Healthcare Marketing and Business Tips in a Slow Economy Traditional business, healthcare and dental practice management approaches will not be as applicable for small businesses due to the trying nature of the economy. With sluggish housing market, and unemployment creeping up to 20%, consumers have to cut back on spending. As a result, many business owners and doctors have witnessed the decrease in customers purchase and for doctors, the postponing of certain treatments by patients.
This presents a problem of great order of magnitude to small business owners across the country. So here are 5 key points to help you, the private practitioner, to survive the hard economic climate:
1. Know that you are only in the business of marketing your business, and that is it. Just providing a good service and product is not enough to succeed in this business climate.
This concept may have been true 30 years ago. But today, if your service and product is not put in front of the potential clientele on a constant basis through marketing, then not enough people will be aware of your services and thus even fewer people will buy. As a result of this, you will have a hard time, especially in a slow economy. Ultimately, only those who continue to learn and implement marketing consistently will survive and expand.
2. Become a community supporter’ to reach more new patients and customers. Instead of only relying on traditional advertising, why not do something positive for the community that will create goodwill and ultimately more customers for your practice?
We’re not talking about PR gimmick. While most of us do perform charity in our own ways, few realize that taking this basic concept into real interaction in the community by performing community enrichment activities like holding food drives, good deed events, anti-drug events etc – not only raises your visibility through free press, but your believability as well. This is where you will stick out so far above your competitors
We call this the “Un-Advertising” whereby through doing actions as a humanitarian in your community, you do not ‘advertise’ but get positive attention that remains in the public’s mind. Specially in a slow economy, doctors who did Un-advertising have found that the public do remember them for a long time, longer than their advertising counterparts would elicit. These social participations takes little time, contrary to common belief.
3. Ramp up your marketing efforts by 500%. flourishing and succeeding well above average can often be easier in a slow economy than it is in a good economy. It has also been proven that many millionaires have been made during recessions and in depressions.
Most practices owners that cut down their marketing during slow times thought that they are ‘saving money’. This cutting-back will shrink their business even further as the consumers will forget about them and in one, two or three years when the economy picks up again, they will have so little left financially that they cannot even take advantage of the upswing in the economy.
Find ways to market inexpensively by using existent free resources – piggy-back your marketing messages to businesses, groups and entities and have them promote for you to their existing customers.
4. Don’t just engage in ONE marketing action. If you keep looking for that ONE marketing action which will bring your business growth, then financial hardship and being overworked will unfortunately result. There is no single marketing action that increases your patient volume, it is always a combination of several actions done collectively.
Talk to different business and dental management consultants and put together a “system” that you can use over and over again. Most people try one thing and if it did not work then they try the next. This shotgun method will not give you expansion, but give you the result of a smaller practice. Take up comprehensive marketing strategies which involve both internal and external marketing activities – that could be done without you spending a lot of personal time or money to implement them.
Marketing is as scientific as engineering, and important scientific data show that half of your marketing efforts will probably not work, even if you are very good at it. Another scientific fact is the principle of synergy as applied in marketing. It is like in war, attack with all the ammunition available and attack from all corners possible.
5. Realize that you do not have to like the marketing action for it to work. People do not like root canals or having to stop smoking in order to keep them alive. Most do not like to hire lawyers either, but winning a law suit and staying out of jail makes the “liking” part immaterial. What matters is that you get lots of business in the end.
Remember: if you are a business owner or a dentist, you need to ramp up your marketing beyond what you guess is ‘enough’. Consumers will consume a lot less in the next 2-3 years and you can yet get a lion share of the business who is still out there. If you do not know what to do, Google for marketing consultants that could help you.
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