Have you ever wondered what were the best ways to effectively get the word out about your medical or dental practice?
There are many different solutions that will help your business generate a buzz in your community, doing just one will not be effective, you must plan and execute an aggressive marketing plan.
Need help? Download our FREE 30 page E-book, Ultimate Guide to Creating your Medical Marketing Plan on a Budget
I always ask the doctors that I meet; do you have a marketing plan? – do you know what 80% of doctors say? – An astonishing NO!
Ever heard the saying, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Unfortunately, very few healthcare organizations have a strategic marketing plan. This lack of planning can lead to most doctors never realizing their true revenue potential, or even worse cause them to lose money month after month till they ultimately fail. Please don’t become another statistic.
One questions I ask is – what are your revenue goals for the next quarter or year, and most Doctors say I want to get more patients, but when I dive deeper, very few actually have a concrete plan to achieve that goal. They just hope and wish it will happen, or talk about the elusive partner referral that never comes.
What is your current marketing budget?
Did you know that you should budget at least 10 – 15% of your expected annual revenue back into your company’s marketing objectives. Even worse most companies when designing a website use a buy it and forget it approach.
Think about it this way, your website is your number one sales person, it never gets tired, never takes a day off, works 24 hours a day/7 days a week – but most business owners never allocated a monthly budget for its maintenance, upkeep and promotion.
Is your website doing your practice justice?
If you hired a full time sales person for your practice and paid them $3,000 a month plus benefits, they still would not be able to generate the type of leads your website should be giving you. Before you hire new people – invest your capital into a properly designed marketing plan so you can capture the 90 percent of people that research products online prior to buying. We work with a few great companies, Check out Level 2 Marketing if you need some assistance.
A website is your closer; it funnels all your leads from your business cards, brochures, referral partners, online marketing, email newsletters, and social media platforms like facebook and drives them to one location on the web. If your website is not designed to interact with your customer, and ask them to purchase or call for an appointment – what good is it.
A properly maintained site is critical, and you should invest a minimum of 20 to 40 hours a month to capture the 1,000s of people searching for services that you can provide.
7 Marketing Strategies to Try.
- Social Media (ex. Facebook,)
- Affiliates
- Display
- Partners
- Email Campaigns – Really good and Free Email marketing program – (Mailchimp)
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization – on-site and off-site)
- SEM (Adwords, Sponsored Links)
You must design and implement a combination of these 7 (some will be more effective than others depending on your practice) objectives in order to achieve your marketing goals. Don’t have a goal (ex. Grow your revenues by 20% in 2013) Then its high time you talk to an expert and build a plan so you can see your goals become reality.
No plan = No chance.
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