Huyen : Everyone goes looking for that one strategy, key focus, or regular practice that will unlock success in their medical marketing efforts and generate even more growth in their business. The problem is that they are approaching the issue in the wrong way. The real “silver bullet” in marketing a professional practice, is not quick fixes or dated ideas, but it is to institute the four essential “pillars” that support any great professional practice. These Four Pillars of Marketing that we are talking about today in our podcast create a rounded, complete foundation for all of your marketing efforts for generating real growth for your practice.
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Podcast intro
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Steve: Hello and welcome to another episode of Online Marketing For Doctors podcast, I’m your host Steven Tait and my co-host from the intro is Huyen Truong. If you are new to this podcast channel or to us, our mission is for Online Marketing For Doctors to be the leading digital marketing agency in the world for providing the best resources for helping practices automate their business for growing and scaling faster. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast by hitting that little bell button (Ding Sound), so you never miss out on a future episode.
Huyen : Do you ever feel that you are getting ignored by prospects in your marketing efforts?
Here’s the truth: most people do marketing backwards. They present people with their resumes or their latest and greatest technology, hoping to convince potential patients that this doctor is the expert they need. Most of the time, this doesn’t work. People tend to ignore those messages, or promptly forget about them when the message is no longer in front of their face.
The fact is that most people just don’t care about you. They are too busy worrying about their own problems and lives. What they really want to know is simple: do you have the answers to solve their problems?
Huyen: What we have observed over our years working as a digital marketing agency, is that on most practices’ websites, when it comes to marketing both online and offline, they tend to engage in something we call “selfish marketing”, where a practice mentions how great they are on their websites instead of demonstrating how helpful they are to solve their target audience’s problems. Understanding that difference, and focusing on demonstrating how you can help, is the foundation of value based marketing, which I am a big fan of.
The reality is, that It’s time to stop telling your audience you’re the best (as your competitors are saying the same thing). Instead, show them you’re the best: offer real value and see what happens.
Steve: Speaking of this, we are hosting a special webinar where we dive into the power of value based marketing and show you the most effective ways to do it. This webinar is called the 3 Must Use Strategies That Will Generate New Patients & Referrals & Build-up Your Reputation on Auto Pilot. This webinar is jam packed with incredibly valuable information and you don’t want to miss it, we leave a link to this webinar in the show notes below, and we look forward to seeing you there.
But coming back to the main topic of the day; this is where the four pillars of marketing come into play. A well-rounded, pillar-based series of strategies that allows you to reach a wide variety of people through multiple avenues, so you and your practice become the one people think of when they need help.
Huyen: Now let’s get on to these Four Pillars
These four pillars for marketing a professional practice are; digital, referral, internal, and external marketing strategies. Together these create a comprehensive solid platform for marketing towards the public, getting your information to the people who are looking for answers and services, and engaging with the people and organizations that can help provide you with more leads and opportunities.
.The first pillar is web-based or digital marketing, and it consists of everything about your practice as it relates to the internet. This includes, but not limited to… your website, pay per click Google & Facebook ads, social media, professional blogs, online videos, review sites, and Google search rankings. Your entire digital footprint. More and more of our world today exists on the web, so your practice needs to be there, too. You need good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and quality content posted on your website regularly. You need to create that content in multiple mediums and share it across social media. You need Google Analytics to help you discover what works and what doesn’t. All of this makes you more visible when people search on the internet.
Steve: We have recently talked to a practice that is planning to grow their new patient base quite significantly, but so far hadn’t done any of these pillar marketing strategies very well. They just started using Google ads and expected big growth to be there. We had to reset their expectations on practice marketing and advise them to look into other pillars as well, relying on one channel in digital marketing is not going to cut it, or give them the sustainable and incremental growth rate that they want to achieve.
Huyen: Yes, correct, you need a comprehensive 4-pronged approach to growing a practice. But before we go on with #2, now that we’ve brought up webinars, as our loyal listeners know…we are big on webinars…
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Webinar Course Promo
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Steve: Yes, that course can really help a practice that is looking to automate through webinars really grow and scale quickly. But let’s get back to the podcast…
We just finished talking about the first pillar, which was digital marketing. Now, the second important pillar is Referral marketing, which is characterized by the process of receiving direct recommendations or medical referrals from local businesses or other practitioners outside your specialty. Word-of-mouth from trusted sources is one of the best ways to connect your information with the people who will use it. Drop by visits, presentations, financial rewards, little gifts, hosted lunches, M&M’s — anything you can leave behind or do for these referral sources helps keep you in their mind. So when someone comes to them with a problem they know that you can handle, they will think of you first.
Huyen: You may need a dedicated physician liaison to help you implement this pillar well if you want to scale it fast and save your time. We explored this topic more deeply in our highly downloaded ebook called “The 15 secrets to Doubling Your Doctor Referrals”. We will leave a link to this ebook in our show notes below so you can have a further read.
The third pillar is Internal marketing which uses both customer service and a list you create within your office to continually reach out to the people you already have an established relationship with. This includes your in-office customer service before, during, and after a patient’s visit. It also allows you to keep in touch with the people who come through your doors. Regular e-mails, follow-up appointment reminders, newsletters, and more, keep you in patients’ minds so they are more likely to return to you.
Steve: In order to implement an effective internal marketing and new lead follow-up process, you need to have a good Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) system, we talked about this in our podcast #40 How To Avoid Leakage In New Patient Conversion & Track Marketing Performance and the CRM tool that we are using to easily automate our client’s internal marketing processes. We’ll leave a link to that podcast and the software we recommend in the show notes below… so check it out after podcast. Regarding the software… we can also help you setup your own follow-up system, and get you a special deal on this software (it is incredibly powerful), so if you are interested, please just let us know.
Huyen: And the final pillar is External or community marketing, which uses as many additional sources as you can pull together to establish yourself as an expert. This can include public speaking, event sponsoring, local community events (such as visiting and delivering seminars, screening events at nursing homes, local schools, local private and public hospitals).
If you have more resources you can even consider local or niche newspaper articles, niche magazines, local TV or radio interviews, and more. All of this serves to establish you as an active presence in your community—again, keeping yourself in the forefront of people’s minds.
Steve: Together, these 4 pillars form the basis of a successful marketing strategy. You can’t just invest in one or even two of them. To really make a difference, you need to push forward in all four areas. Then you will see the real difference in your numbers and growth. Top practices have worked with and refined this approach to marketing for many years, and we’ve been helping professional practices implement it successfully.
Huyen: Well that’s it for today’s quick episode about the 4 key pillars of practice marketing. Our podcast has come to an end. But, before you go, we also would like to hear from you too…what is your key takeaway from today’s episode that you would like to take some time over the next few days to start implementing? Or have you tried building any of these pillars for your practice marketing and has it worked well for you? Our healthcare professional community would love and appreciate your input. Add your comments below, or send us an email with your thoughts.
Be sure to keep in touch with us so we can continue to bring you the best marketing strategies and tactics to grow and scale your practice. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast channel, so you never miss another one! We’ve got more great content planned for future shows so you won’t want to miss them.
We look forward to seeing you next time!
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Show note:
- Webinar: 3 Must Use Strategies That Will Generate New Patients & Referrals & Build-up Your Reputation on Auto Pilot http://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com.au/sales-funnel-webinar/
- The 15 secrets to Doubling Your Doctor Referrals eBook: https://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/increase-doctor-referral-ebook/
- CRM for healthcare practices: https://gohighlevel.com/home-page
- Podcast #40: How To Avoid Leakage In New Patient Conversion & Track Marketing Performance
- Webinar Marketing System https://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/webinar-marketing-system/
20 Ideas for Foot In The Door Offers: https://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/fitd-offers/
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