How to Create an Amazingly Successful Physician Marketing Plan & Budget

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1 Online Marketing Suite How to Create an Amazingly Successful Physician Marketing Plan & Budget Ph

2 How to Create an Amazingly Successful Physician Marketing Plan and Budget Attracting the right type of patient is becoming increasingly difficult with the explosion of physician websites, blogs and social networking tools. If your practice doesn t have a solid web presence, you could be missing out on hundreds, even thousands of appointments each year. But how do you create a physician marketing plan that attracts the right patient? How much should you spend each quarter? These are common questions our doctors and medical professionals ask. This report will show you how to get started with answering these critical questions. Your Physician Marketing Plan The right marketing plan will help you attract more patients each month, build awareness about your practice in your community, and can even help to establish you as an authority in your specialty. Remember that you re a small business owner. You need to know who your patients are, what they truly need, and how you can deliver what they want. Your basic marketing plan will serve as a blueprint for all of your marketing efforts. It needs to be: Specific contain key details about the treatments and services patients in your area are looking for. Timely include marketing activities that are aligned with current consumer behaviors and habits. If you know many of your patients download coupons online, your marketing plan should have a downloadable coupon or a Facebook marketing promotion! Patient-centric patients are looking for solutions to their problems, so you need to focus on promoting the key benefits of your practice and procedures. PracticeDock specialists are here to help you develop a solid marketing plan that gets results. We give you a complete suite of online marketing tools to work with, and you can pick and choose which tools will be the best fit for your particular practice. For practice marketing advice please contact us at or solutions@practicedock.com

3 Best Practices for Defining Your Physician Marketing Plan Your marketing efforts will only pay off when you know how to reach your target patient. You could spend thousands of dollars on advertising your services to your entire city or town, spend hours and hours posting to a blog or Facebook, and still not fill your appointment book. The key to making your marketing strategy work is to focus on targeting patients who are ready to book an appointment. Your marketing plan needs to be designed around your ideal patient. You need to go after the patient who is in any of the following stages of the decision-making process: 1. Looking for information about a procedure they think they need, and need some support or advice from a professional 2. Are ready for surgery within the next six months 3. Are comparing surgeons or physicians in the area to find the best match 4. Are looking for the best deal and are ready to book as soon as they find it 5. Have done their research and are prepared to book the next available appointment with a reliable and trustworthy doctor, surgeon or medical specialist Think of these patients when you re defining and developing your marketing plan. Instead of just broadcasting your marketing messages to an anonymous population, your marketing efforts need to hone in on a particular patient in a particular phase of their decision-making process. For example, a patient searching online for a doctor in their area can easily be targeted through online doctor directories, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing and proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your website.

4 Best practices for defining and developing your marketing plan include: 1. Focus on brand-building, not quick-fix solutions. If you want to build a successful practice that patients are comfortable referring friends and associates to, make sure you re creating a positive experience for all and are perceived as a valuable part of the community. Avoid quick-fix solutions that will only generate short-term results. Be wary of the dangers of discounting treatments and marketing on daily deal sites like Groupon or LivingSocial. 2. Leverage social media. Don t dismiss the value of social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and even text messaging to connect with patients in a new way. While many patients might refrain from connecting with your practice through social networking sites, a good number will be comfortable connecting with you in this way. A professional Facebook page or Twitter presence can help with your brand-building efforts. Post a video on YouTube to drive traffic to your site. Make yourself accessible so that prospective patients can reach you as soon as they re ready to make a decision. Use social media to promote your before and after galleries. For example, LocateADoc.com clients can automatically post before and after pictures to Twitter everytime they update their gallery. 3. Track and review results regularly. One of the biggest benefits of online marketing tools is that you can track exactly where your leads are coming from. You can gauge what is working and not working within a few clicks, review reports and get detailed metrics that you just can t see with traditional advertising methods. Take the time to review this data regularly so that you can tweak your marketing strategies as you go. 4. Be consistent. Make sure your marketing and advertising efforts allow you to be consistent. Your marketing campaigns will only be effective when you can maintain them for several months and even years to come. 5. Don t use only one approach. Your marketing plan needs to include several online and offline marketing strategies. Remember that your patients have individual needs and can be approached in several different ways. For example, some will be more responsive to an newsletter while others will be more responsive to a Facebook page update. Or capture them as they search online with Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing. Think of all the different ways you can reach out to this patient so that your marketing efforts are generating the level of responses you need.

5 Sample Physician Marketing Plan Devising a marketing plan can be one of the most challenging parts of running your business. Here s a sample plan to use as an outline to get you started: I. Executive Summary A summary of your marketing plan II. Market Challenge A brief description of your services, an overview of your monthly appointment goals, and long-term strategic goals for your practice. III. Situation Analysis Practice Analysis Primary and secondary goals Mission Strengths Weaknesses Current market share or market standing Patient Analysis Number of patients Type of patients What your patients value most Patient decision process Concentration of patients base for different services and procedures you offer Competitor Analysis Market position of other doctors, dentists and medical professionals in your specialty Strengths Weaknesses Market share of each Collaborators Any joint ventures, distributors or vendors you work with, or are planning to work with IV. Market Segmentation Your Services and Treatments (list all of them individually) Description Percentage of all appointments booked Price ranges or fees How to reach your appointment goal (booking goals)

6 Sample Physician Marketing Plan Cont... V. Selected Marketing Strategy This is your marketing mix, which is made up of all of your services/treatments, price, distribution and promotion strategies. You will need to outline the following: Services, Treatments and Procedures (What differentiates your Practice?) Any brand name procedures or treatments you offer Signature services, treatments and procedures Quality of services based on years of training of the person administering the treatment Any guarantees you offer Price and Fees Breakdown of practice fees and pricing for each service Discounts available Payment terms and patient financing options How does this compare with your competitors? Distribution All of your marketing outlets where you are promoting your services? Locations of all of your offices Promotion Types of advertising and marketing initiatives o Types of online marketing and advertising campaigns o Advertising Channels Budget Promotional schedule o Public Relations Newsworthy topics Promotional programs Projected results of your promotional efforts (what are your goals for each channel?) VI. Short and Long-Term Projections What do you expect your marketing and advertising efforts will bring to your practice? How many appointments do you expect to book within the next six months? Over the course of the year? This section can include a cost breakdown of all of your expenses associated with marketing and advertising your practice, and the revenues you expect to generate. The cost breakdown of projected appointments booked will also help you calculate your break-even point. VII. Conclusion A summary of all of the elements above.

7 Choosing the Right Tools for Your Marketing Plan After defining your marketing objectives and determining who your ideal patient really is, it s time to choose the right tools and marketing vehicles that will help you acquire those patients. PracticeDock has developed a complete suite of online marketing tools that can generate leads and boost your online presence. We ve been working in this industry for over a decade and created several tools that reach out to today s Web-savvy patients. If you want to reap long-term rewards from your physician marketing plan, you must invest in marketing strategies that you can maintain for several months, even years. Remember that print advertising and billboards can only give you shortterm results. Shift your focus to online strategies such as directory listings, a professional website and pay-per-click marketing so that you can reach more patients with less effort year after year. Some of the tools we recommend: LocateADoc.com a robust patient lead generation network that delivers prequalified, quality patient leads to your practice Website Control easy-to-use web management applications that give you full control over the content of your website and an easy to use SEO tuner to help keep your site at peak performance for best search engine results. Keep patients updated with blog posts, fresh content and news within a few clicks. Keyword Marketing an innovative pay-per-click marketing tool that puts your practice website right in front of prospective patients searching for the services you offer. Call Tracking track which marketing and advertising methods are really working, and train your staff to handle prospective patient calls effectively. Video Services feature a short video profile about your practice and show your personal side to relieve patient anxiety and introduce them to your practice. Patient Education feature 3D educational videos on your website so that patients can learn more about treatments and services. Add a video that s customized with your practice logo and colors. This tool helps save you time during consultations.

8 Your Marketing Budget Your marketing budget will be calculated based on the priorities in your physician marketing plan. Every physician s marketing budget will be different and can even change each quarter or season. The cost of acquiring a patient is one of the most critical numbers to look at when deciding whether your marketing efforts are paying off. The higher the cost, the more you re going to have to spend to attract that particular patient and the bigger your marketing budget needs to be. In this industry, the average cost per lead varies widely by specialty and practice. You can calculate your cost per patient by taking an average of your total marketing and advertising costs, and dividing this number by the number of surgeries performed. Your marketing budget will depend on several factors, including: Cost per lead Average cost per consult PR costs per month Print and online advertising costs To get a ballpark figure, use this formula: (Total Marketing + Advertising Expenses)/Number of Surgeries or Treatments = Average Patient Acquisition Cost If you want to calculate your advertising profitability, you ll need to consider your average monthly leads, consults and surgeries that come specifically through different advertising vehicles, your average fees for surgery, and your average cost per lead among other costs. How to Calulate Your Cost Per Marketing Lead Example: If you spend $5,000 on a marketing program that returns 60 leads your cost per lead equals $83.33 per lead. ($5000 / 60 = $83.33) It is imperative that your staff fully understands that everytime they receive a phone call or from a potential patient that it costs the practice $83.33 or more to get them to call and that every lead should be handled with the proper respect. Many practices use a Call Tracking tool to record calls and replay during training to make sure everyone is properly handling phone calls. Talk to a PracticeDock Marketing Specialist about implementing this tool at your practice.

9 Sample Marketing Budget Sheet The sample budget itemizes a physicians practice first quarter marketing expenditures through January, February and March. It provides totals for each and every marketing initiative in each month, as well as a total for the entire quarter. In this case, the company has focused its attention on pursuing a mixture of inbound and outbound marketing strategies. They ve combined on-line advertising with conventional print, radio and TV advertisements. In addition, they ve also accounted for expenditures such as hosting events, migrating their website to a new content management system, and creating videos. The table below shows the amount spent by the company on marketing in its first quarter, the practice sales totals in its first quarter and uses both to express its marketing as a percentage of sales. This is done by taking the total spent marketing in Q1 and dividing it by that quarter s company sales totals in Q1. marketing as a percentage of sales: $60, divided by $1,050, = 5.8% Need help with your physician marketing campaign? Talk to one of our PracticeDock marketing specialists today and learn how to launch a marketing plan that transforms prospects into consultations. Contact or solutions@practicedock.com

10 Transform quality prospects into business. PracticeDock is an online marketing suite providing patient generation, conversion, communication and retention tools in real-time and at business-speed to optimize internet presence and grow private medical practices. PracticeDock Suite of Online Marketing Solutions includes: Referral Network PracticeDock Lead Generation Network,, offers one-click, pre-qualified, trackable patient referrals & lead generation. Keyword Marketing PracticeDock Keyword Marketing, converting targeted online prospects through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) & Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools. Website Control PracticeDock Website Control provides total website control to easily create, build and manage a more effective, optimized site. Call Tracking PracticeDock Call Tracking enables more effective patient communication with staff-training, monitoring solutions and measuring ROI for marketing initiatives. Patient Education PracticeDock Patient Education empowers and informs patients with engaging, educational web-enabled procedure videos & 3-D animation tools. Video Services PracticeDock Video Services provides an online platform for video production, distribution, and also a video library. Merchant Services PracticeDock Merchant Services is a credit card processing system that provides better rates and service to increase your bottom line. Get started today. Visit PracticeDock.com to sign up, call or Solutions@PracticeDock.com.