Medical Marketing for Doctors – Gaining the Edge for Your Practice
July 21st, 2013
“Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately it takes a lifetime to master.” ~ Phil Kolter
As a Doctor you have spent years earning your credentials and learning about your medical specialisation. Now you are finding that sustaining and growing your practice requires you to enter into competition with other Doctors or Healthcare Professionals to get new patients and referrals. You have realised that you have to learn about marketing and branding your practice. Here is a basic list of strategies that will help you on your way to effectively market yourself and your practice:
1. Define your practice’s image for the current and prospective patients to identify with.
2. Define the unique selling proposition of your practice that sets you apart from the competition.
3. Design your creative and distinct logo and then develop standard graphics to be used in all your corporate prints (fonts, branding colors etc).
4. Design complementary corporate materials like business cards, newsletters, letterheads, envelopes, signage, prescription pads, brochures etc.
5. Research your market and define your target clientele in age, preferences, medical concerns, geographical reach etc and then prepare a marketing budget corresponding to the market.
6.Design printed marketing materials that are highly informative, easily understandable, attractive, brief and precisely formatted for legibility. Always include office hours, map to your place, Web address, services, telephone etc on each printed material.
7. Form high strategic business partnerships with reputable medical practices in the area such as patient referral agreements, ensuring that all engagements are on a win-win basis.
8. Distribute your literature and key adverts in the waiting room and prepare patient giveaways such as pen. Make sure that the waiting room is comfortable too.
9. Get a website and brand it too with informative content and highly navigable pages that are Search Engine Optimized for bringing targeted visitors to your site.
10. Buy and brand all marketing touch points as positioned, planned and budgeted.
Now, more than ever, physicians and medical service providers need “The Edge” to build their businesses. If you would like to enhance your business and highlight your unique skills to patients contact our MEDIQ team for a more in-depth analysis on how we can set forth an effective strategy for you. Marketing is such a crucial component of every business, so let us help you with it and gain the edge in your field.
