Marketing your private practice

Marketing is one of the most misunderstood and frustrating areas of practice development. Many physicians struggle with marketing, and very few have an organized marketing action plan.

It’s easy to see why marketing can be difficult. It is rare to find physicians who are effectively using a practice development plan, let alone have a calendar of planned marketing events and procedures. Without careful planning and timing, your marketing may not proceed rationally or effectively. Scattered and unsystematic marketing attempts are ineffective and produce very few results. This lack of success may lead physicians to conclude that attempts to market their practice will always have the same lackluster result, and may lead the physician to believe that marketing is an exercise in futility or unnecessary.

If you want your marketing practice to be successful, you need to make sure your efforts are part of a larger strategic plan. There must be planning and foresight. Your marketing approach should be organized, relevant, and clearly visible to both employees and patients. You should make an effort to create a linked series of marketing events. Marketing efforts must not only have an individual impact, but they must also have an impact when considered as part of a larger plan.

blueprint for success

Before you start planning your marketing strategy, you need to sit down and decide exactly what type of practice you would like to have. Will it focus on occupational care? Chiropractic care during pregnancy? Sports injury? Will it have a mixed approach? Visualize your ideal practice as you would like it to exist five years from now.

Think about the types of patients you would like to treat. Who do you feel most comfortable dealing with? Unless you can clearly define and target your market, you will have considerable difficulty developing and communicating a message that potential patients will understand and respond to. If you don’t know who your target audience is, how will they know?

Before you start actively working on reaching your target market, take a look at your practice. Are your practice systems developed to the point that your entire team can process new patients in an organized and efficient manner? There is no point in spending time, money and energy looking for your new patients, unless you can process and care for them once they come to you for care.

Once you’re absolutely confident that your practice will be able to effectively serve new clientele, you’re ready to work on the next phase of your marketing plan development: figuring out how to reach your desired target market. Think again about the type of patient you would like to work with. Once you have the patient in mind, think about what types of marketing might reach out and attract this type of patient.

Perhaps you would like to have a significant sports injury component in your practice. Where could I find these patients? You might consider things like speaking to the local PTO, hosting an injury prevention seminar for local coaches, sponsoring local teams, and purchasing advertising in the school newsletter and yearbook. Initially, you may simply need to show up and show up at local sporting events with business cards so people really know who you are, where you are, and what you do.

Taking the time to carefully consider each of these areas will help you develop a marketing plan that is much more likely to deliver the results you want.

do the time

Even the best marketing plan won’t be effective if you don’t spend time implementing it. Set aside a minimum of one hour a week where nothing else takes place other than calendar development and marketing implementation. This time must be protected: it is not cancelable and must be considered essential for the development of the practice. Make sure the staff know not to disturb you; no phone calls or interruptions should be made during this time.

Start planning your marketing efforts. Brainstorm marketing initiatives that make sense for your practice and target audience. Take a desk-sized paper calendar and schedule the exact days and times each step is to be executed. Schedule only the items that you are sure you will be able to do fully and effectively, not halfway.

Plan your marketing to occur more or less simultaneously, and not necessarily sequentially. The reason for doing this is related to the principle of mass action, which is often neglected in private practice commercialization. This principle says that massive action equals massive results. In marketing, too many doctors try to take a random step here or there. When they fail to produce the desired results, they become frustrated and actually quit your marketing program. A much better way to approach marketing is to make sure the linked steps are done simultaneously. You’ll be much happier with the end result by approaching your marketing this way.

Creating loyal followers

An essential component of private practice marketing involves maintaining close contact with those who have used your services in the past, along with members of the community you may have met at civic events and social functions. Staying in constant contact helps ensure that all of these leads and referral sources translate into more patients for your thriving practice. Never forget that patients (and their families) who have used your services in the past are much more likely to not only refer their family and friends, but to see you again as well. Make them feel valued by staying in touch. Seek to build long-term relationships with every patient and potential patient with whom you come in contact.

Create a database where you can keep track of each of these important people. On this day and age list, maintenance is simple and can easily be handled by a trusted employee. There are hundreds of different database tools you can use to track your clientele, and there are options available in every price range. You may also choose to work with a mail house that can create and distribute newsletters and newsletters on your behalf. For example, you might decide that every month your list of coaches receives a newsletter focused on sports injury prevention, including tips and ideas to make their lives easier. Your marketing database can be used to not only send out newsletters and promotions profitably, but also inform your clients of practice changes such as hours, new partners, and more.

Every time you treat a new patient, find out how they came to your office. How did they find you? Where did they first hear about you? Who referred them? Enter this information into your database, so you have a written record of the sources of new patients. This tracking is essential to know in the short and long term exactly where patients are coming from and which marketing efforts are producing the best results. Periodically analyze the results and adjust your marketing plans as necessary.

You should only consider spending money on external marketing (such as extensive newspaper advertising) if you are sure you have procedures in place that will ensure you can keep in touch with existing patients and referral sources, and effectively follow up on your marketing efforts. . in results.

The implementation of an organized marketing program is essential to the success of any private practice. It may seem like a daunting task at first, but once you’ve established it, it becomes much easier in subsequent years to maintain a thriving practice. You will have a solid base of loyal and repeat customers to build on. Paying attention to these simple principles will ultimately result in the development of the practice of your dreams.