More Marketing Tips -

What Is The Most Effective Way Of Getting New Patients Or Clients?

In my daily reading, I saw a couple of articles, one in Rueters called, US small business sentiment stays gloomy in March, and one from an Orlando Florida newspaper entitled, SBA help not getting through to businesses that both indicated that small businesses are not experiencing any positive effects from all the stimulus plans recently passed.

As I've said in many of our blogs, we, as small business owners, need to make sure we aren't waiting around in some state of "hope" for anyone to take care of us. That is why I've been writing many recent blogs about marketing in a health care practice.

I'm often asked, "what's the most successful means of marketing for new patients in a private practice?" It’s not the yellow pages, it’s not direct mail or advertising. Yes, these methods can and do work, especially if proper surveys and good promotional pieces are created. But these are expensive forms of marketing.

The most effective marketing, in terms of cost and results, is referrals from your existing patients and clients. Referrals are so valuable because word of mouth is both free and extremely effective. Your patients or clients speaking positively about your practice to people they interact with is a sure-fire way to increase the number of people walking through your doors.

The real problem with getting referrals is training your staff to successfully speak to patients or clients in order to get them to refer your practice to their friends and family.

There is a right way to do this and a very wrong way.

A very important thing to be aware of, when asking patients or clients to refer your practice to their friends and family, is that people actually like to contribute to the expansion and growth of things that they like. I’m sure you know examples of this. If a nice mall is built in a community, people tell other people to go there and other businesses and people move into the area. If a great new restaurant opens in an area, people go to it and recommend that others try it out. Those people in turn will recommend it to THEIR friends. The point being, if your patients or clients like your practice, they will be willing to contribute to its growth and expansion and, therefore, you shouldn’t be shy about asking them to refer.

At the same time, it is important to know that the MAIN reason people don’t refer their friends and family is that they are never asked to so they rarely think about it. The solution, then, is to simply ask the patients/clients who truly like your practice to recommend you to friends and family.

An example of the proper way to ask a patient or client for a referral can be as simple as the following:

“Hello Sue, how was your service? Great. Did you know that we are expanding? In fact we have hired new staff so that we can help better service our patients. We are also taking on more patients and if you have any friends or family who you think could be helped by [your medical field] care, have them come in for a consultation. Here are a couple of our business cards for you.”

Communicating it in this manner gives the patient or client the feeling that you are growing and puts the idea in their mind that they should recommend the practice. In addition, it avoids making the patient feel put on the spot or uncomfortable about having to give you names and numbers. Of course you will have to adjust this to your specific circumstances.

The above is just one example. Obviously, if you haven’t hired new staff you wouldn’t say this, but you could and should easily come up with honest reasons why it would be good for patients to refer.

On the other side of the coin, here is an improper way to ask a patient/client for a
referral:

“Hello Sue. Hey do you have anyone you know that needs [your medical field] care? We really would like them to come in if you do. Do you think you could ask them? Or just give me their name and I’ll call them?” This puts the patient or client on the spot and would make most people feel uncomfortable. You should have your staff practice correctly asking for referrals with one of your other staff or with you until they can do it easily and comfortably.

After that it is a matter of ensuring they do it and you should increase your new patients in no time! We have numerous other methods of internal marketing, but the above ideas are a good starting point.

If you wish to know more, just contact us at: info@silkinmanagementgroup.com and we’d be happy to help, or visit our Discussion Form on the Silkin Facebook Page BY CLICKING HERE.

Larry Silver
President, Silkin Management Group

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Marketing 101

“The Dictionary Is The Only Place Where Success Comes Before Work.”

–Vince Lombardi

I recently ran across this quote - a great quote by one of the most famous football coaches of all time. I was thinking about how this applied to the general subject of marketing that I’ve been addressing, when not talking about the financial crisis backstory, in many of the recent blogs.

So, how might this apply to marketing a health care practice? Everybody wants to know how to capture their share of the market for their area and wants that magic bullet that is going to get new patients or clients who have the means to purchase the treatment plans you recommend without batting an eye. And to have them lining up outside their office door.

Well, this month’s Hot Tips is about an attitude or viewpoint that must be there to make marketing even happen, let alone work. I recall a doctor once told me that as long as he practiced good medicine patients would come to him with out having to do anything. I don’t hear much from him any more. I wonder what happened to him? Why? Because even if he was the greatest doctor in the world, without proper marketing – even if it is only "word of mouth”, very few people will know to go to him. In fact we’ve seen doctors in the exact same socio-economic areas of a city – one being a truly great clinician and the other being an average clinician, have completely different practices. And it was the average clinician who was out producing the brilliant clinician by well over two times. Why? Because he marketed himself and the other one didn’t at all.

Just last month this same average clinician told me that he had his best month ever. His production and his collections for the month beat all previous records! And this happened while the economy is going down the drain. What did he do differently than others? Simple…he is promoting his business using any reasonable, cost effective method he can.

While other practices are sitting on the sidelines concerned with what their colleagues might say about a practice that is aggressively promoting for new patients, or feeling that the economy is too lousy to spend any money to market their practice, he is actively marketing both internally and externally.

A simple, low cost activity produced him several quality new patients. He set up a booth at local fair and paid his staff to hand out gift bags with his practice name on it and a practice brochure in the bag. He simply decided that, in order to capture his share of the market, he would let people know where to find him and what he could do for them. Just six years ago, when he was still getting his practice off the ground, he was really concerned that the doctors in his area were going to look down on him if he promoted his practice. Once he realized that both the quantity and quality of health care that he delivered had a great deal to do with him achieving his purposes as a health care provider, he decided that he had to be proactive in marketing and promotion for new patients. He saw that if he didn’t do this, he would simply be at effect of whether he was able to deliver both the quantity and quality of health care that he felt he was capable of delivering. With that in mind he quickly learned good, cost effective marketing techniques and now he is flourishing in a very small town in tough economic times while others doctors around him are complaining about a lack of productivity and blaming it on the economy.

Some doctors say, “Well, I didn’t get into medicine just for the money…” I think that is true of most every doctor. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore making your practice as prosperous as possible because “you didn’t get into it for the money.” When your practice is suffering along with the economy and you have to lay off staff, or cut back on bonuses or vacations and not be able to buy the equipment you need, your noble purpose can only take you so far. You do have to know more than just your doctoring skills. And marketing is just one of at least a dozen practice management skills that have nothing to do with whether or not you are the finest clinician in your city or state. Without some level of effective marketing, you will not and cannot grow your practice, no matter how good of a doctor you are.

You are a doctor. It is therefore a safe “given” that you want to help others by practicing your medical expertise. But, to state the obvious, you need new patients coming in the door to service in order to achieve that. And to do that, you need to do something. Get out of your practice and let people know you exist. Join the Lion’s Club or Rotary Club or Chamber of Commerce and get yourself really known in your community. Donate your time and services to those who need it and get that known by others. Sponsor a Little League team, start a canned food drive, do something to let your community know that you are alive and in practice to help them. Make yourself known to the public at large that you are part of the community and you are there to help. Use any media at all to help you do this. All of these are very inexpensive ways to promote your practice externally. Additionally, you should have an excellent internal referral program that all by itself could produce enough new patients or clients for you to thrive on.

Given the economic climate of the day, now is the time to truly be pro-active with the marketing and promotion of your practice. Doctors cannot sit on their past laurels and expect an adequate volume of patients to walk in the door as they might have been able to do some years ago. It takes action to make it happen but it doesn’t have to be costly to do. We know a myriad of ways to make all this happen. If you wish to know more, just contact us at: info@silkinmanagementgroup.com and we’d be happy to help, or visit our Discussion Form on the Silkin Facebook Page BY CLICKING HERE.

Larry Silver
President, Silkin Management Group

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THE FOUR COMPONENTS OF GREAT SERVICE

Great service to your patients/clients is one of the most important factors required for building a successful practice. During these difficult economic times, health care can become much more of a discretionary purchase than it should be. As health care providers you all know that health care is factually not a discretionary activity, like buying a new TV. At the same time you have to realize that, in your marketing activities, you are dealing with a public that often sees no difference in their purchasing choices between buying that new TV, or new clothes and their need to purchase the needed health care service. What we have found is that if patients experience superior service and are properly educated they will make the proper health care decision and understand the priorities of their health versus the new TV. Below are four key components of good service that, if applied, will help you get and retain new patients and clients.

Under the heading of great service, you will find the following key components: convenience, communication, cost and quality, and importance of your service as perceived by the patient/client.

CONVENIENCE: Consider the location of your practice. People generally select a service based on how convenient it will be for them to get to the location. Surveys and studies show that well over half of the public selects their health care services because of a conveniently located facility.

Are your hours structured to meet the needs of your patients/clients? Most people operate on a very hectic schedule and will actively seek out those practices that offer convenient or flexible hours. Practices that really work at ways to make it more convenient for their patients/clients to use their services will surely reap the rewards for their efforts.

COMMUNICATION: Words are not the only way in which communication occurs. Appearances and actions weigh equally as important in conveying an idea or concept to your patients/clients. Look at your staff, building, reception area, signs, business cards, letters, etc. What do these communicate to the public?

Decide exactly what it is that you wish to communicate to your patients/clients and prospective patients/clients. Then convey that in not only verbal communication, but in all of the above categories as well. Teach your staff to do the same.

COST AND QUALITY: The cost of your services is directly related to the quality of service that you deliver to your patients/clients. Your patients/clients will never feel that your fees are too high (or even really think about it for that matter), if they perceive the quality of service to be valuable. If you provide inferior or slow service, it will almost automatically make your fees appear to be too high. Again, patients/clients will take into account the amount of time they had to wait, the appearance of staff and facility and the demeanor of those servicing them.

Communication ties in with this area. Ensure that your patients/clients know what you are doing. Talk to them during the examination and explain what you are doing and why. This impacts the patient/client's impression of the fairness of your fees. Clear and professional communication with your patients/clients helps to ensure that they go away feeling satisfied that they have received excellent value for what they paid.

IMPORTANCE: Although you may perform valuable services, it is most important that the patient/client perceives how important the service is. This presents you with a "marketing" challenge. A large percentage of the population does not visit their doctors often enough.

This only indicates that the importance of regular exams has not been conveyed effectively to the public at large (or even to some of your patients/clients).

National health educational campaigns are designed to increase the public's perception about health and the importance of regularly visiting all of their family doctors. You cannot, however, rely solely on that type of campaign alone. It is vital that you take every opportunity to provide education to your patients/clients and to raise their "IQ" in the area of good health. The more they know, the more likely they are to use and appreciate your services and to tell others about you.

Provide a variety of brochures, put out a monthly newsletter, create your own handouts. Train your staff to educate the patients/clients. Maintain awareness in the practice that an educated patient/client is a more compliant patient/client and one who is much more likely to refer new people to your practice.

Participate in our Discussion Forum! Check out the Silkin Facebook Page BY CLICKING HERE.

Larry Silver
President Silkin

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A SIMPLE MEANS OF INTERNAL MARKETING

In my last Blog, I discussed some points on internal marketing and the importance of properly handling a new patient or client when they walk in the door for the first time. In this article I will further discuss marketing, but address a simple means of how you get patients in the door in the first place.

In today's economic climate a great deal can be said for the benefits of marketing effectively. There are many mediums for marketing a practice - referrals from existing patients/clients is normally the best and most cost effective means of getting new patients/clients. External marketing such as the Internet, business directories, new resident mailings, bus benches, Valpacks and even the local newspaper, radio and TV have worked for some. Some form of one or more of these has proven to be successful in various markets, but not all of them are effective in all markets. Given all this, it is vitally important to know how your new patients/clients are finding out about you and, based upon this, focusing your marketing dollars in the most effective areas.

Somewhere on your new patient/client form there should be a little line that says, "How did you find out about our practice?" (If you don't have this line on your new patient/client form, you should institute it right away.) Some offices have little check boxes that mention their various marketing activities and others just offer a blank line to be filled in. However you do it, the purpose of this line is for your new patients/clients to tell you which of your marketing tools have been most effective. This is vital information for your promotional and marketing activities, as long as you do something with it. Unfortunately many doctors don't use this information properly.

In fact, the last poll taken in our on-line journal "Solutions Magazine",showed that 54% of those responding said that they "did nothing" with the information that they got from this question on their forms. At the same time, our current poll shows 43% stating that they are increasing the amount of marketing they are doing to counteract the down turn in the economy. The poll data seems to support that "marketing for new patients/clients" is important to practice owners but the importance of tracking effectiveness of marketing seems to be missing.

So let's take up "effectiveness of marketing" as a running theme and discover how it might be used. A simple starting point would be to actually use the data you have already gathered by doing a quick break down of where your new patients/clients came from for the past 6 to 12 months. Assign your front desk person the task of reviewing the files of all your new patients/clients and tabulate their responses to the question concerning what brought them to your office. Once the tabulation is done, have this staff member provide you with a summary of this information - i.e. "45% came from referrals, 20% came from new resident mailings, 10% from Yellow Pages ad, etc." Using the results from this summary, locate the area/s that seems to be providing you with the most new patients/clients. Do not be surprised if "referred by a friend or relative" shows up as the number one item - in fact you should be surprised if it doesn't.

At this point, inspect your marketing budget. By this is meant, what do you spend to make sure people know how to find your practice? How much are you spending on your half-page ad in the phone book and how many new patients/clients came from that? What kind of materials do you have to stimulate referrals? Examine each area that you are spending your marketing dollars on and what your return is on those dollars. You'll then want to invest more heavily in the area/s that are giving you the most return, taking into account the cost effectiveness of each activity. For example, if "referrals" is your number one draw, and the Yellow Page ad is not producing much, how can you shift your Yellow Page dollars into more support activities for referrals? As an example, creating a "Refer a friend or family member" card might be one way to start.

To summarize:

1. Have a means to know where your new patients/clients are coming from;
2. Don't ignore this data - tabulate and evaluate the information;
3. Invest your marketing budget in the most effective areas based upon the data you gather;
4. Regularly re-assess this information and adjust your marketing plans and investments accordingly.


If you do the above regularly and religiously, you'll find a steady increase of new patients/clients coming in your door.

Participate in our Discussion Forum! Check out the Silkin Facebook Page BY CLICKING HERE.

Larry Silver
President Silkin Management Group

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THE TWO SIDES TO MARKETING YOUR PRACTICE

I was reading an article today in USA Today about internet and email marketing. It is an interesting piece about the use of emails and other internet marketing methods to bring in new business. I think you'll get something out of reading it. To access this article click here.

This brought to mind taking a look at what happens with new patients or clients when they walk in the door - i.e. what their initial experience is with your office and how they will or will not be properly converted to an active patient or client. My point in this blog is that there can be two sides to marketing - what you do to get someone new in the door, and then what their experience is once they walk in the door. The information below concerns the later.

The facts are that a new marketing idea that is creating new people coming into your office can completely fall apart as soon as the new patient or client walks through the front door. The subject I am referring to is the lost art of customer service and the customer experience. The graciousness that a new patient/client coming into an office feels as he or she first walks in the door can make a huge difference in whether they will actually proceed with any recommended treatment plan. Your technical skill and all the fancy new equipment that you just leased for your practice is for naught if the new patient/client that just found your practice is not comfortable with you, any of your staff and/or feels ignored.

The customer experience can fall down at any point in a practice. We have seen it all too often that a treatment plan that was well explained to a client by the doctor was completely sabotaged by the Tech that had no authority to alter the treatment plan. We have seen the overly chatty chair side assistant that was “Just trying to make the patient more comfortable” completely talk the patient out of the chair to go get his or her dental work done elsewhere. In my own experience, I have had an office manager turn me away because she was unable to handle my questions regarding payment options for the services I needed. All of these situations can be easily handled with good coaching on the subject of customer service.

A good experiment for any practice owner to do is to walk outside his or her practice and close his or her eyes for a moment. Have the doctor or owner get the idea that he or she is a brand new patient or client and then have them walk into the practice. Get the idea of that brand new patient or client arriving to the practice on time for their appointment. Now, having that idea firmly in mind, walk in the front door and look around. What is your first impression? What do you see? How does the practice look? What is the staff doing? What do you hear? What odors linger in the office? Each and every person that is walking in your front door is unconsciously assessing all of these perceptions. Having other staff do the same experiment can be very beneficial as well. Have them jot down their observations and present them for discussion in your next staff meeting. What solutions can the team come up with to address these issues? If you really want to get an unbiased assessment, ask a friend or relative who is not known to the staff to call in and set an appointment and to note down how they were handled. Then have them come in for their appointment and go through the normal new patient routing in procedures. When they are done, have them honestly evaluate their experience as a new patient. Go over all the positives and negatives with your staff. Reinforce the positives – see how you could do more of these things. And, of course, address and fix the negative points that come up. Note all these points down and review and reevaluate them in a few months to make sure you are improving.

In this economy, the individual practice owner can ill afford to waste even one customer experience. Each customer that leaves with a bad impression of the practice is costly in terms of production and potential word of mouth. A very famous phrase in customer service jargon is “Nothing gets talked about more than a bad customer experience.” In fact marketing people have determined that a happy customer tells 1-3 people about his experience while a dissatisfied customer tells 7-10 people about it. It is a key datum for managers in any industry to keep in mind when assessing weak points of service in business. By making “Customer Service” the motto of your practice, you will ensure that the marketing dollars that you are spending to attract new patients and clients will be well spent and result in patients/clients returning to your practice for their health care needs.

If you have any feedback on this, let us know by visiting our discussion forum at the Silkin Facebook Page.

Larry Silver
President, Silkin

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