Health Care Success Strategies Magazine published a special report called “The Worst Mistakes Health Care Organizations Make“. It clearly says that having a no clear marketing objective is the number one mistake. The report also mentions other usual mistakes, like having an outdated website, no mobile friendly website, no regular electronic newsletters, no statistics that measure online activity and more.
It was only after talking for long hours to dozens of health care practitioners for the past six years that Sergio Rodriguez, a local marketing consultant expert, realized that even when doctors are clinically prepared to deal with their patients, many of them are still struggling in their practices. He says that the reason this is happening in a great number of cases is a poorly designed marketing plan or no marketing plan at all.
“I see this as something unfair” Sergio explains. “There are many good, well trained health care providers that I’ve met over the years that deserve a better chance.
The Problem
“The problem is that marketing is no part of their career education, so is difficult for them to learn dental or medical marketing, especially the way is done now. Every day, they are constantly focusing their attention on filling in their patient scheduling and dealing with staff issues. This only creates a lack of time for other areas, even if they wanted to do something about it.
“It’s common to see doctors asking the office managers to do the marketing for the office, or to hire new and not so well trained staff to do whatever they can to bring the new patients up. When that happens, the so called ‘marketing or social media department’ becomes a partly attended activity with questionable results and poor ROI.
“This is because these marketing actions have been added to the already busy office manager’s duties or is being done by a staff member with no real marketing training.”
What If You Already Have a Website?
Another observation he made was the fact that many doctors think that just by having a website and putting it online will bring more patients without doing any extra effort on their side.
“That was probably true some years ago, but now, we see some offices employing high tech, well trained external marketing agencies, to compete against other doctors in the area. They have big marketing budgets and are taking the lion’s share.” he added. “They are aggressively working on Google Local results and Facebook, for example, to stand out from their colleagues.
“To make an even stronger impact on their results, they are training their staff on how to do better case presentations to increase the monthly numbers. ”
Witnessing this, I decided to do a complete medical marketing research in order to solve this issue for small and medium size medical offices.”
The Search for Solutions
“I found that some companies online were providing solutions, but they were not really specializing on dentists, or even other medical professions for that matter. Rather, they were giving them cookie cutter solutions that would apply to other industries that won’t necessarily help them bring new patients.
“One of the biggest challenges doctors face nowadays, is getting a high value return on investment (ROI) on every advertising dollar spent. We see, for example that, while many are able to attract prospective patients to their websites paying Google or Facebook advertising, very few offer a free valuable report as an exchange for their email.
“When that happens, a follow up campaign begins with automated messages that engage, build trust and position physicians as educators and advocates for the success of their patients’ health.
Sergio goes on to say “Prospective patients often need months to make a decision to have treatments done, like implants, crowns, even cosmetic procedures like facelifts, for example. “It’s therefore critical for these doctors to stay top of mind with targeted email broadcasts that send the right messages to the right people at the right time.
“Above all, it’s cost effective, allowing physicians the time to do what they do best, practicing medicine.”
A Scientific Approach for People Trained to Think Alike
“We are talking here about approaching marketing from a more scientific way, the way doctors are trained to see things. We don’t want to do an amateur effort, because then we won’t have the professional results they require from us.” The medical marketing system utilized by him is not just theory.
The biggest health care corporations are actively incorporating new ways to bring in new patients and have been doing it before anyone else. Finally, he states, “With the new marketing online tools available now, it’s possible for the first time to compete against large franchises. Doctors willing to help more patients deserve a chance. We are helping them with this kind of marketing for the first time.” he concluded.