Identify the Best Treatment Options
Now that you know what you define as success (your goals and objectives), who you are speaking to (your audience) and who might interrupt the conversation (your competitors), you need to plan your messages.
Identify your marketing strategy—what you need to do to break through the noise, stand out from the competition, gain the attention of your target audience, and make them act. Marketing strategies are the broad approaches you will take to reach your main goal. To determine your strategies, keep your target audience—and what they want—at the forefront of your mind. If your goal is to increase appointment booking by 3% over the next six months, some potential strategies might be:
- Become a go-to rheumatology practice in the minds of referring physicians;
- Regain the business of lapsed patients; and
- Maintain good relationships with current patients.
Implement Treatment
Once you have defined your goal and marketing strategies, focus on short-term, measurable, action-centered tactics to successfully implement your strategies. For example, tactics to implement the strategies above include:
- Provide PCPs with patient fact sheets about rheumatic diseases that share information and reinforce the importance of working with a rheumatologist;
- Plan personal visits to PCP offices;
- Reach out to lapsed patients with direct mail pieces touting any exciting changes you’ve made to your practice; and
- Provide patients with a monthly newsletter that gives advice on managing rheumatic diseases and information on how your practice can help.
There are many tactics you can use to reach your target audience. Some are more expensive than others, and some take more time and personal involvement from the practice owner, but it is important to implement treatment, or your great plans will go to waste.
Gauge Success, Next Steps
Once you implement a treatment, it is important to determine if it was successful. If you achieved success, ask yourself which tactics helped the most and which were less helpful. If you didn’t achieve the success you hoped for, don’t give up! Just do what you would do with a patient who didn’t respond to a particular treatment—try another approach. Marketing plans may not be successful for many reasons, including:
- Lack of planning;
- Choosing the wrong audiences; and
- Setting unrealistic goals.
Creative, well-planned marketing efforts will benefit your practice and should be part of your overall business plan. Even in these tough economic times, there are economically savvy ways to reach out to different groups in your community and build a practice that is recognizable by name and sought after by patients and partners.
