In order to build an effective marketing strategy to achieve such goals, your approach should be methodical and varied. Your approach requires devel-opment and planning, strategy, and execution. Each of these stages rely on one another, and skipping or focus-ing minimal efforts on one of them will thwart the goal of your initial efforts.

STAGE 1: DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNINGKnowing who your ideal target pa-tient is, is the first step in creating a marketing plan for your practice. You must first understand the makeup of the surrounding community—the de-mographics—including gender, race, age, household income, etc. Are there

specific subsets of the population that make up your patient base that you should be catering to? Is there a more ideal patient you would like to reach that you don’t have already? Are there any factors that limit patients commut-ing to your practice? Do most patients drive to their appointment? Is public transportation available? Determine who your patients are, why they come to you, and how to attract others.

Being aware of your practice’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and, most importantly, your competition, will allow you to formulate a specific message to use when promoting your practice. What makes your practice unique? In the past, what tactics have worked and what have not? What are your successes and failures? Taking a look at your practice’s previous marketing initiative outcomes

Growing Your Investment:THE STAGES OF MARKETING A MEDICAL PRACTICE

BY LORI TRZCINSKI, MARKETING COORDINATOR, PHYSICIANS ENDOSCOPY

Lori Trzcinski

ESTABLISHING A STRONG PATIENT BASE DOESN’T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT. IT TAKES TIME TO DIFFERENTIATE YOUR PRACTICE FROM THE REST, DEDICATION TO SEE PROMOTIONAL GOALS THROUGH TO COMPLETION, AND A DESIRE TO EXAMINE THE RESULTS—WHAT WENT RIGHT AND WHAT COULD BE IMPROVED UPON. IT IS NO LONGER ENOUGH TO SIMPLY HAVE YOUR PRACTICE LISTED IN THE PHONEBOOK, TO RELY ON WORD OF MOUTH, OR TO HAVE A HOSPITAL AFFILIATION; PHYSICIANS MUST NOW ACTIVELY SEEK OUT NEW PATIENTS AND REFERRAL SOURCES AS A MEANS OF GROWTH.

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will only help you to formulate a more targeted strategy. Recognize what deficiencies there are and improve upon them. What has worked for your competition? What your competition does to promote themselves may not always be the best solution to fit your needs, but sometimes just knowing what tactics are being used is of much greater value.

Two elements crucial to the planning stage that will have the greatest effect on the reach and influence of a market-ing campaign are budgeting and sup-port. Knowing how much of a budget you have to work with and what you are comfortable spending from that budget will greatly influence the ap-proach you take on where to best al-locate those funds. The person(s) re-sponsible for creating and sending out the marketing materials, following up with patients, and tracking the sourc-es of new patient referrals will be the core support of a practice’s marketing efforts. When planning, be sure to consider your current staff’s availabil-ity and workload. A larger, more ro-bust plan will call for greater time and effort—an effort that may sometimes require additional support staff or outside assistance.

STAGE 2: STRATEGYSetting short-term and long-term goals for marketing your practice will allow you to establish a more concrete strategy. Whether it’s attracting a new type of patient base or integrating a new service line into your practice to give you that competitive edge, your marketing initiatives should in-volve a healthy mix of advertising and promotion, networking, and commu-nity outreach.

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If you have not done so already, establishing and maintaining your practice’s identity, or brand, is essential in order to keep your advertising message consistent. Without it, those messages will be lost, and it will be a challenge to set yourself apart from the rest. That messaging includes the look and feel of brand items such as your logo, website, and your print and promotional materials.

The key to advertising success is being repetitively seen and heard until your audience develops a familiarity with your brand. There will always be specific location-based marketing items that will work for you simply by knowing your audience and being a part of the community. Are there certain media outlets that are more prevalent at reaching your target market that you should be in? Are those targeted solutions paying for an ad in the newspaper or being featured on a news segment?

There are other items, however, that have become a standard in marketing and should be integrated into your strategy if they have not been already. Some are more of a necessary staple in today’s digital marketing, such as having a website and a Facebook page, while others are more specific to making the location of your practice more readily available to the public—such as verifying your practice listings on the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo!).

In addition to advertising and promo-tion, another key piece in your practice marketing strategy should be network-ing. In order to have a substantial re-ferral base of physicians, a networking relationship must exist. The relation-

ship should foster a mutual benefit and be something of value and meaning to both parties. The key to networking is time and effort. Connections can be made through a variety of ways includ-ing industry conference receptions and events, and physician-specific social media networking sites, but the most important part is the nurturing of that professional relationship, which will al-low for a more solid referral base.

The final piece of your strategy should be community outreach. Your most influential marketing tool is your pa-tients themselves, and they must see that their well-being is your number one priority. With the focus of health-care changing from quantity to qual-ity of care, this is of great importance. Have an open line of communication with patients before, during, and after their visit. After appointments, follow up to see how they are doing and ask if they have any questions or concerns. Send them thank you letters after an appointment or birthday cards during their birthday month to show them that you care. Send out a practice publica-tion or newsletter with useful health tips and information to guide them outside of office visits. Hold an open house where potential patients can tour your center and recruit new ones by offering free screenings. Be pres-ent at community events, get involved in awareness groups, and have a table at a local health fair to keep your prac-tice’s name (and the physicians associ-ated with it) in the public eye.

STAGE 3: EXECUTIONNow that you have an action plan and know what end results you would like to achieve through marketing your practice, you should prioritize your

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goals and assign the tasks of those goals to specific individuals to get the most out of your plan. You should stra-tegically plan for each of the items—taking advantage of any cross-channel, cross-promotional opportunities that may apply in order to unify your brand-ing efforts. For advertising and promo-tion, you could set a goal, for example, of sending out two practice-related items a month. Those items could be press releases, articles, postcards to the community, recording a radio spot or filming a commercial spot to air on stations in the community. For net-working, you could set a goal of meet-ing one to two new physicians every four weeks with the intention of setting up follow-up networking opportuni-ties with them—whether it be meeting

for lunch or dinner, or even providing them a personal tour of your practice and a chance to meet the staff. For community outreach, you have a vast number of opportunities. You could set a goal of performing a number of charity cases per quarter, or a goal of participating in at least six community events throughout the year.

NEXT STEPSThe key to successfully executing your medical practice marketing plan is the timeline you set up to accomplish it in. What is most important to you now? What goals should have more priority over others? Which will be more impactful? Who will be available to help you carry out the plan and when? Assigning the workload and

responsibilities to specific staff, including yourself, will allow for a successful transition into the marketing timeline by all parties involved.

Though growing your practice through marketing is a methodical process, with a well-thought out plan and a timeline to follow, sustainable growth of your practice is within reach.

Lori Trzcinski is the marketing coordinator at Physicians Endoscopy and the manag-ing editor of EndoEconomics. Ms. Trzcinski leads the corporate and center marketing initiatives of PE and its affiliated centers. Ms. Trzcinski earned a B.A. in Business & Economics and Media & Communi-cations from Ursinus College. For more information, she can be reached at ltrzcinski@endocenters.com.

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