"Postal mail sent directly to potential, and your own,
medical patients is overwhelmingly the most
productive and persuasive method of inciting
patients to join, or return to, your medical practice
because it requires a return response in the form of
some action to take for more information by
contacting your office directly."
You know that the flow of new patients joining your medical practice is the life-blood of your medical practice business success, income and use of your healthcare skills. A constant flow of new and loyal patients are the perpetual and only money source you have in private medical practice business.
Your focus on attracting new patients and maintaining the loyalty of your present patients are the only means for you to afford to keep your practice afloat, let alone to enable you to afford to meet all your career objectives.
Regardless of your personal view about the assimilation of money as a primary goal and necessity of your medical practice business, you really don’t have another alternative if you intend to remain in private practice. So fix that income factor in your mind right from the start, today.
Doing that is no more difficult than trying to explain to your spouse that you are not making enough income from your medical practice management to keep your medical office open. Believe me, I’ve been there and done that.
You also know that earning enough income from your medical practice management to pay all the expenses of your business and meet your family and private financial obligations over the years is the only means of using your medical education and skills to their maximum advantage. Money is not the goal you seek, but it does enable your lifestyle and career to expand to the ultimate potential in your medical practice business management that you have in mind. OR--Try practicing medicine for free sometime.
The key is to learn to work “on” your practice, not “in” your practice. Whatever happens to your medical practice marketing income depends on how well you can work “on” your practice while practicing “in” your practice. The idea being that you should spend enough time working on your practice to ensure that it is managed in a profitable manner and your decisions about what you do in your practice are seasoned with diligence and monetary knowledge. That means business knowledge.
Ignorance is eliminated by knowledge. If you are caught in a snare of regretful decision-making, you must always remember that more of the right knowledge is required to escape… you already know that…but you often think that you can handle it yourself anyway… and likely will continue to lose that battle. It's the result of your arrogance.
Problems associated with marketing failure (lack of patients)...
The notion that marketing is just a matter of putting a proposition or offer in the face of enough people, enough times, that the payoff will be what you want to occur. This myth is perpetuated by those who fail.
Marketing to be effective regardless of the method used, requires the following maneuvers…
- You must have a product or service that is highly desirable, easily obtained, and affordable to most people. Physicians, unfortunately, assume that they will always attract enough loyal patients because of their professional reputation, excellent treatment of their patients, and obtaining "other doctor" referrals.
Rarely can a successful business, including private medical practice, reach a level of income, growth, and satisfaction appropriate to your professional status and education without the essential tools of business that make it possible. You start a medical practice and hope patients find your office, right?
That thought process is the primary source of burnout in our profession because the incessant struggle to attracting more and more new medical patients to your practice becomes overwhelming to those physicians who never learned the value of marketing to their success. That's a proven fact for about 98% of physicians over the last 10 decades in our nation. - You must find, create, influence, and attract with your medical practice marketing process
the kind of patients who have the highest potential to be interested in what you are selling
and are most likely to buy from you. Physicians either sell themselves or their skills and reputation hoping to make it big... never happens, unless a catalyst comes along to assist the process. Working wives are not the best answer.
Finding targeted patients for your medical practice business should be more than a scattered research process. Almost all medical patients already have a doctor the day you start your medical practice business, so it means that you either need to find those who don’t have a doctor of your specialty (people moving into town) or patients who are ready to change to a different doctor for some reason.
Of course it's a nice area of the country and the other three new doctors in your
specialty that just moved in up the street shouldn't be a problem, should it?
How smart physicians can win this patient attraction game...
The simplest medical practice marketing strategy/method and least expensive one to pursue in the beginning is "PostCard Marketing."
You can go to a “list broker” in town, or nearby if your office is in a rural area, that can select the exact patient prototype you are looking for, such as those who can pay for your skilled and fantastic medical healthcare services… for example...
---earn over $60K per year
---own a boat or plane
---are male or female
---subscribe to certain magazines
---buy health services like yours
---drive race cars or are new in tow
And list brokers will furnish you a list of those people meeting those assigned criteria along with their office or home address, phone numbers, zip code, email address and more.
Cost varies from broker to broker but often will cost you about $500 per 5,000 names you can use only once, unless you pay for multiple uses of the list. Acceptable success for a single mailing to this number of potential patients would be 3 to 5 patients that would make an appointment in your office with you.
Post-card marketing is the least expensive and excellent method to use to filter for the patients you want to attract and treat. Maybe as an OB-Gyn you want infertility patients--you could select married females 20 to 45 years old without children.
No matter what method you use to reach potential patients, it’s necessary to communicate with them in a special way to let them know you are available to provide them healthcare. The secret here is that most physicians are too "occupied" with their practice that they never discover, or even try out this medical practice management marketing strategy.
Patients may already be receiving such letters, emails, etc. Whatever you use to communicate, they must be persuaded to take some action. To persuade patients, verbally or vocally, you must know how to do it. That issue is normally managed by copywriters who know what exact words to say and how to say it in a written context to persuade a patient to take action on your offer.
Copywriters are experts in persuading people to do something by using sentence structure and the right placement of the best persuasive words in the right order that bring buyers to their knees begging to pay for something being offered to them. Copywriters are highly paid and always in great demand because we live in a world of demanding customers and businesses that only survive by recruiting customers to buy.
A medical practice business is no different.
How to construct your postcard offer...
You communicate with potential patients because you want something from them.
That is your “offer”.
The offer you propose to a patient can be by phone, written letter, online, newsletters, etc. Most patients hate a “cold call” that requires a response at that moment. Most people prefer to receive a letter or statement describing the benefits and advantages of your offer…then make a decision to take action you have suggested.
The offer you make to a potential patient must be worth their time to even consider. It means that not only does your offer have to stand-out from the rest, but also must have a value that the patient wants or needs now or in the near future.
Any offer being made must provide as many means as possible for the potential patient to contact your office…phone #, email address, fax #, or return post card. The fewer ways for them to use, the lower the response rate is.
You should specify the one you prefer, but a phone call to your office is the best, because they can be given the info they need to decide about joining your practice and at the same time make
the appointment.
A phone call to your office indicates a couple of important things…
1. The potential patient that calls has already decided what they want to do, usually, that is to join your practice. The only reason they might not is how well the office staffer handles the call…provided positive info, doesn’t rush the call, is very friendly and helpful no matter how chaotic it is that day in the office.
The opposite response to the caller is an immediate loss of a new patient forever. If the story spreads, maybe a loss of even more potential patients that they might have referred others to you.
2. Most potential patients prior to calling you have already sought advice from family, friends, and neighbors about what kind of person you are with your patients. It’s rarely about your medical skills or knowledge, but usually about how you treat patients and whether you can be trusted...
a marker of your reputation.
For physicians, the usual and most effective method for contacting a potential new patient is either email or a postal mail piece. Of the two, email is the least effective because patients are less likely to open and read the message even though emails are a free means of communicating
with prospects.
Many studies have proven the value of email and postcard mailings. Mailing lists with the same words, info, and colors can be sent many times to the same list. Most marketing experts advise sending to the list about every two months. The reason for sending several times is a result of testing which documents that new patients who don't know you or trust you will not stop to read the message until you have sent the message up to 6-7 times.
Additionally, by changing the message wording, design, and colors on the postcard each time the results are far more effective for people to finally take action. Changing the color of text in the emails and using P.S. personal comments increases the response of emails as well.
Direct mail is more expensive, but much more effective for drawing in new patients. As a reminder, direct mail is anything you send to someone that is carried through the U.S. Postal Service and lands in their mailbox.
It’s one thing to send out a message but a whole different issue getting the addressee to open or even read the mail. Most email is never opened or read because the subject line they see on the screen or post card/letter does not contain the elements that persuade them that it might be something important, usable, or of value to them in some way.
Unless you create a subject line that draws curiosity, the potential for benefits, or is interpreted to be important to the recipient, it won’t be opened. People rarely go back to read an email they saved to read later.
Direct mail has similar characteristics. When you pull a pile of mail out of your mailbox, you know that you will sort through it over the wastebasket, and select the mail piece you are interested in opening. So what makes it interesting, or you curious, about each of those? Over 50 percent of mail is neither opened nor read.
About 5 to 15% open rate is reasonable and expected. But you want everyone who gets your offer to open or pick it up and read your offer.
The more you do to make the envelope exciting, different from all the rest, or somehow enticing the more chance you have to gain a new patient. When you get around a 50% open rate for your mail, you celebrate. Then you continue to re-use a copy of that in all of your mail sent
out after that.
Just think about the mail and envelopes you select out of your pile to open and read and why you choose certain ones and not others. There are many tricks to the trade that induce recipients to open mail that is well known among marketers. You have to discover them by reading information about them.
Advantages that direct mail has over email...
Direct mail offers many more customizable options for the sender than email offers. These options include nearly all of the necessary things that cause recipients to open the mail. Some common
examples are…
1. Lumpy mail… almost everyone will open a piece of mail that has a lump of something inside, even if the rest of the information on the envelope is something that would have led you to throw it away immediately otherwise. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but for people, it overcomes any desire not to open the mail.
2. Cockeyed stamp… a real stamp placed on the corner of the envelope at a crooked angle means that a person took the time to do it, therefore it becomes a personal message, not a commercial one. When you perceive it as personal you are more likely to open it.
3. Handwritten name and address… it makes it more personal than a typed or stamped address and creates the feeling that it is a personal message, not commercial.
4. Envelopes include designs, logos, or colors…makes one think of a holiday, birthday, or anniversary, all good emotions, therefore, the mail should be opened. It differentiates the mail from others that are plain white envelopes. Most people open these first.
5. Doodles… hand-drawn messages, arrows, and words that create urgency and increase value, “only this once”, “price going up”, “only 4 left”, “lifetime value”, “usable forever”, etc. Photos on envelopes are not recommended. They use up space and don’t help sell anything. The decoration or images on the stamps don’t help.
6. Envelope size… tends to make one believe that it contains more value, more information, and more benefits. Often used to send certificates for something simple with your name on it.
7. Return addresses… Some leave it off or put it on the back of the envelope because on the front of the envelope it instantly tells the recipient who sent it and you quickly dump it. Without a return address, you may go ahead and open the envelope just to find out who it’s from knowing you may read it while you have it open.
Occasionally only the street, city, zips are on the front of the envelope and no name mentioned. Most people don’t remember who is at what address and end up opening the envelope to see who sent it.
Although one can track both email and direct mail and use the statistics reported to judge the effectiveness of your mail marketing campaign and make it even more effective, direct mail
has the advantage.
Email is usually read and deleted or saved somewhere and never read later. Direct mail is a piece of information you hold, feel, and touch and it connects with the mind of the recipient better and continues in the conscious mind much longer.
Direct mail is apt to be saved in an easily visible place and maybe left laying around in plain sight for days, all the while catching the person’s attention repeatedly.
Direct Mail Marketing for Physicians...
Most physicians in private medical practice today are well aware that they are doing medical practice management in an environment where they either must learn to market their practice to remain solvent in their business or be forced into an environment of employee-ship--otherwise known as indentured servitude.
Physicians all tend to be independent thinkers; independent decision-makers, independent medical care providers, and sure as hell don’t want to give that up. Such a description instantly categorizes all physicians as entrepreneurs.
Medical patients are beginning to recognize the consequences and deficiencies of what government control of healthcare is causing in healthcare. Patients see the dire effects that result from restricted fees, increased frustration, and lack of availability of healthcare when physicians are being forced into methods of medical practice that complicate their own medical care.
These circumstances create even more serious effects on medical doctors personally than the media cares to explore. It’s like a large group of people standing breathlessly quiet while watching an out-of-control house fire burn it to the ground and no one can do anything about it.
That image remains in my mind because I watched and felt that happen to the home of a classmate of mine in grade school when I was about 9 years old.
Our very small town in western Pennsylvania of about 300 people living in relative poverty under the WWII defensive efforts, no fire department within 30 miles, volunteer firemen had to be called in from home or work in the middle of the night, often too late to do anything about the fire, and no police presence, was how we lived then. Thankfully, that night no one was injured.
Personal effects suffered by medical doctors that result from a constant and increasing demand and restrictions on physiciana to comply are rarely discussed outside of medical circles. The media rarely focuses on such egregious issues that physicians have to practice with.
Their true disgust, disappointment, and inability to find a way to protect themselves and their practice from the political decisions being made today concerning healthcare is repressed mentally. No one wants to give up the ship that took so much effort to build.
So what can physicians do under these increasing demands?
The one thing that you can do for your own medical practice is learning how to market it. By simply reading a book or two on “direct marketing” that I recommend on my website and you will pick up enough knowledge to do direct marketing yourself. It would be far better to delegate your most intelligent and inspired employee to do it all for you if you have one of that caliber. "Hello Cynthia, time to get to work."
You will have the same knowledge about direct mail marketing because it is the only way for you to be sure it is being done properly, efficiently, and profitably while you oversee the employees assigned to do the practice marketing work. It's my belief that in the future all smart private medical practice doctors will have an employee assigned to your medical practice marketing--which would easily more than double the income of the private medical practice.
If you are not of the temperament to do it all yourself and have no employee that qualifies, then hire a person who is already knowledgeable about marketing…pay them well because it will be worth it. You will recognize that by creating a method to measure the success or failure of the patient recruitment campaign. This is the best thing you can do today to at least get started in a marketing effort.
Your income depends on MORE NEW PATIENTS, so any effort for getting more of them is highly important. Your mental barrier to suddenly learn about and do marketing will quickly be removed once you are in the groove of learning and doing it.
Remember, your best resource for new patients are other physicians who refer them to you. So having a robust system for obtaining more referred patients from other doctors is critical to do. (See my articles on my website about how to set up an elite doctor referral system.)
Article #13 Title, "Referrals Should Be Outlawed--Just Too
Difficult To Say Thanks"
Article #14 Title, "More Practice Income By Referring Your
Own Patients To Yourself"
In marketing, the hardest thing to do is to be patient about seeing big marketing responses. It may take 3 to 6 months to see the good results from your marketing efforts. You will need a setup to record the dates and progress of the responses.
Required steps for managing the program…
1. Find a “List” broker for direct mail--"Google" keyword “list brokers”, using parentheses.
2. Decide how much money you have that you are willing to use in marketing your practice monthly. Stick to the budget that you decide on and adjust the available cost to your total income.
3. Pick, choose, and buy the list--choose requirements to focus on who you want for patients. Then buy a list of 10,000 to use. Expect to get 3 to 5 new patients from that list.
4. Record details of every response in a journal… either on your PC or on paper. Many call for information only but often call back for an appointment. By a potential patient responding, means you legally can communicate with them using the info they gave you personally. It means you can send them emails if you have that address.
5. Send out another 10,000 direct mail packets to a new and different List of potential patients, every 2 to 4 weeks for the next year…put an inexpensive gift into each letter, like letter openers, book marks, key chains, etc.
6. Use the USPS bulk mailing discounts.
7. Using postcards with your design and message on them is another approach to your list. Don’t send these out if you are going to use real letters. If you are short of money, use postcards instead of letters.
8. If you have questions or need more help then call me at... 702-444-6865---no charge for the introduction call.
These are practical things to do that help you for sure. Like everything, it requires both money and your time to do it properly.
----Professional Probe----
"All private physicians have the same problem... you're not alone."
Every medical professional can relate to this scene whether in private practice or an employee. The overwhelming aspect of postal or direct mail arriving in your mailbox or your prospective patient's mailbox creates the same emotions you feel about it.
Your job is to do what you need to do to entice a prospective patient to pick out your mail piece first and to open and read it. There are many ways to draw potential patients to your letter or postcard, some of which are mentioned above. There are ways to track the mail you send and measure the rate of response to your offer.
The greatest problem for most physicians is to be patient during the process as the results unfold. Some people hold on to your message and use it to contact you in a month or so.
Many become more unhappy with their own doctor before they finally respond to your offer and intend to change doctors. Repeated mailings to a group of patients may not be opened until they receive the third or fourth mailing.
People procrastinate often on responding unless you present them with good reasons to contact you. (Urgency--tactic)
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #64, 3-16-22
