In an article for the New York Times, Dr. Sandeep Jauhur gave voice to the frustrations that he and many doctors have been suffering recently.    Concern over a practice’s bottom line due to increasing expenses and decreasing reimbursements has had adverse effects not just on relationships with clients, but on doctors themselves.  “We were trained to think like caregivers, not businesspeople,” Jauhur writes.  ”The constant intrusion of the marketplace is creating serious and deepening anxiety in the profession.”  (Jauhur, New York Times, 6 July 2009.  For the full story, click the link at the bottom of this posting.)

The everyday business of running a practice is a full-time job that many doctors shoulder in addition to their already full schedules.  When it comes to marketing, many doctors just don’t have the time.  But Marketing their practices does not have to be another endless task that they, or you, complete burning the midnight oil.  Instead, it can be easy, economical, and effective.  Let the marketing professionals take this worry off your plate.  Take a look at The Practice Marketing Kit and see for yourself what 20 years of medical marketing expertise has yielded. 

“A Doctor by Choice, a Businessman by Necessity”  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/health/07essa.html

These days you can’t just hang out your shingle and expect business to beat a path to your door. Even if you’ve been open for a while, just to maintain the practice you have, you need to create awareness.

Direct mail can help. A targeted direct mail message is one of the most cost-effective ways to build business. You can create awareness, acquire new patients, and make existing patients more loyal, all through the mail.

As with any healthcare direct marketing, you should seek legal advice to ensure you’re in compliance with HIPAA requirements (for direct mail lists), STARK regulations (for promotional offers) or other applicable regulations.

Benefits of Direct Mail
There are many benefits to direct mail.
• It’s personal-every day, current patients and prospects go to the mailbox.
• You control the timing-direct mail allows you to control the timing of your message.
• It’s cost-effective-it doesn’t take a lot of time, money or effort to print and mail a postcard (more on this later).
• It’s measurable-you can calculate the results of every mailing just by counting the inquiries or visits that come from the mailing.

A successful mail program is just that, a program. To be effective, you need to mail regularly and often. The more you mail to your target audience, the more top of mind you become. You may wish to refresh mailings with additional insights about your practice such as new staff members or new technological services. If so, be sure to use our suggested layouts and copy as directional guidelines. 

To assist you, users of TPMK will find that we’ve created a complete direct mail program for your practice. In your companion software we’ve included options for a 9″ x 6″ postcard. In the guidebook we discuss direct mail letters and promotional offers that help generate responses. Promotional offers can be used in the postcard or a letter.

In crisis lies opportunity.  Small businesses across the U.S. seem to be taking this to heart.  Despite the current economic downturn, many small businesses are increasing their marketing efforts.  A study released by the online research firm Ad-ology shows that 86% of businesses with fewer than 100 employees plan to spend as much or more money on advertising in 2009 than they did in 2008.  Fueling this determination is the belief that a company can gain market share through marketing while its competitors are cutting back. 

Adverse times can be a great opportunity for you to expand your practice for the reasons listed above.  However, just because you buy an ad or put your face on a website doesn’t mean that you will see more clients coming through your door.  You need to know how to market your practice, who to market your services to, and how to measure success.  The Practice Marketing Kit can help you do these things, as well as design and implement your own marketing campaign — all in a way that is easy, effective, and economical. 

So whether you’re an established practice looking to continue your success, or a new practice looking to get off the ground, think about what opportunities are out there for you right now.

For more on the study, go to http://www.marketingcharts.com/uncategorized/online-will-grow-as-26-of-small-biz-ups-ad-spending-7440/adology-influences-advertising-media-bought-2009jpg/

You’ll first want to develop a simple marketing plan that will help you determine the marketing budget. You might want to start by establishing a general, or “ball-park,” figure for your total annual marketing budget and see if your plan can support that figure. You can always go back and make adjustments to your plan and budget. (TPMK Users: samples of a marketing plan and budget are found in Appendix A).

Let’s start the process by developing your marketing plan. While some marketing plans can be very complex, we’ll begin with the basics. The main components you’ll want to include are:

• define the target market—whom do you want to reach?

• set realistic marketing goals—what do you want to achieve?

• differentiate your practice—what makes your practice different from your competitors? Do you have a particular business philosophy?

• prioritize the marketing tactics—what are the best and most efficient ways to reach your audience? Direct mail? Advertising?

• develop the budget—how much will it cost?

• execute your plan

• monitor and evaluate results

Over time we will post more detailed descriptions of each component and help you define these in your marketing plan.

Medical practices are not immune to the effects of recession.  So what to do?  One answer is to remember that, at some level, everyone in your practice is responsible for gaining and retaining patients.  In other words, everyone is in marketing, or should be!  I’ve attached a link to an article from HarvardBusiness.org that make this point.  Here’s an excerpt:

“This is truly the time when employees are your most important assets — for real, not just in slogans. In a recession, everyone should be in marketing. Motivated employees contribute to creative thinking that can help retain current customers and identify new ones. ”

You can easily substitute the word “patients” for “customers” and see how this applies to you.  Here is the link to the full article: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/harvardbusiness?sid=Hd9a517e6b58cc86a3bba180b0dc94f04

So remember, in times like these it is even more important to communicate and connect with your patients, and that means marketing. 

Best wishes,

TPMK

(Excerpted from The Practice Marketing Guide)

Introduction to marketing

Marketing is the art of persuasion and in today’s highly competitive environment, it’s more essential than ever. But keep in mind that marketing also extends to an organization’s operations and staff—how easy is it to make an appointment? Is the staff friendly and knowledgeable? All of these “touch points” make an impression on consumers and influence their decisions. When properly executed, marketing can be a smart investment. Whether you’re a solo practitioner or part of a group, and regardless of your budget size, these posts will begin to give you the expertise to invest wisely—and effectively.

Basically, marketing has four core jobs:

• get the attention of your target audience

• establish an image or personality about your practice

• reassure your current patients they made the right decision which helps maintain loyalty

• persuade new patients to make yours the practice of choice

In these posts, we’ll talk about brands and direct mail campaigns, target markets and media buys, awareness and retention. But we’ll put it all in terms that have practical value and immediate application. Every doctor or healthcare group is vying for new patients within a finite area. You have an opportunity to positively influence your practice if you take the right steps, one of which is marketing. With this guide, you can be confident you’re making wise choices that produce results. It has been developed by an agency with more than 20 years of experience in marketing hospitals and medical practices.

Marketing is not just advertising…it involves other communications tools such as direct mail, newsletters, publicity…and it even extends to your practice’s operations and staff.

The Pulse of Today’s Market

Now more than ever, you face a critical need to grow your practice. There are simply too many mitigating factors to leave the health of your practice to luck or chance. Rising costs for office administration, equipment, and malpractice insurance coupled with declining reimbursements from public and private payers have placed tremendous pressure on healthcare practices today.

To offset these conditions you need to gain and retain more patients. And patients today are more educated and discriminating. People want to make more informed decisions about their healthcare. If you want potential new patients to consider your practice as they make their decision, marketing is an essential tool.

Your Daily Dose of Marketing

Like daily vitamins, a healthy diet and regular workouts, marketing needs to become a habit, not a sometime activity. Just as a healthy regimen will show measurable results, so will marketing. When used effectively, this approach can produce both immediate and long-term benefits.

Welcome to the new Practice Marketing Kit resources and blog page. We’re glad you’re here!

By now you’ve had a chance to look at the rest of the website, and you’re familiar with what TPMK is about: the only marketing solution that provides an easy, effective and economical way to market and grow your medical practice. Maybe you’re a current TPMK user (thank you!) Perhaps you had some further questions and you looked through the FAQ. But you still want more! That’s where this Resources page comes in.

Our goal here is to provide:

• Blog posts with tips on marketing your practice
• Useful links, including printing/mailing resources
• Articles regarding medical practice marketing
• Additional details on using TPMK
• Other resources that can help medical practices be more effective

We hope you find this useful, and we look forward to your thoughts, questions and suggestions.

Best wishes,

Joe Pratt

Principal

PMG Ideology Corp