Marketing Tips: Doctors Become Entrepreneurs
67Learning Marketing Skills
Doctors turning to entrepreneurial advertising and marketing skills to attract new patients.
It is more difficult today for a doctor to build their practice. The average income for doctors has declined and it is estimated that the failure rate may be as high as 50% of practices. Insurance plans are paying less, malpractice rates are increasing; all these factors are forcing doctors to put more emphasis on the business of building their practice.
Five Tips For Doctors To Attract More Patients
1. Target Your Marketing: Too many doctors use ineffective advertising with mass marketing techniques. Today doctors need to zero in on one specific aspect of their practice. If you are a sports doctor, target one specific sport – such as basketball or weightlifting, and market yourself to that segment.
2. Market Locally: market where your prospective patients live – near your office. Targeting those households with direct mail frequently gets great results. Target your marketing to those who are most likely to become new patients, your neighbors.
3. Grab Your Prospective Patients Attention: You only have seconds to get your prospects attention, it is vital that you use creative, unique marketing to do so. Example: Is that migraine headache a sign of something serious?
4. Attract More Patients: Make it easy for a prospective patient to use your services. Find a way to remove any roadblocks to people becoming your patient. Offer an introductory service or a special discount.
5. Guarantee Satisfaction: Doctors don’t guarantee a cure, but they can guarantee patient satisfaction. Not only will this make you stand out from your competition, but patients appreciate the extra attention. Most patients will not request their money back.
In today’s world health care professionals can no longer depend upon putting up their shingle to get patients flooding to their door. It takes smart marketing to create your practice branding.
After 35 years in practice Dr. Enders closed his Chiropractic Clinic to pursue a career in Network Marketing. He soon realized that if your business is not on the Internet, you're not in business. In his search to learn Internet Marketing Dr. Enders discovered Renegade Professional and the principle of attraction marketing.
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Comments
Excellent thought for doctors. Direct marketing and marketing to a target in their area is very important.
Learning to flow with school schedules and appealing to moms is also very important. Insurance is always going to be an issue and not all insurances can be accepted but we do have a crisis with doctors taking medicare especially in smaller communities. This could be another area that a new doctor could attract committed patients.
Thinking outside the box of normal marketing is key.
Looks like everybody's revising there advertising methods, who would have ever thought that Doctors would have a need to advertise there services.
Traditional advertising methods just aren't cutting it anymore. I'm sure all the Doctors out there will find this article very helpful especially if the failure rate is 50% didn't know it was that high.
It seems if there is a 50% fail rate in MD practices, something has to change with how clientèle base is built.
This article gives a health professional or their Office Administrator great tips for getting their marketing done.
David,
You know I didn't know there was such a drop in MD practices. 50%? My how times have changed. This isn't good. Something has to change. And your article explicitly says that...
You have given some great tips for the Health Profession...
Donna Wells
Premium Websites says:
5 weeks ago
Great ideas for any local business. They can even use te Internet to target local customers.