Marketing your Practice is Like a Fish Finger Sandwich

healthcare marketing Mar 18, 2019

 

Apparently I am a bit weird (according to my husband) because up until fairly recently I had never had a fish finger sandwich. We had apple and cheese, sprout and stuffing, and cheese and jam sandwiches when I was growing up, but never fish finger sandwiches.

Anyway since I discovered fish finger sandwiches, which are great by the way, I have also discovered that everyone has their own preference for the order they stack the contents in and quite often some variation in the contents too.

Some people like cheese and tartar sauce, other people prefer the lettuce and ketchup variation, but they always contain the basics of:

  1. White bread
  2. Fish fingers
  3. Butter
  4. Some kind of sauce (Tarta, ketchup, mayo, salad cream)

These may all vary in their type, but all fish finger sandwiches contain these basics.

Then depending on personal preference people add a combination of:

  • Cheese
  • Poached eggs
  • Bacon
  • Avocado
  • Tomato
  • Lettuce
  • Gerkins
  • Salt & pepper

    Thus creating their own signature fish finger sandwiches.

Marketing your practice is very similar.

Your Practice Marketing Recipe Ingredients

When it comes to your practice marketing there are the basics that every practice should have in place, these may vary in their look and feel, but they are essential elements you need to include.
Then there are the extras that you can add if you have the imagination and the resources to manage them.

My Top 5 Marketing Sandwich Essentials are:

1. Customer Knowledge – knowing exactly who your dream patient is and what they need will enable you to precisely target your marketing activities at them and should make your marketing more effective.

2. A Sound Pricing Structure – what you sell has value to your patients because it solves a problem for them. What is that solution worth to them? To make your practice viable, that price has to be higher than the total cost of producing and delivering those patient services. Too many practices have a flaky pricing structure meaning that they tread a fine line between maintaining enough cash flow to keep the practice profitable and not having enough.

3. A Website – Your website is essential as the online hub to focus all of your digital marketing to. Essentially you fill it with educational and helpful information that means you can direct people to it from all over the internet. Also importantly it is the only piece of online real estate that you actually own and have full control over.

4. An e-mail Marketing System – not a spammy bombard your patients with sales stuff everyday system, but a system that keeps them in touch with your practice and adds value to their day every time you send them an e-mail. Keeping in regular contact with potential and existing patients is essential and having a good e-mail marketing system makes that much easier.

5. The Human Touch – not exactly a marketing tool, more a way of working, but never the less it’s vital. People buy from people they know, like, and trust. So as a small business you stand a much better chance of succeeding if you let people see you are human and care about your practice, your patients, and your local community. Giving the human touch to your website and the way you communicate with your potential and existing patients will give you the edge over your competition.

6. Google My Business Profile - Googling is now almost a worldwide phenomenon. When you need some information you "Google it". Even my 80 year old Mum Googles things! So making sure you show up when someone locally to you is Googling for your services is so important. The easiest and cheapest way to do this is to claim your Google My Business profile and start sprucing it up and adding fresh content every week. That way Google sees you are a proactive local business and will start to pay more attention not only to your GMB listing but also your own website if you have one connected.

 The Extra Ingredients

Once you have the basics in place then you can start pepping up your marketing with other elements that communicate in a different way or to a different sector of your target audience.

These extras might include:

  • Social media profiles
  • Printed leaflets
  • A blog
  • Local advertising
  • Direct mail
  • Promotional events
  • A referral network
  • Press releases
  • A YouTube channel
  • A patient review system


You get the idea. But whatever you do always remember that the number one essential ingredient is knowing who your dream patients are and what help they need.

 

Take it Steady & Measure

Build your marketing sandwich over time. Don't rush to try and put everything into place at once. Take your time.

Test each new ingredient out in turn alongside the existing ones, to see if they complement each other. If that works and you still think you can improve on the mix then add in the next one. If it doesn’t work, take it out and pick another new one to try.
Keep going until you are happy you have a marketing mix that is working for your business and is one you can sustain.

Let me know what your favorite combination is 🙂

To make this system work you also have to have ways of measuring the effect of each change you make. So make sure you can do that for each new marketing tactic that you try before you flick the switch on, and make sure you schedule time regularly to review the measures on how successful your marketing sandwich making is.

Without having a measure in place how are you ever going to really know what is working and what isn't? In other words what to do more of and what to do less of? Without measures, you are going to be wasting time, money, and energy.

I'd love to hear from you on how you have built your sandwich and what elements are working for you.

Hop over to the Practice Momentum Facebook Page & let me know about your favorite sandwich.

Many thanks for taking the time to stop and read my Practice Momentum blog.

Until next time

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