Never before in the history of American medicine has the significance of effective marketing been so important. So many of us think of marketing as placing a advertisement in the local newspaper or running an ad on T.V. or doing a radio spot. Never before in the history of American medicine has the significance of effective marketing been so important. So many of us think of marketing as placing a advertisement in the local newspaper or running an ad on T.V. or doing a radio spot.
The truth is that marketing can be accomplished without spending huge sums of money. Marketing really means letting the public know about your services and your areas of interest and expertise and making sure that your existing patients know what services you offer. Marketing has the potential to enhance your image and the image of your practice, to allow you to take care of patients and perform procedures that you enjoy doing, to increase your market share of urologic patients, and, most importantly, to increase your bottom line.
Do market research
Try to determine your market share. For example, look at the total number of urological procedures or admissions to urology at your hospital and determine what percentage belong to you and your practice. Look at what the competitors are doing. Look at their ads in the telephone book. Does your ad standout on the page of urologic surgeons? If not, look at what you have to do to make it more visible especially if you are trying to attract new patients via the Yellow Pages. Look at your competitors’ webpages. Does their website allow interaction with existing patients and potential new patients. Look at your practice brochure and compare it to the brochure of your competitors. Look for unmet needs in the market place especially if your practice is looking to hire a new associate and you want that anew associate to fill those unmet needs.
Begin by setting your goals.
It is best to commit your goals to a written plan. Make sure your partners and your staff have bought into the plan. Make clearly defined goals and list the steps that will be necessary to get you there. For example, if you plan to do more procedures in the office than in the hospital or ATC setting, you might state that you want to increase the minimally invasive treatments from 3 treatments\month to 6\month. You may consider changing your scheduling system from the standard 15 minute time slots to wave scheduling program that will allow you to see 6-8 patients an hour.
Evaluate your practice from the patient’s point of view
Call your office on the line your patients use to contact your office, and see how the phone is being answered. That’s exactly what your patients are hearing. Hire a mystery shopper to come to your office and experience first hand what your patients see, hear, and feel when they come to your practice. A mystery shopper anonymously contacts your practice as if they were a patient and they record the entire experience. You will find out the reality of what your patients experience and this gives you an opportunity to improve the service you offer your patients.
Conduct a patient satisfaction survey.
There is no better way to assess the experience of your patients than to ask them about their experience with your practice. There are several kinds of surveys including those conducted by your practice or hiring an outside firm to do the survey. I have found the best way to survey the patients is to survey every patient at the time of their visit to your office. The survey card I use is shown in Fig. 1 and is given to each patient when he\she checks in. All comments are answered by someone in the office within twenty four hours after the patient leaves the office. One of the best aspects of using this card is that the reverse side allows the patient to list what questions they would like to have answered during their visit (see Fig 2). This avoids the door knob phenomenon where the patient remembers a question they would like to ask just as you are about to leave the room and place your hand on the door knob.
Marketing is truly an opportunity to create the very kind of practice that you want and that you will enjoy. By following the above steps and start with research, set your goals and objectives and then implement the plan, you can successfully and inexpensively market and promote your practice. In the next issue I will cover how to implement the plan and then how to evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing plan.
Figure 1
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Figure 2
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