Now that your practice is established and you are transitioning from sustaining to growing your business, it’s time to think about:
- Marketing and branding strategies to enhance your practice reputation
- Professional organization membership for professional support and cost savings
- Partnerships or relationships with community organizations that contribute to the health of your patients
- Future employee recruitment, including physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs)
- Investments in digitally-enabled care and your desire to offer such care
Marketing and Branding
Carefully consider your “brand” of patient care as you grow your business. What do you want to be known for? What sets you and your practice apart from others? What is your value proposition, and how will your brand present this to customers? Often, a practice’s best and most distinct advantage lies in the interests, personality, and style of its practitioners and office operations. Your practice’s brand should be a reflection of these qualities. Most importantly, a practice that prides itself on listening carefully to patients and giving them more time has already identified its brand proposition.
A marketing or branding consultant could help you develop and refine your practice’s brand and create a marketing plan. Not all practices need this level of support or to allocate a large budget to marketing and branding. Even the smallest budget with a solid marketing plan can be highly effective for individual physician practices. One practice increased new patient volume by 7% with a focused marketing effort that employed the talents of each team member.19 Focusing efforts to uncover your practice’s marketing advantages, conducting research to gauge community satisfaction, and strategically using social media and other paid digital platforms can help a practice build trust and enhance its reputation (Figure 15).
Your marketing efforts should include an array of external (public-facing promotional) and internal (employee and/or current customer-directed) measures. External marketing tactics to promote your brand and attract new patients, such as a practice website or a social media presence, require thought and consideration as they’ll be in the public domain. Internal marketing tactics rely on activities conducted within your existing patient base, including retaining the patient base and increasing patient loyalty.
Figure 15. Components of a Marketing Plan
Identifying your practice’s marketing advantage |
Conducting market research |
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A guide to help physicians identify their unique marketing advantage and create their own “brand” of medicine and patient care. |
A guide to provide structure for choosing market research options that meet your needs and determine the implications and action steps for your practice. |
Building trust in your practice |
Basic digital strategies |
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A guide that provides a structure for integrating relationship-building tactics into your practice in manageable ways, alongside key definitions, step-by-step recommendations and best practice tips for long-term success. |
A guide to assist private practice physicians to better understand the important role of digital and online strategies to strengthen their market position. |
Figure 16. Crafting a Marketing Budget and Plan for Your Practice
Marketing Budget |
Marketing Plan |
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Account for this in the practice’s operational budget Important marketing budgeting considerations include:
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A multi-faceted approach may have a broader reach:
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Social Media
More and more practices use social media to connect with their patients, share current medical information and updates about the practice. Practices should consider seeking professional guidance if they don’t have any experience on the platforms. Practices can develop a presence on “the Big 4” social media platforms— Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), and LinkedIn—to maximize the return on time invested (Figure 18). Maintaining your practice’s social presence requires effort, so you might focus your efforts on 1 or 2 platforms if you’re just getting started.
Figure 17. Key Elements of Social Media Posts
Figure 18. The “Big 4” Social Media Platforms