11 Medical Marketing Strategies

Have you ever noticed that some doctors in a community seem to get a majority of the patients and the rest are scrambling to even stay in business? The doctors, hospitals, and clinics that implement these essential medical marketing strategies are the ones that tend to find better levels of success. It’s more than just brand saturation that matters in the medical field. It’s also about creating an authentic environment that communicates a caring, individualized attitude toward every patient.

Your strategy for marketing depends on the needs of your community more than anything else. Any medical practice that can best meet the needs of local patients in a way that communicates caring will quickly establish a large base of operations that people will migrate toward. If you’re losing patients, then the issue isn’t that you’re doing something wrong. It’s that others are doing something right and it’s being noticed. Use these ideas to get noticed too!

Best Medical Marketing Ideas That Grow Your Business

1. Video Marketing Cannot Be Ignored
There is no greater need in any marketing strategy from the medical industry than to be able to identity quickly with a patient’s needs. This is often approached through a series of marketing content that is designed to describe all of the specific benefits that a medical practice can provide. With video marketing, however, you don’t leave the descriptions of your services to the imagination. You put it there, on display in full color, for people to make their own decisions.

2. Get Everyone Involved
Every aspect of your medical practice can get involved with your marketing strategy because every department can get feedback for you. It can be as simple as picking up the phone to contact a patient about their care. Surveys can be sent out. This feedback is critical because you won’t be able to detect a service gap without. By getting everyone involved, you’ll be able to seal up all the cracks in your patient care routine.

3. Market For Referrals
Knowing what your doctors specialize in providing will provide you a natural network of referrals. Many medical practices today try to be a one-stop shop of patient care and that can work in some communities, but specialized care is also needed for some patients. If you provide it and no one else does, then you’re going to get the referrals, plain and simple. If you just do the same thing that every other provider does, then you’ll just be background noise.

4. Let Experience Talk
People want to be treated by the best doctors possible in their community. This is where you can really let experience speak for itself. Utilize the experience on your doctor’s C/V to prove that your medical practice has the experience that the local population will want to have when they have a problem that requires treatment.

5. Take Your Care To the Next Level
People like to be treated by doctors that know what they’re doing, but they prefer to be treated by doctors who also know how to care for people. It can be something as small as a holiday card or the ability to provide kids with a treat, like a sticker, when they come in for an appointment. It’s these little caring touches that will provide your medical practice with a lot of class that is perfect for a marketing campaign.

6. Always Start From Within
The fastest way to derail a marketing strategy before it ever begins is to have the employees of your medical practice sabotage it. That’s not to say that a majority of employees want to sabotage their employer. It just occurs because they disagree with the marketing strategy and aren’t afraid to say why. When this happens, it naturally drives patients away from a practice, so work hard to get everyone on board and start every marketing effort internally before taking it to the rest of the community.

7. Become High Profile
For many medical facilities, there is a dangerous line that is being allowed to exist because nothing is being given back to the community, although sometimes high-priced procedures are performed. Adopt a marketing strategy that gives back to the community as much as possible and you’ll create a foundation of success which you’ll be able to build upon.

8. Get Integrated
Your marketing strategy must become fully integrated into every place you plan on channeling information. This means information on your website must be updated regularly, emails must reflect the strategy, any telemarketing efforts you might have must use the strategy as the primary focus, and even your direct mail must reflect the core message used throughout. This way there is never any confusion regarding the message people will receive.

9. Start Your Newsletters!
Your medical practice has a lot going on and people will want to know what that is. Rather than risk having your press releases ignored by the local media [which is a very real possibility], get a newsletter up and running and use it like a direct mail campaign. This way you’ll know it will reach people in your community and provide a concentric message that works with your marketing strategy.

10. Identity the Clones
The focus of many marketing strategies is to recruit new patients, but you want to recruit copies of your best patients to maximize results. To do this, you must identify the specific core attributes that are common to your best patients. When you can identify these key markers, you can then market your medical practice’s specific strengths to this core demographic so that you can bring in “copies” of your best patients.

11. Drip Away
If you’re not calling people to remind them of appointments or the need to be seen, then you’re letting profits leak out of your bank account. Design a quality calendar that works, fill it up with follow-up reminders after visits, and let people get on the phones. This way your bucket will catch all of the drips and the profits will get deposited where they belong.