"Advertising is a splinter off of the medical practice
marketing process, but when used properly it can become
a massive profitable part of your medical practice
marketing efforts."
"It's intellectual and moral pollution," is what a professor taught students at the New York New School of Social Research and what one of the world renowned advertising expert, David Ogilvy, used to point out the common misconception about advertising held by Galbraith and Toynbee, among many others.
In our world economy advertising has become the most efficient way to sell. How else would any person find out that a product existed, what its benefits are, where it's sold, and how much it costs?
In the case of physicians, how will any patient learn that you have a medical practice "out there somewhere," what kind of medical practice you have, where you are located, and how you may
treat patients?
Relying on the outdated methods of building your practice, like word of mouth and surfing the Internet in this modern age of express information, is fraught with disappointment, let alone the loss of income. It's, "Money left on the table."
Advertising is a simple process of alerting patients in your area you exist and why they should seek your services. The use of printed or spoken words in any channel of media that patients see (TV infomercials), read (newspapers), or hear (radio) is the basis for delivering advertising to the public.
The words and graphics must be presented in such a way that it immediately attracts attention, quickly focuses attention on the product (your medical practice), and logically, clearly, and rapidly leads the viewer through the critical emotional benefits of using the product (seeing you for
medical care).
Constructing an ad which does all those things at the same time makes it highly effective in attracting patients to your practice. It's a skill that few do well without learning how to make it effective--but can be learned and used productively in a medical practice.
Advertising can be quite expensive but doesn't have to be, if you do it all yourself.
Why advertising won't make doctors rich...
It's because advertising has several short-comings that marketing doesn't...
- Ads don't reach all the patients.
- Ads aren't focused on the group of patients you want to attract.
- Ads may have no follow-up methodology.
- Ads commonly don't rely on what patients are interested in knowing.
- Ads must be constantly changed to avoid customer boredom.
- Ads have only one shot at catching attention and usefulness.
- Ads are perceived to be manipulative, insincere, and misleading.
Ads are like shooting an arrow and hope you hit something you're looking for.
Advertising strategies shine when they're merged with your marketing plans. Putting a great player on a poor team diminishes the player's ability, not his or her talent. Ads are only valuable when they're coordinated with your marketing plans and goals. If your efforts at marketing are less than desirable, advertising won't help much.
Marketing is an ongoing process... no stop and wait... no giving up too soon... no high expectations.
Medical practice marketing is a blanketing protocol. When you think about the actions of the high school football team on the field Friday night, do you consider the often unrecognized factors responsible for the team playing such a great game? The school must search for a coach with certain qualifications. The coach must adapt to the school expectations.
The team must learn to comply with the coach's methods and techniques. After the game's over, comes the evaluation of what went wrong and how to correct it before the next game--exactly like the marketing and advertising game.
The medical practice marketing process begins as an idea for increasing income and expands into any and all steps required to bring it to maximum efficiency and use. It includes every detail to make it profitable from start to finish, modifications over time to extract the largest amount of income from the needs of the public, and is refined to become a profitable tool for a prolonged period of time.
What medical practice marketing does that advertising doesn't accomplish...
- Medical practice marketing is directed at the segment of patients you want in your
medical practice business
- Uses multiple methods for persuading a patient that you are the best doctor for them
- Applies strategies and tactics that are constantly revised for maximum effect
- Is designed for the long term persuasiveness in a repeated fashion
- Modifications in the medical practice marketing plan can be made immediately for best results
- Applying the laws of medical practice marketing is not very effective through advertising itself
Is all this sinking in...or what?
Al Ries and Jack Trout published "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" in 1993. Their straight talk about the concepts well known to marketing experts set new standards for even physicians to follow in their own medical practice marketing efforts.
The laws work for physicians and other health care providers...
- It's better to be first at doing a new procedure than it is to be better at doing it.
- If you can't be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
- It's better to be first in minds of patients about a new treatment than to be
first in doing a new treatment.
- Marketing is not a battle of how smart and talented you are, it's a battle of how smart and talented your patients perceive you are.
- The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word (ex. "hip replacement"
instantly brings up your name) in the patient's mind.
- Two doctors cannot own the same word in the patient's mind.
- The strategy to use depends on which rung you occupy on the professional ladder. If you're
not top physician for a certain medical treatment, your market your talent in a way appears to be top rung--(Ex. AVIS number 2 in car rental "We try harder.")
- In the long run, every physician's marketing becomes a two-horse race. The top doc drops to
second and the second rung doc becomes top doc eventually.
- If you're shooting for second place, your strategy is determined by what the top doc used to reach first place.
- Over time, a category of medical practice will divide and become two or more categories. There's room for you to then be top doc in another category instead of second in the
original one.
- Marketing effects take place over an extended period of time. Therefore, the need to be persistent at marketing efforts to be successful.
- There's an irresistible pressure to extend your knowledge, expertise, and talents beyond which you think you are unable to cope with, with few exceptions.
- You have to give up something in order to get something... you don't have time for all you'd
love to be doing.
- For every attribute, there's an opposite, effective attribute. When the top doc owns the turf
don't try to copy him or her. Choose an opposite expertise position that equals or competes
with his marketing focus.
- When you admit a negative or mistake it's disarming, but the result is positive.
- In each situation, only one move will produce substantial results. Forget about marketing everything you do, make a bold audacious thrust at what you do best.
- Unless you write your competitors' plans, you can't predict the future.
- Success often leads to arrogance and arrogance to failure.
- Failure is to be expected and accepted. You go at the project a different way next time.
- Your medical practice marketing strategies are often the opposite of the way it appears
in the press.
- Successful medical practice marketing programs are not built on fads, they're built on trends.
- Without adequate funding an idea to improve your income won't fly.
The worst thing I can think of in today's world is the disappearance of private medical practice, but that's where we are headed. Perhaps physicians who market their practice will hang on forever.
"A prudent person profits from personal experience, a wise one from the experience of others." ----Dr. Joseph Collins
As I'm sure you know, the whole field of medical practice business marketing is kind of like the big boy's club. The tendency of commercial marketers is to avoid teaching you much, if anything, about doing your own marketing. It would be like shooting themselves in the foot. They want your practice business marketing and to earn money.
Because I'm a physician who has run the medical practice gauntlet, I look at marketing in quite a different and emotional manner. My lack of knowledge about marketing kept me from building a better medical practice business management plan, kept my income at a level that I am ashamed to admit now, and made me on many occasions believe that I had chosen the wrong profession, or at least the wrong specialty.
Marketing and medical office business management are areas of knowledge most of us were never taught and had to learn by trial and error. It's a wide gap in a physicians academic training. A few medical schools are today beginning to wise up and add some of this to medical school training.
----Professional Probe----
"The 'somewhat' proper way to look
at advertising and marketing"
As long as the world continues to favor the elements of the economy that selling and buying creates, the more we will need to be networked into advertising and marketing as a dominant protocol for increasing income.
Unless you are knowledgeable about, or working in, the industry of marketing and advertising, regular people are commonly caught in a web of confusing information, misconceptions, overloads of options and choices, over expectations, among many others.
Because we have few if any other options for maintaining our economy, we are stuck with what we now have, at least until a world wide destructive process happens.
Advertising tells us what is available to buy or sell.
Marketing tells us the information necessary for us to decide what and when and why we need to buy something.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #81, 3-16-22
