This Is The Place Where Physicians Find Prosperity! "How To Use Marketing To Perpetually Increase  Your Medical Practice Income In Any Economy" Curt Graham, MD, FACS, FACOG    www.MarketingAMedicalPractice.com           702-258-0415
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Decision Map What's Your impetus for thinking about marketing your medical practice? 1. Government's increasing restrictions on your medical practice fees causing you increased work for less pay? 2. No end in sight for the great majority of states ever putting a cap on malpractice awards thus increasing your premiums and reducing your net income? 3. Overcoming the mediocre practice income you settled for because you never knew how to make it any better? 4. You became aware of the national surveys showing a 8% decrease in physician's incomes across the board over the last 10 years, and the trend doesn't seem to be changing direction soon? 5. You discovered how much plastic surgeon's incomes have skyrocketed since they implemented marketing into their practices and forgot to tell all the other doctors about how and why it works so well? Your best defense against all of the externally forced compromises you have had to make in your practice just to keep going is to do exactly what all small businesses do to survive.................. they market their business aggressively and create business systems that puts their practice on automatic pilot.  You definitely don't want to make the same dumb medical practice mistakes this medical doctor made when he was in practice a while back!  Your marketing tools can easily be found, used, and profited from without ever being blasted with overwhelming costs, lost practice time, and hired commercial marketing guns who don't truly understand physician mindsets...................And you can simply scale the marketing strategies to your own practice style...... even do it all yourself if you choose.   What medical practice marketing won't do: No, you don't have to be a medical practice marketing genius to make the marketing strategies work. No, you don't have to throw out thousands of dollars of hard earned money to hire someone to do practice marketing for you, but it can be beneficial and faster. No, you don't have to worry about spending huge amounts of time out of your practice to enable efficient marketing of your practice. No, you don't have to do any marketing of your medical practice.  You can just let the other doctors WHIP PAST you leaving you in their medical practice marketing dust. This is a NO B.S. website for physicians determined to reach their maximum potential...what ever it takes!      Permit me to enlighten you about a few observations concerning what's happening in the healthcare marketing world today. But first, please let me clear up the misconceptions about the difference between advertising and marketing.        Advertising is telling or showing someone about something you might want or need that's available, and to let you know about how it will improve your life in the hopes you will buy it.      Marketing is the total process of moving from an idea of something to sell, all the way through to the time a customer buys it or returns it.       As a medical doctor you see it as, I want to "sell"  patients that I deliver excellent medical care and can make their lives healthier and happier.  At the same time, they are buying into trusting me, permitting me to treat them, and having the confidence in me to accept what I advise.  HELLO!  You are a salesman.      Marketing strategies include research, design, manufacturing, packaging, promotion, distribution, target marketing, selling, and making a profit as well as expanding the  business.  Advertising is the wart on a marketing finger.      The basic principles of marketing are applicable to any kind of business, and medicine is no different.  The same strategies and tactics apply.  (FYI) The principles are a lot easier to learn and use than memorizing the anatomy of the human body.  A real physician's practice marketing story:      Let me tell you a story of a new OBG doctor who arrived in our community of 100,000 people and started out practice with an established OBG doctor.  This was a community overflowing with OBG physicians--fire off a gun and you'd hit 2 of them without even aiming.  All of us OBG doctors were very pessimistic about his chances of developing a good practice load.       He trained in an excellent medical school, had a great personality, and practiced top notch medicine.  Within two years he had his own office and a rapidly increasing bolus of patients in spite of the OBG practice competition.  We had already seen many doctors set up practice, fail, and leave the area.  Within the next two years he had one of the top practices in the whole area.      The amazing thing about his skyrocketing practice was the speed with which he had accomplished it all, because the rest of us had spent 5 to 10 years to reach the peak of our practices.  It was a time I call B.C. (before computers and the Internet).      Most doctors I know and have met are very tight lipped about what they're doing in their practices to build income and patient loads.  Behind the scenes this doctor had hired a public relations (actually did marketing) expert early on to guide his practice.  It cost him a bundle, which most of us starting out in practice can't afford.  But, it did show all of us local doctors what astonishing results marketing could do for our personal practices.  It was a wake-up call for me and too late.       That was in the 1980s.  What has changed in the world of marketing and is so important to doctors starting their practices as well as those who have quietly drifted into the 21st century in a state of inertia, is the Internet......not to mention personal computers.  You now have the opportunity as a "marketing" physician to: Interact with patients with e-mail, podcasts, webinars, ebooks, articles, reports, and more....all in a digital format from your computer while sitting there in your shorts sipping on a cool one.   Take advantage of the level playing field provided by the Internet by having the same ability to market your practice to exactly the same patients as the $30,000 a year Medical Marketing Businesses you pay to do it for you. And that is a no B.S. fact you need to let sink in.   Use every marketing strategy and tactic the big boys use.   Morph these marketing strategies and tactics into your practice at your own speed and timing.   Access every marketing and medical practice business database and information source the non-physician marketers learn from.   Access your patients on handheld computers anywhere, anytime, and even while on the cruise ship.   Learn how to do your own medical practice marketing by knowing where to start and what resources are available to physicians.  Your marketing education is considerably less expensive than you may believe.   Do what other doctors are not doing!        In order to tickle your curiosity a bit about what you might decide to do to market your medical practice, think about how you might begin using some simple marketing strategies like these: Educate your patients---tell them what you think and believe.  Start a newsletter to them, or handouts you personally create on special medical topics.  Most doctor's won't take the time to do it--one hour per week to do.   Create a website---with the templates and graphics available a website can be constructed and on the Internet in one day.  Old patients use it to learn.  New patients use it to find out who you are.  Over 3 million people are surfing the Internet daily, so if you're there, you will get new patients.   Write articles, reports, and ebooks---have them published on the Internet for free and on your website, and let your patients know that.  It gives you great credibility and makes you an expert in their perception.   Social interaction---offer to speak at community functions, be part of a charity event, be out where people (potential patients) can see you like coaching kids soccer games or going to church functions.    Be active in hospital affairs---serve on committees, attend hospital supported events and parties, give your opinions on solutions to problems, and be humble while you do it all.   Postcard marketing---Do you have any idea how powerful it is for a patient of yours to receive a card from you, signed by you, on their birthday? But, there always must be an offer for something they need on that card.        Crowded into each of these marketing factors, and many others not mentioned, are incredible amounts of value to your practice.  Some are obvious and some not.  Each of these creates an explosive elevation of your position among doctors, nurses, and other doctor's patients.  Consequences include increased referrals, prestige, and income well beyond the norm. Start here if you prefer:        If you desire going directly to the top gun in marketing, I suggest joining Dan Kennedy's Inner Circle and newsletter.  Read his marketing and business books-----available at his bookstore and on Amazon.com.       Click here to start--FREE:  http://www.freegiftfrom.com/drgraham Marketing your medical practice is not difficult nor costly in your own hands. Medical practice marketing is the ultimate business tool for increasing medical practice income. Personal note: If you prefer to work one on one with another M.D. who has the marketing knowledge and medical practice insight to propel your practice and income far beyond your practice competitors, then contact me.       It's what I do and I love it.  It's my opportunity to give back to my profession and friends.  What have you got to lose?  Maybe, the million dollars you will unknowingly leave on the table in your career without an expert's help. Check me out here:  http://www.MarketingAMedicalPractice.com  + free newsletter. Contact me here when you're ready: cgmdrx@gmail.com  or  702-258-0415 Have you ever wondered if you are capable of doing your own marketing? Have you actually read what marketing is all about? You might want to latch on to a resource today to learn a bit about what you might be facing if you took on the job yourself. Go Here.......see for yourself!!!	Do it yourself.   Easy and quick strategies.   Cost metered to your needs.   No sacrifice of patient time.   Increase your practice income by 200% or more in the next 6 to 9 months. Expand your business and marketing knowledge-- Click Here
Curt Graham, M.D.                            L & C Internet Enterprises, Inc.                       2404 Mason Ave.  Las Vegas, NV 89102                                E-mail = cgmdrx(at)gmail.com      © 2004 - 2012 Curtis Graham, M.D., L & C Internet Enterprises, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.