How to start a healthcare marketing agency for your clinic or doctor’s office? What are the aspects not to be overlooked before, during, and after starting to take the first steps in healthcare marketing?
What advice are we talking about? Let’s start by distinguishing marketing from advertising, and then understand how planning your campaign will allow you not to lose precious budget but be careful not to carve it in stone! Next, you will see why marketing is not a group sport. Instead, you need to ensure that your team is committed to welcoming new patients as well as possible. Finally, I’ll tell you how to choose your healthcare marketing agency, to help you achieve your goals. Remember that the person who manages communication and marketing on your behalf has to do with your reputation, and we know how much effort it took to build it.
Well, we are ready to go!
Tip # 1: Don’t confuse marketing with advertising
These two terms are by no means synonymous! We can say that they are part of the same family, but they are not interchangeable words.
Healthcare Marketing Agency is a set of structured and well-planned activities to attract people who need your services to your clinic or doctor’s office.
Advertising, or advertising, is only one of the tools that can support marketing to achieve your goals, and it is certainly not the only one.
Did you know that many healthcare marketing agencies don’t include advertising?
Tip # 2: Prepare a marketing plan. Or at least a road map.
A marketing plan requires a planned, thoughtful and specific communication strategy.
Not preparing a marketing plan means not following a strategy, not identifying a target, a “patient-person,” and not optimizing the available budget by choosing the most efficient mix of healthcare marketing agency tools and means about your objectives.
You must consider that it is essential to plan your marketing activities carefully, preferably with experienced professionals who can suggest the most effective strategies and guide you towards your goals.
Tip # 3: Don’t get stuck in analyzing your marketing plan
This is the complimentary advice of the previous one. Often you get stuck in the analysis phase of your healthcare marketing agency. Sometimes you think so long about what to do that the analysis phase expands beyond belief.
Thinking and planning alone will not increase the number of patients. Your actions do it. So set a short deadline to make a decision and then take action!
If this seems impossible, remember that social media marketing agency is forever. Even if you make a mistake, you will have more elements that will allow you to refine your approach next time.
Tip 4: Marketing is not a group sport
Inexplicably, when it comes to marketing, everyone has an opinion and a secret recipe.
Your secretary, the chair assistant, the trainee, the medical director: everyone, absolutely everyone, wants to have their say. This buzz makes you cringe and confuses you. Even when, finally, a decision shared by the whole group is reached, the result will be nothing more than a watered-down marketing strategy that will end up doing little or nothing to achieve your growth goals.
Remember that while trying to get everyone to agree, your competition has already defined its marketing plan and has already begun to acquire new patients.
The solution is for the interested parties to agree among themselves on the objectives and, above all, on the budget and then involve a qualified third party to draw up a marketing plan.
Tip # 5: Do your best to welcome new patients
Imagine that you followed a strategy that allowed you to increase the number of phone calls your office receives.
These new patients may not know your surgical technique well or have not fully understood some aspects they have read on your site. They are, therefore, curious to know you, but at the same time, they are extremely skeptical and hesitant.
Tip # 6: Don’t hire the wrong marketing consultant
Evaluating someone outside your expertise is always difficult, and marketing is a complex industry. When you have a possible marketing consultant, you need to judge them based on three fundamental aspects.
You must therefore be able to answer these three questions:
- How much experience in healthcare marketing do you have? Hire someone who only works in this field because they will truly be able to help you. The tone of voice used in a healthcare marketing agency is different from that of commercial marketing and requires a lot of experience. You do not need a consultant or agency with heterogeneous clients, from beauty salons to SMEs.
- How much do you invest in your training each year? It would help if you had someone committed to continuing education to master their craft (books, courses, seminars, newsletters, etc.), NOT someone who hasn’t opened a book since University.
- Which marketing gurus do you follow? If it starts with an endless list of names, without paying attention to the word “guru,” I recommend that you dismiss it instantly.
I hope that with our advice your marketing activities will lead to the results you want. Now you have to roll up your sleeves, experiment, and… if you have any doubts, we are here to help!
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