Marketing Building Blocks for Self-employed Physicians
In a Medscape report, more than 1 in 4 physicians expressed distaste for the practical realities of running a business, and numerous respondents identified marketing as particularly difficult and costly. “We don’t have a budget for marketing or knowledge to use a budget if we had one,” a New York pediatrician lamented.
That’s a problem, according to Andrea Eliscu, president of Medical Marketing Inc and author of four books on building healthcare practices. When it comes to small medical practices, “good marketing is 80% of their survival…. If you want to be independent in 2023, you have to really work at people knowing you exist.”
Marketing an independent medical practice has evolved rapidly in the past decade. Eliscu’s clients today use QR codes rather than business cards and downloadable PDFs rather than brochures. But self-employed physicians who haven’t changed so swiftly can still make up ground by following certain easily digested, fundamental marketing principles.
Assess the Situation
Eliscu’s self-practice assessment for a new client serves as the foundation for a marketing plan. “What are their strengths? What makes them unique? What are the benefits of coming to their practice? Who are their competitors, and how are they different?”
Answers to those questions are essential to establishing a brand identity, which in turn shapes marketing messages as low-tech as your practice’s logo and as high-tech as the design and content strategy of your website.
The flip side of knowing your own practice and your services is understanding your target market. Current trends in healthcare marketing include a focus on services over brand or image, personalization over standardization, and building long-term relationships. Expect your patients or prospective patients to extensively research their condition before booking an appointment.
“People don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘Let me see if any doctors out there are talking to me,’ ” Eliscu says. Rather, they’re problem-driven. “If your site makes the information current and easy to understand and seems welcoming, the patient will say, ‘I’m going to call these guys.’ “
Maximize Your Online Presence
Your medical practice website should use up-to-date architecture and technology, including mobile capacity (an automatic smartphone mode), to avoid looking outdated. Eliscu recommends consumer-friendly formats like WordPress that make it easy to change and update the website regularly.
Content marketing fuels online engagement, which means how much time people spend on your website and how closely they pay attention to your information. The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is for your practice to appear on the first page of search results for your specialty and location. Effective content marketing and SEO are symbiotic: Good SEO drives people to your website, and quality content keeps them engaged longer, which in turn enhances SEO. Posting regularly also helps. Eliscu recommends blogging or posting new content at least weekly, even if just to add a few sentences.
You’d be surprised how much new content your physicians may already be creating. “Every local talk I give, we video it and put it on the website,” says Van Crisco, MD, a cardiologist and partner at First Coast Heart and Vascular Center, based in Jacksonville, Florida. “Every positive feedback from every patient, we get their name and picture and put it on the website. Every time I give a talk at a conference, we’d put it on the website.”
Even the busiest small practices can be nimble in deploying announcements that serve a marketing mission. “During the pandemic, we initiated drive-through flu shot clinics on Saturday mornings where you don’t even have to get out of your car,” says Michael Weizman, MD, a family practice physician and owner of Our Family Doctor in Asheville, North Carolina. “We notified patients with mass texts, mass email, on the website and Facebook.”
When patients recently commented about office staff continuing to wear masks, Weizman wrote a post explaining why. When doctors participated in a “White Coats for Black Lives” event, his practice posted a photo on social media that was shared widely.
Other possibilities for regular online content include how-to articles, frequently asked questions with detailed explanations, feedback on relevant articles or books, and hiring of new employees.
Reinforce Digital Efforts in Real Life
Here are some IRL (in real life) marketing efforts:
Make sure staffers who answer your practice’s phones “follow through on the online promise” with compassion and by being informative and helpful, Eliscu advises.
Don’t underestimate the impact of community involvement. Eye Associates practice is a longtime underwriter of Orlando’s public radio station WMFE. “People thank us and they don’t even think of it as advertising, because it’s just short and informative and gets your name out there,” says Sandra Barker, OD, who co-founded Eye Associates with her husband during the mid-1980s.
Handwritten thank you notes have not vanished from the American scene; Eliscu provides templates to clients, if they need one. “I have clients send them to patients who’ve referred friends. It gives people such a good feeling, and the patient becomes an advocate.”
Build Your Referral Network
Building a referral network is a challenging yet essential marketing element for many self-employed physicians. Think of physicians who could refer patients as another target marketing audience. For example, Barker’s practice specifically markets to specialists such as internists and endocrinologists whose patients can develop associated vision problems.
In-person meetings are vital to your becoming a referral of choice. When his cardiology practice set up monthly, lunchtime office meetings with primary care physicians, Crisco found them invaluable.
“You’re offering medical education over lunch from somebody who’s seen a lot of patients ― and it works. If they, like you, gave them something that can help them help their patient, that’s a really high-value interaction.”
Touch Base With an Expert
Practices looking to hire a marketing consultant should expect to spend 3% to 5% of gross revenue on marketing, according to some estimates. If your physician friends can’t offer a recommendation, search for healthcare specialists online, and don’t worry if they’re in a distant city and are using Zoom, Eliscu advises.
When vetting a marketing consultant, be prepared to outline your situation. “Until the marketing company knows your goals, your marketing background to date, and more about your practice, it is difficult to give a quote and have both parties be happy with the outcome,” she says.
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