Are you ready to take the next step in marketing your physician practice? Perhaps you’ve recently hired an agency and are unsure about what to bring to your first meeting. If so, we’ve got you covered!
Sometimes developing a great long-term relationship depends on getting off to a good start. Here are five easy steps to set yourself up for success.
1. Determine your goals.
Your most important step before hiring a healthcare marketing team is to articulate your vision. Think critically about your short-term and long-term goals. This will help your agency understand why you’ve decided to hire them and what you expect them to accomplish throughout your partnership. Try to have some very specific goals in mind, like increasing patient visits by 10 percent during the coming year or boosting website traffic by 150 percent within the next six months. It’s okay to have broader goals too, just make sure you communicate them clearly to your agency. Articulating your vision to your marketing team could mean the difference between success and failure.
2. Define your market.
In the weeks preceding your meeting, think about how you would define your target market. Does your practice specialize in services for infants or senior citizens? Do you appeal to the general population or to those with a specific medical condition only? It sounds simple, but these valuable insights will help your marketing team craft the ideal buyer personas for your strategy. The more specific you can be when defining your market, the better. It’s also vital to prioritize when necessary. Even if your practice seeks patients of any age or gender, you should rank the personas that are most valuable to your business. Tailoring your marketing efforts by audience will steer your activities, save you money, and produce results.
3. Develop your budget.
Though often the most difficult step for many companies, developing a budget is essential. In order for your agency to develop a marketing strategy, they must understand what resources can be applied toward reaching your goal. Don’t be apprehensive about revealing what you’re able to spend; if you’re working with a reliable, trustworthy agency, they won’t look at your budget in terms of how much money they can squeeze out of you, but what resources they can access to produce the best results.
4. Determine your market position.
Before your agency can help you create a successful brand for your business, they must understand your market position. This involves asking yourself what you have to offer that your competitors don’t, and why patients should choose your practice over hundreds of others in your category. Perhaps you offer a procedure or treatment that many of your competitors do not, have been around the longest, have the most physicians in the specialty, or provide a service at a lower cost than your competition. Determining your position in your industry will help your marketing agency create a plan of attack highlighting the assets that set you apart from your competition. Let them know what makes you special!
5. Identify your weaknesses.
We all have strengths and weaknesses. Carefully examine which methods have been helping your business grow and which have been falling short. Do you draw in more than half of your business through physician referrals? That’s great! It’s good to know that you’re doing that right. But perhaps you aren’t generating enough self-referrals because nobody hears of your practice until their doctors tell them about you. By knowing your weaknesses, your marketing team can make strategic decisions, like whether to address your weaknesses or ignore them and play to your strengths.
These five easy steps will prepare you to meet with your new healthcare marketing agency! They’ll appreciate all the hard work you’ve put it and you’ll be thrilled with the results.
If you have yet to hire a marketing agency for your practice, consider Lenz. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Lenz has 21 years of specialized experience helping our healthcare clients increase patient visits, improve their payer mix, and elevate their brands. Our team delivers the full range of digital and traditional marketing expertise, including brand strategy, advertising, PR, web site development, search engine optimization, and more.
Contact Lenz today and find out how we can make a difference for your business.