"How To Use Marketing To Perpetually Increase Your Medical Practice Income In Any Economy"
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Medical Practice Business And Marketing Articles
Article #21 - Mar. 2011
“12 Essential Elements Of A Medical Practice Business And Marketing System (Plan)”
All wealth derived from business is based on systems.
Think of a system as a detailed step-by-stem series of separate and individual actions and processes required by everyone in your business entity to perform in order to reach the primary goal or objective you have set. A marketing system is created in a medical practice to recruit new patients, and retain old patients.
What you sell to patients are your medical care services. Unless you have a constant flow of new patients into your medical practice to compensate for the patients leaving your practice, you will need to have an exit plan for your practice. The strength of your practice, along with profitability and productiveness, is directly dependent on the constant flow of new patients, which far exceeds the loss of old patients.
The various segments of the marketing system required for efficiency and profitability must all be coordinated for and focused on the one
established goal.1. Prospective patients: Permitting new patients to spontaneously show up at your office on their own recognizance as your only source for new patients is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Increasing medical practice competition demands that you must do your marketing for patients to stay in the game. Select a category of patients you want in your practice, narrow it down to a specific person with specific attributes, and persuade them you are the best doctor in town (because you are).
If you’re a pediatrician, you serve kids 3 to 16 years old. An obstetrician normally deals with only female patients. Allergists want sneezing patients.2. Finding prospective patients: No, you don’t contact every patient within 30 miles from your office—costs too much and is not very productive. Ask a list company to provide you with a list of 1000 people in your immediate area. You tell them exactly the description of the patient you want names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, zip codes for. Now you have all the data you need to recruit a percentage of them as patients.
Just keep repeating the process to keep the flow of patients coming in.3. Establish a business and marketing budget: Diligently, choose the maximum amount of your profits you can spare without compromising your other financial obligations. Until you do this, the two steps above may put you in the poor house.
Start with a smaller budget and later increase it when you can afford more, and when you know that the method you are using is working well.4. Decide on a marketing method: Direct mail is the most productive by most measurements. The aim here is to use as many marketing methods as you can afford and which work well for you. Don’t waste time with a method that accounts for no new patients.
Calculate the costs of each method and pick the one to begin with and that you can handle.5. Create your marketing materials: Marketing letters and materials must contain all the necessary elements known to persuade a percentage of people to take action and respond to the marketing offer. The process is
These are the essential elements of a marketing (your sales letter) letter to patients.
called copywriting.
You can hire it done, or do it yourself if you have the knowledge to do it right.
Hair raising, fire breathing, headline that draws immediate attention.
Greeting—use person’s name.
Bulleted list of unique benefits a patient would have at your office.
Testimonials—what others have said about your medical practice and you.
Guarantee issues.
Offer of a medical service no other doctor is offering—details.
Why a patient should grab the offer today—unique benefits.
Rebuttals to potential patient questions that may delay their decision.
Deadline to accept offer.
Tell them what to do next—“Call for an appointment before deadline” –questions.
Doctor’s name, office address, phone number.
Repeat summary of the patient benefits for accepting the offer.
(Options) a. Offer a free “get acquainted” visit.
b. Ask for a referral of friend, relative, neighbor if patient can’t
accept offer.
c. Note indicating they are always welcome to join our practice
in the future.
d. Follow-up mailing in 3 to 6 months to remind the list about your
practice.6. Send your marketing materials: Sending marketing mail to your chosen list does not mean the envelope ever gets opened or letters read. If they get 15 envelopes a day in their mail, which ones will get trashed without being opened and which are interesting enough to open? There are well documented tactics that increase the opening rate, which are called “envelope cosmetics” such as doodles on the outside the envelope, urgent or important stamps, postal stamp placed at an angle, a palpable item felt through the envelope walls, and hand written names and addresses.
Postcard marketing gets around these barriers.
Always be sure you include all the features necessary to persuade a new potential patient to take action and respond to your offer.7. Handling contacts made by new patients: Without a doubt, a potential new patient’s first contact with your office, first impressions, solidifies their decision to become a patient or not. As soon as the office staff member knows the caller is a new patient, there should be an immediate mind conversion of the employee to that of a person willing to spend the rest of the day with the caller. All other duties should instantly be redirected to someone else or put on hold. You should have a template script written out for all your office staff to follow for new patient contacts.
Consistency is important for your practice image.8. Appointments for new patients: New patients should be treated like royalty. Their appointment should be within a few days of their call, unless it’s a serious medical problem. In that case see them the same day.
Catering to a new patient’s choices is smart—even if it means staying late, or even as a forced fit-in appointment.9. Obtain old medical records: Much of the patient’s medical history patients will have difficulty remembering, especially for older patients. Records can be requested at the time of their first appointment or before. Electronic medical records will resolve this hassle in the future.
Have a system to use to insure you have all the patient medical records.10. Resources for new patients: New patients are not aware of what you have available for your regular patients such as information handouts, a brochure promoting your practice, phoned-in prescriptions, educational materials like videos, newsletter the doctor creates monthly, or house calls.
Have a process for informing them.11. Follow-up sequence: The fact that repeated sequencing of marketing offers increases response rates can’t be denied. When you send your direct mail marketing letters out to your selected target market of potential patients, don’t quit with one mailing as so many do. In any target group, there are a significant percentage of people who never respond to
the first mailing.
By repeating your mailing offer every week or so for a couple months your response rate can double or triple. You stop when there are no
more responses.12. Outrageous Advertising: Previously considered to be a fools gesture, outrageous marketing or advertising continues to stand out as a profitable means to gain new customers in a world saturated with commoditized marketing methods. People enjoy and are attracted to unusual and different kinds of offers presented in unusual ways.
You would be well advised to read Bill Glazer’s new book, “Outrageous Advertising” where he gives over a hundred successful examples you can copy and try.Comment about continually promoting your medical practice:
Constructing your personal customized marketing system using marketing strategies to promote your medical practice business is an efficient means of pulling your practice up out of the financial quicksand in any economy that comes along. A medical practice business composed of business systems to streamline efficiency will free up previous wasted time doing lots and accomplishing little. Consider it an entrepreneur’s shield.
Our resource for learning business systems is readily available to you.
Links to my articles related to this issue :
The author, Curt Graham, is a highly experienced business and marketing expert, copywriter, and entrepreneur who has been published in various media over 50 years while in medical practice and after.
Discover what it takes for you to reach the optimal limits of your potential in medical practice, and how to do it: Click The Link NOW!
www.howtopropelyourmedicalpracticeincome.com
© 2004-2011, Curt Graham M.D., L & C Internet Enterprises, Inc., All rights reserved.Word Count = 1344
Keywords = marketing strategies,marketing medical practice,medical practice marketing,business systems,marketing system,marketing plan,marketing method
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