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Wouldn’t it be great to walk into the office each morning and see an appointment book full of patients? That deep exhale overtakes your body, settling you into instant relaxation mode, and you know it’s going to be a busy but great day.
Unfortunately, the only thing you’ve walked into so far is the vacant stare of a resentful rubber fig plant that has been woefully neglected of water, and the last thing you need that early before your Folgers is a passive-aggressive shrub giving you attitude.
And you know how you wish you could systemize the whole “getting new patients easy-peasy with medical practice marketing” and watch them walk in the lobby, insurance card out and paperwork completed without babysitting the marketing process or trying to fit in seeing patients around marketing your medical practice but as of now you can’t seem to keep on top of either? Read on as we discuss how to get more patients even if you are a marketing dummy.
There are two main problems that will keep you from sustaining a successful practice:
- Not understanding, you need a village (or at least a small team) to make your medical practice marketing strategy work.
- Being unwilling to delegate your marketing plan to trusted experts.
The truth is that even if you could do it all, you shouldn’t. Something always gets sacrificed in the name of “saving money” (which is a lie because you don’t actually save money by doing it all yourself). Specifically, your time is usually on the chopping block. Time is priceless and once spent, is lost forever.
Trying to handle running and managing your practice and your marketing is too much. Smart small practice owners understand this, and that’s what enables them to grow while maintaining a high level of patient quality care.
But this isn’t ONLY about marketing. It’s about healing your patients and giving them more time with their loved ones.
It’s about understanding that psoriasis treatments for the retired elderly teacher doesn’t just relieve her itchy elbows, it restores her quality of life.
Or the arthritic back of a fifty-year old construction worker who just wants to come home at the end of the day and sit at the dinner table with his wife and kids instead of on the floor, three Ibuprofen in and praying he’ll be upright tomorrow so he doesn’t have to miss a paycheck.
It’s about you using your experience, skills, talents and gifts to fulfill a cause greater than yourself.
Something that’s been your goal since you went to medical school. Service is the highest form of love that you can give the world. You do this because you know you’re one of the few people on this planet who can.
There’s a significant calling to a select few who based on their own life experiences have forged them into becoming a physician who can affect change for the community. You are one of those people.
And you know that without patients you can’t fulfill your calling.
It’s your responsibility to find a way to share your gifts with the world.
You believe in systems. You know that an infrastructure set in place holds up the entire building and without it, your castle crumbles. You believe in every nail and every bolt that has a responsibility to hold its own weight and the weight of its brother, so that the common good of the structure is supported.
You believe that a team injected into your medical practice marketing plan and the ability to delegate responsibilities to that team allows you to focus on your zone of genius which ultimately gives your patients the best part of yourself and the highest quality of care to help them.
But it’s your specific life experiences that have built your empathy. It’s what causes you to take an extra ten minutes with a patient even though you’re falling behind on your rotation. It’s your ability to calm a patient and give encouragement to a patient who you’ve just had to deliver bad news. And it’s the way you give kind, uplifting words to a widow who doesn’t know how she’ll be able to cope through another mastectomy.
Not getting a handle on your marketing means your patients suffer.
You know that if your patients don’t get your best, they’ll suffer needlessly. That’s not something you will accept. Especially when you know that you have the power to make a difference. That’s why you’re not going to even try to divide your time between patient care and in-house marketing. Don’t try to make your staff marketing experts, and don’t try to do this yourself. You’re smart enough to know that you stay where your gifts are strongest.
Know how I know?
Because right now, with so little time left in your day, you’re reading this trying to find out how to make your practice better. How to grow it without overwhelming yourself or knocking your own balance out of whack.
You give a thousand percent to your life’s work. And you want to know that you’ve done all you can to make the world and your community and patients better than when you found them.
Here’s the down-and-dirty seven principles to help you get more patients than you can handle even if you are a marketing “dummy.”
- Marketing is simply finding those you can serve and inviting them to let you solve their problem. The way to do that? Get yourself an SEO optimized website that works for you. It’s very difficult to set up and is not something that you can just throw up on the internet (if you want it to work, that is)
- Patients want to come to you; they just don’t know you exist. That means you have to have ongoing publishing to keep the Google algorithm happy and rank you.
- Knowing who you want to serve makes it easier to find them. Business listings help with local searches. Accumulating that will help your audience find you.
- There is no scarcity when it comes to an abundance of patients. They are out there. The market will never become saturated. There will never be too much competition. Don’t believe these false belief systems. If you build a way to find them and get noticed, they will show up consistently.
- Trying to market your own practice while running it is nearly impossible to do successfully (and may result in a loss of money and time, learning as you go). PPC ads for your medical practice help if you are a fresh domain to provide an artificial boost to your rankings. This means you need someone who knows how to set up these ads. This is just one example where you need a team to help you run your marketing.
- Learning as you go is not a winning marketing strategy that gets results fast (although you should learn the principles of marketing your practice). Regular social media posts to keep online activity going and video introductions to provide better engagement introducing your practice. For this, you need someone who knows how to market your practice via social media. See where I’m going with this? You can’t do it yourself.
- Delegating is the single most common trait of a successful practice. Allowing a team to market for you gives you the opportunity to build a reputation by proactively seeking reviews from your patients. The point is that you allow the experts to take care of what they’re experienced in so that they can help you build a healthcare marketing strategy that brings in patients consistently.
Now, combine this with a winning marketing team who you delegate these principles to, and you’re on a successful path to bringing in a steady stream of new patients.
Your mission is to heal. Our mission is to free your hands up to do just that. We are recognized by SuperbCompanies as the ‘Top Ranking Marketing Agency’ for healthcare providers. Our services establish great ROI from medical SEO service, social media management, medical website design, and development, creating brand identity, high-quality medical content and articles, PPC ads, digital signages, video marketing, and medical IT support. There are better ways to do everything, and we want to bring modern digital solutions to all medical practice management.
Your focus should be on using your medical experience to heal, not sorting through administrative paperwork or setting up a marketing plan. That’s why you partner with experts. We do just that. Take care of setting up a marketing system that works for you 24/7, so you don’t have to. Let’s talk about it. Meet us here.