Common Mistakes of the Marketing Practice
Common Mistakes of the Marketing Practice
- October 2nd, 2009by Eric Gunderson, CEO, Valeo Communications
I’m often invited to help practices uncover why their marketing doesn’t bring in more, or better, patients. By the time this meeting occurs, those with decision-making responsibilities have concluded marketing just doesn’t work and their fate to continue experiencing decreasing profits is sealed unless their existing patients start physically delivering their friends and family to the front door.
There are four typical mistakes I find that cause a practice’s marketing efforts to provide unintended and undesired affects:
1. Using a generic message. If you are telling prospective patients or referring doctors about YOUR experience, YOUR care, YOUR technology and YOUR menu of services, guess what? YOUR competition is telling them the same thing! Therefore the message has zero impact on the target no matter how unique or great your practice is. The message has to be about what’s in it for the prospect if they decide to visit you or refer someone to your practice. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a unique reason; it just has to be something that matters to THEM.
2. Building awareness. The classic objective of traditional advertising is to build awareness. This means that if someone ever has a need for your service, hopefully you will have spent enough time and money pounding your name into their head that they will remember you, look up your phone number and schedule an appointment. Effective marketing should inspire a prospect to take immediate action. Don’t settle for waiting months in hopes that your investment in growing the practice will pay off – eventually.
3. No strategic plan. Without a plan to guide it, many practices waste money trying new things in hopes they will drive traffic. A sales representative from a TV station calls to tell you about a health fair they will be promoting, so you invest some of your budget there. One of your competitors has been getting more referrals from a coveted resource after taking him golfing, so you decide to take him to dinner and a football game with scalped tickets on the 50 yard line. Or a very attractive and funny representative from a local physician’s lifestyle magazine calls you up about advertising and you decide to give it a try. Before you’re three-quarters of the way through the year your marketing budget is gone and you’re missing out on other opportunities that may have provided much better results. Without a plan, it’s hard to quantify what will deliver the outcomes that will have the most positive impact on the practice.
4. No measurements. It’s extremely rare for me to find a practice that can accurately account for where appointments are coming from. So if you don’t know how these patients are arriving at their decision to schedule a visit or why another doctor decided to send his patient to you, how can you possibly determine if anything you are doing to help drive traffic is working?
Effective practice marketing focuses on the needs of the target and how best to facilitate immediate action regardless of your price, your location or their personal relationships. The goal for every marketing effort should be a 3-4 times return-on-investment. You can achieve growth even in today’s economic climate if you avoid the four pitfalls of practice marketing.
For more information about the author or Valeo Communications, call 502-558-1717 or visit www.valeocommunications.com
