Updated approaches to ramping up growth of your practice need to be current for today’s profit-focused physician and medical practice owner.
Achieving success requires thinking outside the box. Resources are often limited and the competition is often better armed than you are. It takes creativity, aggressiveness, and sound strategies to overcome these disadvantages.
Making the most of the patients you already have is vital to your success.
Imagine if you could focus your efforts on cultivating the relationship you have with current patients instead of constantly trying to attract new ones. You would talk to your patients, learn their likes and dislikes, and better understand the problems they struggle to overcome.
By spending more time working with current patients you can become a trusted partner, someone who they turn to in times of need. Because of this you will have a better understanding of the dynamic motivations your patients have. You will be able to respond quickly to an ever-changing market. You will out-maneuver your competition by responding quicker.
This relationship is not something that you have to imagine. You can get to the point where your practice will sustain itself and grow because of your current patients. It’s easier than you think.
Of course you will always need to attract new patients — that goes without saying. However your current patients can do some of that hard work. Through word-of-mouth marketing and formal referral programs your customers can lend a very powerful hand in attracting new prospective patients.
This includes rave reviews. Have the office staff gently inform satisfied patients that they can post reviews on Yelp and physician rating sites. You can even have a small sign posted on the office wall, informing patients that it would be helpful to the practice for them to jot off a glowing report and that’s a great way to generate practice growth.
Watch your practice soar.
This isn’t fantasy; it’s a fact that’s been proven again and again. It’s turned failing practices and health facilities into successes.
You want repeat business. You want your patients to be a positive reference for potential patients. Make sure that your service does whatever it takes to meet and exceed patient expectations. Doing these things will go a long way towards creating satisfied patients.
A lot of future business can be won by positive referrals, word of mouth, and having a reputation as the “original source” of great patient engagement. Create a culture that fosters the creation and nurturing of satisfied patients, and you will be viewed as a winner.
What doctors and medical practice owners must keep in mind is that through the “care and feeding” of existing patients, a strong repeat clientele base can be built, from which word of mouth advertising can become a very strong marketing tool. Rather than spending great sums of money on mass media advertising, word-of-mouth advertising proves very effective in that actual consumers of your buy xanax health services can vouch for the quality of the patient experience and will act as a motivated promoter for your practice.
You pay nothing for what has evolved into the most important marketing commodity in the age of social marketing: real-people testimonials.
This includes letting patients know that they can write testimonials on various ranking sites. Let the office staff know that this is something they can recommend. You also can have a sign posted on the wall in the waiting room that if a patient is happy with the services rendered, that writing a testimonial would be greatly appreciated.
Positive word of mouth occurs spontaneously and naturally when your service is of the highest quality. So before you launching a new service, you need to test its receptivity. The most reliable way to test any product is to try it under realistic conditions. Find out just how many of your current patients for instance would prefer concierge service and corresponding payments versus the type of practice that you currently have. Are they eager to try it or would they seek care elsewhere if that is all that you were going to offer.
That means different things for different people.
These types of tests have two main benefits:
- Create positive publicity at your webs site
- Issue press releases about the new service
Designers of other types of products can enjoy these same benefits by testing their work in focus groups or by testing out the product among company employees. With physicians, we don’t have the same opportunity for testing but small focus groups would still work.
Sometimes, even the “big guys” get it wrong.
After the launch of Microsoft’s Windows Vista, users began to complain about the operating system’s compatibility issues, which included problems with such common pieces of software as the popular iTunes music service.
The resulting negative publicity, fueled largely by technology bloggers, put Microsoft in a terrible public relations situation. That translates into skeptical prospects, fewer sales, and lost profits.
You want repeat business. You want your patients to be a positive reference for potential patients. Make sure that your service does whatever it takes to meet and exceed expectations. Doing these things will go a long way towards creating satisfied patients.
A lot of future business can be won by positive referrals, word of mouth, and having a reputation as the “original source” of a great first product. Create a culture that fosters the creation and nurturing of satisfied patients, and you will be viewed as a winner.
For a significant period of time, patients are likely to remain ambivalent about any new development that you may implement in your office, be it different office hours, coverage or payment models. However, this will boost your practice in time if you got positive responses from your surveys and discussions with your patients.
