"Most wealth and income is
derived from business systems,
in both small (medical) and
large (hospital) businesses."
Think of a system as a detailed step-by-stem series of separate and individual actions and processes required by everyone in your business entity to perform in order to reach the primary goal or objective you have set. A marketing system is created in a medical practice to recruit new patients, and retain old patients, and is the lifeblood of medical practice.
What you sell to patients are your medical care services. Unless you have a constant flow of new patients into your medical practice to compensate for the patients leaving your practice, you will need to have an exit plan for your practice. The strength of your practice, along with profitability and productiveness, is directly dependent on the constant flow of new patients, which far exceeds the loss
of old patients.
The various segments of the marketing system required for efficiency and profitability must all be coordinated for and focused on the one established goal...
The details on each one of the system components described below you will find in my articles listed on this site--category--"Advantages of a marketing focus"
Elements of a profitable marketing system that are necessary for profitability
and efficiency...
1. Prospective patients-- Permitting new patients to spontaneously show up at your office on their own recognizance as your only source for new patients is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Increasing medical practice competition never ends and demands that you must do your marketing endlessly for patients to stay in the game.
Select a category of patients you want in your practice, narrow it down to a specific person with specific attributes, and persuade them you are the best doctor in town (because you are). If you’re a pediatrician, you serve kids 1 to 16 years old. An obstetrician normally deals with only female patients age 16 to 35, etc. Gynecologists want to find patients that still have their uterus. Allergists want sneezing patients. Humor is effective.
2. Finding prospective patients-- No, you don’t contact every patient within 30 miles from your office—costs too much and is not very productive. Ask a "list broker" to provide you with a list of 5,000 or 10,000 people in your immediate area. You tell them exactly the description of the patient you want, names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, zip codes or other criteria specific to your
chosen characteristics.
Now you have all the data you need to recruit a percentage of them as patients. Just keep repeating the mail-out process every couple months to keep the flow of patients coming in. Expect those lists to produce about 3 to 5 new patients and about 10 who will call for information.
3. Establish a business and marketing budget-- Diligently, choose the maximum amount of your profits you can spare without compromising your other financial obligations. Until you do this, the two steps above may put you in the poor house. Start with a smaller budget and later increase it when you can afford more, and when you know that the method you are using is working well. You must keep records of the marketing mailing results.
4. Decide on a marketing method-- Direct mail is the most productive method by most measurements. The aim here is to use as many marketing methods as you can afford which work well for you. Don’t waste time with a method that accounts for no new patients. Calculate the costs of each method and pick the one to begin with and that you can handle.
5. Create your marketing materials-- Marketing letters and materials must contain all the necessary marketing elements known to persuade a percentage of people to take action and respond to the marketing offer. The process is called copywriting. You can hire it done, or do it yourself if you have the knowledge to do it right. Read my three articles about copywriting on this website...
Article #59, Title, "Marketing Effectiveness for Physicians Begins
With The Genius Tool"
Article #61, Title, "Prevent Medical Malpractice Suits by Applying
The Same Principles As Used In Good Copywriting"
Article #62, Title, "How To Use Copywriting As A marketing Tool
For Your Medical Practice"
These are the essential elements of a marketing (your sales letter) letter to your potential medical patients...
- Hair raising, fire breathing headline that draws
immediate attention - Greeting... use person’s name
- Bulleted list of unique benefits a patient would have at
your office - Testimonials... what others have said about your medical
practice and you - Guarantee issues
- Offer of a medical service no other doctor is offering... details
- Why a patient should grab the offer today... unique benefits
- Rebuttals to potential patient questions that may delay
their decision - Deadline to accept an offer--like, end of the month, urgent, won't be offered again soon, only accepting 10 more patients.
- Tell them what to do next—“Call for an appointment before the deadline”... questions
- Doctor’s name, office address, phone number, map to office, or other pertinent info, like, 5th floor, etc.
- Repeat summary of the patient benefits for accepting the offer
(Options you could add)
a. Offer a free “get acquainted” visit
b. Ask for a referral of a friend, relative, neighbor if the patient can’t accept the offer
c. Note indicating they are always welcome to join our practice in the future
d. Follow-up mailing in 2 to 6 months to remind the list about your practice
6. Send your marketing materials-- Sending marketing mail to your chosen list does not mean the envelope ever gets opened or letters read. If they get 15 envelopes or postcards a day in their mail, which ones will get trashed without being opened and which are interesting enough to open?
There are well documented tactics that increase the opening rate, which are called “envelope cosmetics” such as doodles on the outside the envelope, urgent or important stamps, postal stamp placed at an angle, a palpable item felt through the envelope walls, and hand written names and addresses. Postcard marketing gets around these barriers--immediate visualization and reading, nothing to open.
Always be sure you include all the features necessary to persuade a new potential patient to take action and respond to your offer.
7. Handling contacts made by new patients-- Without a doubt, a potential new patient’s first contact with your office, first impressions, solidifies their decision to become a patient or not. As soon as the office staff member knows the caller is a new patient, there should be an immediate mind conversion of the employee to that of a personal mindset, like--willing to spend the rest of the day
with the caller.
All other employee duties should instantly be redirected to someone else or put on hold. You should have a template script written out for all your office staff to follow for new patient contacts. Consistency is important for your practice image.
8. Appointments for new patients--New patients should be treated like royalty. Their appointment should be within a few days of their call, unless it’s a serious medical problem. In that case see them the same day. Catering to a new patient’s choices is smart...even if it means staying late, or even as a forced fit-in appointment.
9. Obtain old medical records--Much of the patient’s medical history patients will have difficulty remembering, especially for older patients. Records can be requested at the time of their first appointment or before. Electronic medical records will resolve this hassle in the future. Have a system to use to ensure you have received all the patient's old medical records.
10. Resources for new patients--New patients are not aware of what you have available for your regular patients such as information handouts, a brochure promoting your practice, phoned-in prescriptions, educational materials like videos, newsletter the doctor creates monthly, or house calls. Have a process for informing them.
11. Follow-up sequence--The fact that repeated sequencing of marketing offers increases response rates can’t be denied. When you send your direct mail marketing letters, emails or postcards out to your selected target market of potential patients, don’t quit with one mailing as so many do. In any target group, there is a significant percentage of people who never respond to the first mailing. For many, it takes up to 7 mailings.
By repeating your mailing offer every week or so for a couple of months your response rate will double or triple. You stop when there are no more responses.
12. Outrageous Advertising--Previously considered to be a fool's gesture, outrageous marketing or advertising continues to stand out as a profitable means to gain new customers in a world saturated with commoditized marketing methods. People enjoy and are attracted to unusual and different kinds of offers presented in unusual ways.
You would be well advised to read Bill Glazer’s book, “Outrageous Advertising” where he gives over a hundred powerful and successful examples you can copy and try.
Comment about continually promoting your medical practice...
Constructing your personal customized marketing system using marketing strategies to promote your medical practice business is an efficient means of pulling your practice up out of the financial quicksand in any economy that comes along. A medical practice business composed of business systems to streamline efficiency will free up previous wasted time doing lots and accomplishing little. Consider it an entrepreneur’s shield.
Our resource for learning business systems is available to you on this site...
Article #20, Title, "How A Business System Prevents You From Being Incarcerated At The Poor Farm"
The bonus that makes your competitors quiver!!!!
Requirements for maximizing your medical practice income...
- Good knowledge of medical practice management
- Having the energy for medical practice marketing
- Medical practice business planning is important.
- Marketing for physicians and their office staff is a winning set up.
- Learn what makes a medical practice business successful
- Your medical practice business system is essential.
- Both practice marketing and physician marketing is rewarding.
- Business success is the objective of all physicians in private medical practice.
- My business teaching website--www.marketingamedicalpractice.com
----Professional Probe----
"Are you too financially swamped in your
private medical practice business to
dig your way out?"
Financial quicksand is the greatest threat to private medical practice physicians that are nation has ever faced. The problem is not new. The cause is not only out in plain sight but also has been there for the last 6 decades.
The tragedy starts with the money/income problems of private practice physicians and ends up in the national spotlight because of the consequences of the deterioration of the quality of healthcare, the increasing attrition of American physicians, loss of private medical practices for financial reasons, the American males who aren't applying to medical schools, and most of all---the government plans for taking full control of healthcare in our nation.
If you believe that being forced to see overwhelming numbers of patients daily in your private practice to earn enough to pay the medical office overhead is not a critical problem for us, then think about the next step that our government is planning. That of total control of the medical profession itself, once they have full control of healthcare, by intentionally causing the disintegration of private medical practice.
The secret government plan includes the cooperation of our 174 accredited medical schools in our country. Now we are getting down to the actual defect in the medical educational-armor that has cleverly been disguised to coverup the true core of the problem.
Virtually everything pointed out above is the result of the medical schools total disregard for the future success of all physicians by denying their responsibility to fortify the careers of virtually all physicians by providing one essential ingredient--a business education for all medical students.
By untangling the factors surrounding this tragedy, anyone can recognize that the lack of a business education creates a situation that predetermines the financial failure of all physicians in clinical private medical practice.
It's not a question of variable degrees of financial failure of private physicians, it's a question of how much, how many, and how soon the tragedy triggers the collapse of the independence of private medical practice care in our country.
The details about this are described in my book, THE WOUNDED PHYSICIAN PROJECT.
----Professional Probe----
"Private medical practice success is like a
perfect machine made for winning,
and loses a wheel (meaning money) in
the high jump."
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #21 3-15-22
