No budget? Unrealistic budget? How to begin when the page is blank. Two different practitioners called us recently. Let's just describe them as smart and experienced doctors in different professions, in different parts of the country and on different ends of the promotional spectrum. They both were experiencing an "ah-hah moment" of personal insight and […]
Strategic marketing planning and analysis is an ongoing process. As part of almost every "Marketing 101" course, students are taught a basic marketing analysis principle, most often called the "marketing mix." The marketing mix was originally defined as the "4 Ps" - Product, Price, Promotion, and Place. For service businesses, a fifth "P" - People […]
Skilled practitioners want everyone to appreciate the work they do, and before-and-after photos can work wonders. But, remember that patients are interested in personal benefits, not clinical process. For external marketing materials, use images that illustrate positive outcomes and benefits and save the clinical pictures for colleagues. We are often asked about using "before-and-after" photos […]
You can't sell enough $100 products in a year to replace one patient lost in a day Here's a brief, but absolutely real-life, patient-experience story. The venue is the office of a general dentist, but the "how-not-to-do-something" message applies to many other provider settings. Picture yourself as the patient and you'll have no trouble reading […]
Editors note: This article is the second of a two-part series. If you haven't chosen your new practice location yet, we recommend you also read, Medical Office Space: How to Choose a Great Location. Congratulations! You have signed the contract for your new office space, and your staff is on top of all the administrative […]
The Internet has become the tool of choice for prospective patients in making dental and other health–care decisions. But there are a ton of practices that don't have a first–class online marketing tool, and that's a missed opportunity and lost revenue. If it's time to take a critical look at your tired, gen–one version, here's […]
Dentists want to grow their practices, but most are operating without a marketing roadmap. "This is an increasingly tough business." This comment from an experienced solo dentist (age 55 to 64) practicing in the Midwest was clear and direct. And many, perhaps most, dentists who participated in the first-ever State of Dental Marketing Survey seem […]
Medical marketing efforts that attempt to reach anyone, anywhere-are doomed to produce only a squandered budget. Carefully and precisely identifying the target audience is a critical success factor in brand strategy development. You know whom you want to reach, where they are located, what makes them tick...and how to speak directly to them.
The three big ideas behind every successful Professional Referral Program. Referrals are all about relationships. And professional relationships—the source of professional referrals—don't blossom spontaneously. There's a well-considered system that fuels a successful Professional Referral Program, based on these three concepts. Healthcare referrals are the financial lifeblood of many hospitals and practices. And for others, referrals […]
"If you can get our phones to ring more often, we'll be happy campers!" It would be very hard to estimate how many times we've heard that request in our combined 30 years of healthcare marketing experience. Hundreds of times would be a conservative guess. "Get people to call us and we can take it […]
Editor's note: This article is the first of a two-part series and covers how to CHOOSE a new practice location from a marketing point of view. At the conclusion of this article, we'll provide you a link to the second article, which covers how to PROMOTE your new location. "Location, location, location..." This wise old […]
Can you guess what spaghetti marketing is? (A lot of healthcare businesses do it.) Simply spend a lot of marketing dollars randomly, throw a bunch of "spaghetti" against the wall, and see if anything sticks. As you might suspect, we are not big fans of spaghetti marketing. You could throw a lot of spaghetti -- […]
Real-world insights and ideas A marketing plan is not a list of marketing ideas from which you randomly select different concepts to test or combine for trial-and-error experimentation. That is just random, episodic, spaghetti-on-the-wall marketing activity - which is almost always a high-risk prescription for disappointment, frustration and failure. A marketing plan is a strategic […]
Shouldn't you trust your practice marketing to two of America's top physician marketing and dental marketing experts Done properly, ethical marketing can grow your profits, attract patients who appreciate and can afford quality care, deliver the high-paying fulfilling cases you want and even enable you to have a life again. However, the stakes are far higher than […]
