"Improving your sociability on social media is profitable
for medical practice if potential medical patients live
close by, are moving to your area, or refer their friends
who live where you practice."
(In Part 1 readers learned various approaches to social network marketing and the relative uselessness of that specific Internet trend for professionals, and why)
Social Media Marketing Options Usable Outside Your Medical Office Practice...
1. Medical Practice Website, Blog, or Podcast
On the Internet where these social network sites are visible to millions of people around the world, you have the opportunity to tell the world who you are, what you do, and how you can make everyone’s health care problems go away. You have to have a patient’s permission before you are legally allowed to send them emails. You can manage that barrier by using Aweber.com or Get Response.com software programs.
On your medical practice website, patients can opt-in to a subscription, or a newsletter. Aweber provides a gallery of various optin forms you can copy and insert on your website. Direct mail (USPS) pieces do not require permission (those sent through the Postal Service). You can send your medical newsletter through the USPS to anyone, anywhere, anytime and hope to get a few new patients out of the mailing... if they are local residents convenient enough to get to your office.
A blog is another form of a social or medical practice business marketing website, but is much
more interactive with readers (interactive written messages) and has fewer restrictions on content, format, and context. You can plead your case for your medical practice business to millions of Internet blog surfers in case they move close to your office. Be sure to include your medical practice website information, and keep your medical practice advice and comments fresh
and current.
Most successful businesses have a blog site in order to increase their visibility and sales. And, because of the social network interaction on a blog, businesses are able to sell more products and make more money than they can otherwise. The personal touch and relationship create a higher level of trust in what you are offering. Medical information from a medical doctor is always in demand in our nation. Want to sell your medical info?
A website and a blog complement each other well and should be used in coordination with each other. Both can promote and sell products, link to other sites in the same business, but preferably should not link to competitors' sites and businesses for obvious reasons.
Every medical practice owned by any physician must have a business website and blog to remain viable in the future. If you don’t do it, your competition for your patients will. You can easily have a medical practice website built for you for a couple hundred dollars.
Many offer website building software you can download for free (MyFreeWebsiteBuilder.com) Go to www.elance.com or one of the other similar sites to get bids on doing your project for you. Also, a site called Fiverr.com offers many services online for about $5.
Amazon Mechanical Turk is a place where you can tap into many individuals in third-world countries where your projects can be done very inexpensively. They usually are quite reliable resources to use. Most are available in the Philippines, Indonesia, India, and China.
2. Social Network Marketing
Although Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are the dominant social network sites for social networking, there are dozens of others that are often focused on specific services to the public. LinkedIn, for example, focuses on business and professional people interactions/jobs.
The burr under your saddle now is likely to cause a concern about your privacy. There are way too many people giving out way too much personal information on these social network sites. It’s information which can be used to track your activities, cause you personal harm, and come back to haunt you later in life.
The fact that when patients enter a medical office and immediately see how well organized it is, the sense about how the physician handles his medical practice management and treats patients becomes evident.
Commenting about your beliefs, ideas, and your work attracts followers who have your same interests. It’s a way to become virtual friends and have them trust you enough to take your advice or buy from you. It takes time to stop your work and create a comment on your social networks almost daily to get any results. Physicians can pay people to do all that for them. But it does distract from medical patient attention.
However, for physicians and other professionals in health care provider businesses the networking can be a long run for a short slide, if the goal is to attract new patients. The person you are friends with on the social site may live in Germany or New Zealand, not just down the street.
The advantages of using social networking for marketing for physicians might be...
- To sell information products you create, like a book you wrote, reports you created on some medical-related topic, or instructional CDs relating to helping people health-wise...a profitable sideline medical business.
- A person might be moving to your area and become a patient of yours.
- Your website information may be exactly about what someone or some company needs who will offer you paid speaking engagements, stipend for writing a book on the topic, or
bring in job offers.
3. Outrageous Advertising...
Physicians and attorneys often spend thousands of dollars a month for ads on all the available social media formats to attract patients and clients. The process does accomplish publicity and attracts small numbers of patients. Yellow page ads have been shown to be a very poor use of marketing dollars.
However, the newer forms of advertising (old advertising that was previously considered indiscreet) that has proven to do a much better job of promotion and results. Once measurable statistics about their profitability became reliable, this unusual advertising has been labeled Outrageous Advertising by marketing experts such as Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy. The book by a similar name, by Bill Glazer, was a NY Times best seller in 2010.
Outrageous advertising is a process of constructing ads that contain the 8 or more elements which trigger the emotions of potential customers to react to the ad in a known way, and take action of one type or another to respond.
In addition, the ad contains elements of unusual characteristics that seem outrageous compared to the usual ads we all see every day and attract our attention, curiosity, and interest because of
their uniqueness.
You’ve probably already seen online in actual advertising with those stimulators included. Such things as scribbled handwriting notes or comments in the margins of the sale page ad, ridiculous offers, added photos emphasizing an important factor mentioned in the ad, and a nonsense
sounding headline.
Anything out of the ordinary in an ad is quickly picked up by your eyes and draws you to the spot for more evaluation and thought... exactly what the ad is supposed to do.
Spending your advertising dollars on that kind of advertising is well worth the money. Bill Glazer’s book, Outrageous Advertising, gives 200 plus examples of ads to copy or get ideas from. Many are used by physicians as well as other professionals.
Social Marketing of a Personal Nature...
Another important and often forgotten medical practice business marketing strategy is probably the most important for medical practice building and is something most physicians have
no time for.
I’m sure you have come to know the attractiveness of “experiencing” an event, not just watching
or participating in it. It’s a process of providing a patient with much more than they expected. Watching an auto racing event in one thing, but, to get a ride in a race car is another
kind of experience.
What has become quite evident when examining medical practice businesses that earn in the upper six figure bracket consistently, is the universal idea of creating an environment where patients have an “experience” and not a “visit” to their office.
Certainly, the experience is different in each case with each patient. Interestingly, patients will travel much further to see that doctor, remain much more loyal to his practice, pay more for the experience, and find no good reason to criticize the practice or the physician's treatment.
The bad news is, most physicians don’t have the income to create that kind of expensive practice setting in the first place. You certainly can do creative and stimulating things for your patients that will be an experience for them. A little brainstorming helps. Creativity provides results.
The good news is that you can wow your old and new medical patients without cost by greeting your medical patients with a smile, eye to eye, first name, hand shake, and warm greeting words.
Consider doing these practical easy marketing strategies...
- Start featuring a “Patient Of The Month” on your office bulletin board where all patients can see it--about a patient of yours that has invented, created, done something, or accomplished something that others haven't. Practice marketing can be done the simple way.
- Offer one day each week where if your patient comes in for a doctor visit and brings a new patient in with them who also schedules a physician visit, your patient gets basically a free office visit, no co-pay, even add a second free visit as well. Earning the income from just one visit by the new patient, more than pays for all the co-pays you don’t collect from your
regular patient. Medical patient recruitment is done by medical practice marketing alone.
- Once a year have an outdoor party for all your patients who wish to come and who bring a friend or friends... lots of free food, games for kids or pony rides, spouses welcome, entertainment of some type, things to do and talk about.
I know of a life insurance salesman who doubled his income in a year by doing this... even had a pony ride for kids. Also, a physician friend of mine did the same and doubled his income by having a party for his successful IVF patients twice a year.
You can do all these outrageous things and the cost of each will more than pay for itself over time... FACT! I once calculated out what a medical patient might be worth to a medical practice using common office fees only (not surgery or hospital procedures). The figure I came up with was over $500 a year per patient for simple office visits.
When you add surgeries, office procedures, and follow-up visits you probably will come up with over a thousand dollars income per patient on average per year.
If you have the average medical practice number of patients, usually around 3000, you should expect to be making $3,000,000 a year income… no? I must have multiplied wrong... I think.
Let’s just agree on $300,000 per year and disregard the dire financial impact of government fee controls, increased malpractice insurance premiums, lost patients, poor investments, paying off the $200,000 education debt, and alimony as a result of overworking in your practice.
Figure it out for your own medical practice, when and if you ever have time. It might be a good idea to do it soon because our government is trying to take control of everything. There, I just used my favorite marketing tactic... creating urgency.
"Truth is, most people engineer most of their own
disappointments, with unreasonable expectations."
---Dan S. Kennedy
----Professional Probe----
"You're going too fast, I missed the
end of the message."
"Learning how to slow down in your private medical practice can be
accomplished by becoming smarter. You become smarter by locking
on to the business education opportunities widely available
almost everywhere.
If you are too busy in your practice to scan for business strategies
that create profitability almost overnight for you, then you are
permitting your external circumstances determine your
career destiny.
When I observe what happens to those employed physicians that are
caught in that trap, they may make more money, but their practice
of medicine is shackled to the almighty dollar they are earning for
the company, that in private medical practice they would take
it all home with them.
Most importantly, I believe, is the freedom to practice medicine the
way I find fulfilling, at the speed that allows me time with my family and lifestyle,
and being able to control my own destiny in medical practice which is the
true measure of my success."
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #16 3-16-22
