For a medical practice to succeed and grow, you must nurture it through medical marketing; whether your practice is a specialist or a primary care physician. In order to continue increasing revenue, building patient volume, diversifying patients, and perhaps even opening new office locations, you must continuously promoting your practice. Marketing is not a one shot concept; successful marketing is an ongoing process. Once a doctor stops advertising, he or she is forgotten. It’s important to keep in mind that consumers are bombarded by more than 500 advertising appeals a day. A doctor’s message gets lost in an overcrowded advertising environment.
However, doctors have to be careful not to be too aggressive in their medical marketing approach. Without even realizing it, a doctor could be breaking several state and federal laws by marketing and advertising aggressively. Following is a list of top 10 do’s and don’ts of medical practice marketing that will help you stay on the right track.
10 DO’s
1. Define your target market. Identify who are the people most likely to want your services and have the ability to pay for it.
2. Develop a well thought, strategic marketing plan with specific goals and with certain objectives in mind. Create action plans to meet those goals.
3. Send a clear message to your target market that your services are what they want, your practice is a place they can feel confident, and comfortable with. Bold print that image in your advertising.
4. Educate your target audience, whether it consists of referring doctors, patients, or the community. Educating and helping others is the key to success in modern medical marketing.
5. Make sure that all of the marketing materials you use are straightforward, accurate, and not deceptive. All the marketing materials should be readily comprehensible and create realistic expectations.
6. Your ads or marketing materials should have a “call to action.” They should make the target audiences do something. Call your office, make an appointment, pick up a free brochure on their area of interests, etc. Suggest that practice should have at least two brochures. One that hits all the high points of the practice – like the things you’re good at; it’s short, clear, and easy to read with lots of bullet points and heavy on benefits. Second one is the informational brochure. It has a lot of detail for the person who really wants a lot of information. It’s usually used after the first brochure has brought the client in and after the initial consultation, you present the second one to re-enforce the follow up.
7. Several brochures are more effective than just one. It’s better to create several brochures to cover your various services than just one on all services. Don’t mix medical dermatology services like eczema, acne, and rosacea with cosmetic dermatology procedures – Botox, reducing wrinkles, and removing unwanted spider veins, etc.
8. Patient to patient referrals are highly effective. Be sure to include a “Send to” button to all your electronic newsletters and correspondence to past patients. Have your staff make an on-going effort to collect emails addresses for all patients so that you may use this cost effective way to keep your practice “on top of mind” with past patients who may refer friends and family. This is the most powerful business building tool of them all. It simple means that you encourage your current patients to refer people to you.
9. Get yourself known in the community. It’s the key to success. Join and become more active in one or more of the groups or clubs around your area. Include your business card in every bill, flyer, and letter you send out.
10.Make sure you know the laws regarding the advertising of your particular practice. Consult a health care attorney to ensure that your medical marketing efforts do not violate any state or federal laws.
10 DON’Ts
1. Waive coinsurance or deductible amounts because you can violate several laws by doing so. For example, a physician can face fines of up to $10,000 for offering a waiver to sway the decision of a Medicaid or Medicare-eligible person to choose him over another physician. There are exceptions to this rule; however, as long as the waiver is not offered as part of an advertisement or solicitation, the physician does not regularly offer waivers, and the physician only offers the waiver after determining that the patient is in financial need, no laws would be violated.
2. Wait for patients to find you. Be proactive and use medical marketing methods to attract more and diverse people to your practice.
3. Use medical terminology or illustrations that are difficult for the general public to understand in your marketing materials.
4. Make unsolicited phone calls to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. In order to call them, they must have been your patient in the last 15 months and you must have their permission to call
5. State in your advertising that patients will not have out-of-pocket expenses and that Medicare or insurance is accepted as payment in full. You should avoid saying that you provide discounts to beneficiaries of Medicare.
6. Provide discounts for services if the patient commits to purchasing another item or service at a specific price. Offering contingent discounts is a violation of state and federal laws.
7. Assume that marketing is advertising. They are two different things. Marketing refers to the systematic planning, implementation, and control of a variety of business activities that is carried out to bring together providers and receivers. Advertising refers to the paid, public announcements of a persuasive message and/ or a presentation or promotion by a business of its services to existing and potential patients/clients.
8. Take advertising lightly. If you do not play your cards right, advertising can prove to be very costly for your business. Advertising is all about location – where you place your ads; and audience – who receives your ads; and messaging – how your services are being conveyed. Medical professionals have to be particularly careful with ads, considering the fact that some frown upon advertising in this field, and herald it “flashy” and “unprofessional.”
9. Compensate your employees and marketing consultants based on the success of their marketing efforts. Make sure that the fee you pay them is fixed in advance.
10. Expect results overnight. Medical marketing is just like everything in business, achieving real results take time. If you’re patient, you’ll see your efforts bear fruit.
Ultimately, your medical practice is a brand, and you need to make the effort to build a strong brand image with professional reputation through your medical marketing efforts.
Take a look at our DO’s regarding practice marketing by clicking here …
Source: BINGMED
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