When I bring up the subject of marketing for medical practices, I get either a glare of disbelief or a concerned look that says – ‘yes, but we don’t know how’.
The look of disbelief comes from old-school doctors who always thought the words marketing and medical practice don’t go together. They consider marketing cheesy, and downright nasty.
For others, they have come to the realization that the world has changed. The Internet has turned things upside down just as the world of healthcare is changing dramatically.
What is Medical Practice Marketing?
It can mean any of all of these:
- Advertising
- Building a Website with search engine optimization
- Sending newsletters to patients
- Being active in the community to promote good health and in turn, become visible and written up in the local media
- Engaging local media with proper public relations
- Sending letters/postcards to patients on their birthdays, and other occasions.
- Holding events for other doctors in your referral network
Does any of this (other than Advertising) sound like ‘sales and marketing’ to you?
Everything that you do is meant to educate and engage your patients (and potential patients) in a dialog and establish you as a thought leader in your community.
The altruistic goal is to treat and serve patients – but you wouldn’t be doing that if patients didn’t come to you.
Marketing is indeed serving your patients
The goal of marketing is to reach as many people as possible so that you have the opportunity to help and serve. Marketing does not mean making a used-car sales pitch.
My goal here is to firmly establish the need for Marketing. Are you convinced?
In future blogs, I will write about the process of doing marketing – what and how to of medical practice marketing.
