Basic Marketing Principles

These marketing thoughts are basic components taught in every marketing school across the country, are easy to understand once laid out, and are the backbone of why a practice can benefit from the PWP.

I. "It is cheaper to keep a customer than it is to find a new one."

The idea here is that finding a new customer takes research, advertising, and convincing them they need to upgrade/switch/buy your service, all of which costs money. Whereas keeping an existing customer happy will take only a fraction of the cost and they may refer additional business.

II. There are only three ways to increase profit: 1. Decrease cost, 2. Get more customers, or 3. Increase the revenue from existing customers.

With the PWP we address all three:

  1. Reduced cost with efficient handling of the administrative burden of the program limiting in-house costs or overtime or the need to increase staff
  2. Getting more patients if the program is used for marketing to possible patient populations
  3. Increased revenue from increased visits and reduced missed appointments as well as a more loyal patient base due to the improved concern for their well being.

III. "Give the customer what he/she wants."

In this case as in most, the customer wants to feel remembered, cared for, and thought of as an individual.

So, what is the fundamental key to marketing? Well, actually, it is something maybe a little boring and therefore overlooked by most doctors and for that matter most business owners. Who wants to manage? Doctors went to school to treat patients, and many business owners either learned by doing or went to school for something other than "marketing." Your marketing procedures need to be placed on an organizational foundation.

A good marketing management system solves many business problems. To name just a few, it:

Healthcare practice marketing-the type that attracts preferred customers, wins referrals and enhances an owners reputation-is time-consuming. We can take on this activity and you can free up your staff so that they can manage it pro-actively. Here are five reasons why your practice is likely to need our assistance.

  1. Most owners of healthcare practices have little (if any) time to allocate to this critical practice growth and maintenance program. Most healthcare practice owners - and their employees - prefer to view their practice as a calling, a career, a profession, anything but a business.
  2. Healthcare practitioners have a great concern for their reputation with colleagues (who are also often competitors). Try to imagine another industry where competitors are more concerned with not offending each other than they are with attracting customers. These practitioners frequently express the concern that if they market their practices their colleagues will think they are struggling and desperate. What these practitioners usually do not realize is that there are many professional and ethical methods, strategies and tactics that can be successfully employed in a way that does not damage their reputation. We have intentionally developed our method to instead enhance their reputation with colleagues by utilizing what is at the core of every practice: the desire to help people.

  3. Healthcare practices have to conform to (or at least consider) marketing and advertising guidelines imposed by their state licensing boards. While state licensing boards cannot legally prohibit private practice owners from marketing their services, they can and do often establish restrictive guidelines. Many healthcare practitioners are understandably intimidated by the power of these boards to sanction and penalize them for violations of these guidelines, so they tend to avoid marketing altogether - losing out on the positive benefits that effective and ethical marketing has to offer.

    Here are the basics:

    1. You should not present anything in your marketing that is not true or attempts to mislead and/or misinform the public.
    2. You should not directly disparage a professional colleague/competitor.
    3. You should not state anything in your marketing that makes you appear better than your colleagues.
    The essence of marketing is representing why you believe (and can honestly represent) that you are the preferred/best choice for your desired audience. It is often difficult to make this argument without creating the impression of at least inferred comparisons. Fortunately with our methods you can create very effective marketing without even using claims that might violate these regulations.
  4. In many healthcare professions and specialties, healthcare practices must conform to Medicare and other healthcare insurance guidelines that limit their ability to offer special pricing discounts and related special offers to their customers.
  5. Most healthcare practice owners are conditioned and/or inclined to view marketing as inappropriate, distasteful, undesirable and even unethical. These natural perceptions and inclinations are ingrained in most healthcare professionals from the time they first enter a healthcare provider career track and then further reinforced during the clinical training curriculum. The challenge that eventually trips up every growing small business is providing quality services while simultaneously marketing those services. To be successful, you've got to market your services. Yet quality patient/customer care must be top priority. The solution: you can delegate all marketing to marketing systems, thus enabling you and your team to comfortably focus on patient care.

These 5 fast steps will help an office with managing its marketing. If the steps aren't being done at all or are taking valued staff hours away from meeting patient needs, your office needs our help.

  1. Scheduling marketing activities. Select what you want to do and schedule them. Use a calendar for all those that you do just now and then (e.g. Patient Appreciation Day), and a list for those that are recurring (Welcome Letter to all new customers). If you use our follow-up services you can schedule these activities well in advance, and not even have to worry about the date.
  2. Get someone to be the marketing coordinator. As Jay Levinson, author of Guerrilla Marketing says: "Marketing will succeed only if time and energy are regularly devoted to it by you or a person you designate." This designated person could be the doctor, owner, spouse, office manager, associate doctor, or anyone who is up to the job.
  3. Internal Monitoring and Accountability. All marketing activities should be tracked and monitored. Statistics should be kept. Measure everything of significance. Anything that is measured and watched improves.
  4. Regular review and planning. You have to regularly review your past activities and then select what activities you will be doing in the future and who will do them.
  5. External Accountability and Support. Seek and use outside support.

Even with the briefest amount of management as outlined above, your marketing will improve and your practice will grow.