It is important to understand that content is not the only key to appearing high in search engine rankings, but it definitely helps.
You also need:
- A strong Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. This strategy is a guide to getting your site listed on the first page of google using specific keywords and phrases.
- A social media presence. Having a presence on top social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus will help you connect with millions of users. According to statista.com, “78 percent of U.S. Americans have a social media profile today.” So, by having a social media presence, you can connect with a large audience; and the more you engage with users on social media, the higher you will be listed on search engine result pages.
- To constantly monitor your website via online reputation management. ORM is the process of understanding what patients are saying about your practice and then determining the best ways to improve what is being said online.
How to Get Your Site Listed on the Front Page
1. Write about relevant content
Dragonsearch.com states that 61% of consumers’ decisions are influenced by custom content. When it comes to creating content, you should write about what you know. Some great examples to help get you started are:
- Patient testimonials
- Discussion of new treatment technology in your field
- Risk factors for potential diseases
- Quick top 10 lists – this is particularly effective when creating custom content. These lists are short reads (something many patients will appreciate), but they still help you establish authority.
Also, it is important that you use meta keywords in your writing to link to other pages on your site. If your website doesn’t have the ability to do so then it’s time to build a new website that does have these features.
2. Set a schedule and stick to it
Creating content is a never-ending process. It’s important to continuously generate new posts such as video testimonials, articles or blog updates on a weekly basis. Posting 2 to 3 pieces each week will help you boost your ranking.
3. Promote your hard work
At the end of the day, you’re not writing for your health, you’re writing to boost business, right? So, why would you write, publish and then not tell anyone?
You can earn more patients by:
- Spreading word of your website. Mention it to friends and family, at networking events, or have your doctors put a link to the website on their presentation slides when they host meetings.
- Posting about your website on social networking sites. Including a link on your social networking profiles can drive more traffic to your website.
If you need help spreading the message, you can always contact someone who specializes in the field. Ultimately, the goal is to spread news of your website to the world.
The Takeaway
Building good relationships with patients is essential for medical practices today. If you create custom content frequently and spread the word on it, then you will increase your position on search result pages and establish yourself as an expert in the community.
— This post Why Content Marketing Matters to Medical Practices was written by Corey Gehrold and first appeared on Capture Billing. Capture Billing is a medical billing company helping medical practices get their insurance claims paid faster, easier and with less stress allowing doctors to focus on their patients.