Developing a One-Page Marketing Plan: Part I

This article is the first of three parts on using the one-page marketing plan to enhance your practice’s potential. This part discusses the Phase 1, the period before the patient actually enters your practice. Part II addresses Phase 2 of the one-page marketing plan, in which you receive leads from your marketing efforts, and shows you how to develop a system of follow-up and how to keep in touch with potential new patients. Part III will discuss how to create enthusiastic fans and how they help promote your practice.

Today, marketing in medical practices is ubiquitous. Who would ever have thought that great medical establishments such as the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and Kaiser Permanente would embark on marketing strategies for their institutions? Marketing aims to attract new patients to the practice and then provide them with a stellar patient experience, followed by establishing a system to keep the patient within the practice and make that patient into a raving fan. All of this can be accomplished using a one-page marketing plan.

Every profession, including healthcare, has a well-thought-out plan that is created, distributed to the staff, and followed meticulously. This is true in the airline industry, where pilots follow a flight plan, as well as in the military, when soldiers follow an operation plan. Marketing is not taught in medical school, and most physicians and office managers are clueless when it comes to marketing and practice promotions. We have seen many practices hire a marketing consultant who provides an assessment of the practice in a slick business plan that identifies the needs and wants for marketing the practice. This very expensive, multipage plan is put on a shelf and never looked at again and, more importantly, never implemented. The result is a waste of precious marketing dollars on a plan that doesn’t work for the practice.

We suggest that if you create and follow a one-page marketing plan, you are likely to see more patients enter the practice as a result of this simple approach to medical marketing.

The Circus and Marketing

Historically, physicians have thought that marketing is just another word for advertising and requires an outlay of lots of money. Let’s look, instead, at marketing as thinking about the circus coming to town. If the circus is coming to town and there is a sign saying, “Circus Coming to the Showground on Saturday,” that is advertising. If the sign is on the back of an elephant that strolls into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the town’s flowerbed in front of City Hall and the newspaper writes a story about the debacle, that’s publicity. However, if the mayor offers his observation of the elephant and laughs about the elephant, that’s public relations. Now if the town’s citizens show up at the circus and buy a ticket to see the show, that’s sales!

The one-page marketing plan consists of nine elements, which are divided into three phases (Figure 1):

Figure 1. Marketing plan worksheet. Used with permission from SuccessWise and available at 1pmp.com .

1. Identifying a target market and following up on any potential patients needing the services of the practice;

2. Providing the patients with educational materials before they enter the practice and have an outstanding experience; and

3. Ensuring that after the patients leave the practice they continue to return regularly, and, more importantly, become enthusiastic fans who tell others about the wonderful experience they had with the doctors and the practice.

Phase 1 is the period before the patient enters the service cycle. In Phase 1, the future patient doesn’t know anything about you or your practice. If you can create an awareness of your practice, you have accomplished the first and very important part of the patient cycle. This phase is a magnet, or the “hook” that entices the patient to provide information about him- or herself and ensures that the patient will avail themselves of Phase 2 or when they become part of your practice.

During Phase 2, the potential patient becomes an actual patient and has their initial experience with the practice. If that experience is positive, the patient is likely to remain in the practice and will segue to Phase 3.

Phase 3 begins after you and your practice have participated in the care of the patient and the patient has had a positive experience. You will want them to tell others about that positive experience. The patient has interacted with your staff from the time they made their initial phone call to the practice until the moment the doctor-patient encounter ends, they pay their bill, leave with educational material, and all of their questions have been answered. Your marketing has made promises of providing access to the practice, that timely follow-up will be achieved, and all of the patient’s questions will be answered at the time of the visit. When those promises are fulfilled, the patient has a favorable relationship with the doctor and the staff and is very likely to refer others to the practice.

Figure 1 shows that each phase of the one-page marketing plan consists of three components. Let’s look at the three components of the first phase with practical examples of how each component will hopefully lead not only to adding more patients to your practice but also to maintaining the loyalty of those patients who are already in your practice.

Phase 1: The Before Phase of One-Page Marketing

First Component of Phase 1: Identifying Your Target Market

The goal of the before phase is to get your patients to know you and your practice. When you create a message to reach out to prospective patients and they have demonstrated even a modicum of interest, you have to continue to connect with the prospective patient to motivate him or her to enter the practice.

This usually begins by identifying your target market. Let’s be very honest—it is nearly impossible or unreasonable to target everyone with what you do and how you do it so that everyone enters your practice. Phase 1 also means avoiding a mass marketing plan such as television, radio, or newspaper with bland comments about your outstanding services, or claims about being the first in the area to offer such a service or treatment.

We suggest using the “PVP” approach to identify your ideal patient. This consists of personal enjoyment, value to the marketplace, and profitability.

Personal enjoyment is the enjoyment you have providing care for a certain type of patient. For example, if you are a primary care doctor, do you enjoy helping patients achieve their ideal weight and helping them with their diet, nutrition, and the use of supplements? If you are an orthopedic surgeon, you may have an interest in sports medicine and helping weekend warriors overcome the injuries incurred by middle-aged and senior patients who engage in sports. Another example is the urologist who offers treatment for middle-aged men who are experiencing difficulty with urination and erectile dysfunction. Each practice can find the area or niche that they enjoy, and identify a target market by doing so.

The value to the marketplace is the benefit of your service to your target market. For instance, if your target market is women with problems achieving pregnancy, you can be certain that your practice offers a very high value to the couple who are trying desperately to become pregnant.

Finally, you must determine the profitability of providing care and services for your target market. You want to avoid any target where the fees you charge are not worth the effort or the expense of your marketing programs. You want to avoid—at all costs—having a target market that is not profitable.

Next, you want to learn as much as possible about your target market. If your medical practice is dependent on referrals from other physicians, then you want to know as much as possible about your referring physicians. To this end, one of us (NB) has developed a simple worksheet called the “Baum 10” to learn the hot buttons of referring physicians (Figure 2). This brief survey of your existing and potential referring physicians can provide valuable insight into their practice and their private life.

Figure 2. The Baum 10 worksheet on referring physicians.

Second Component of Phase 1: Crafting Your Message

The second component of the Phase 1 consists of crafting your message. Most marketing messages are boring, similar to all other messages, and ineffective. Most medical marketing doesn’t address the needs and wants of the target market but instead lists platitudes that don’t work to attract patients. Providing the practice logo and a laundry list of the diseases and conditions that are treated and the procedures that are performed is ineffective. We call this “me too” marketing that is likely the same as all the other practices in the community. So why are you wasting your precious time and dollars?

We recommend that you develop a unique service proposition (USP). What is it that makes you different and special and that distinguishes you from others who also are trying to attract the same kind of patients that you are reaching for? Let’s look at the example of water—one of the most abundant commodities on earth. In contrast to many areas of the world, in our country, most tap water is free and safe to drink, yet millions of Americans are paying $1.69 or more for a liter of name-brand bottled water such as Evian, Fiji, or Smart Water. The price of bottled water is 20% more than the same volume of Budweiser beer, 40% more than the same volume of milk, and more than three times the cost of gasoline! Now that’s the power of your USP: motivating people to pay more for water than what is available for free at the tap. What is the USP that will make you the Evian of healthcare?

Most of the choices we make—from the coffee shop we frequent for our jolt of java to the company that provides the medical supplies for our medical office—are based on a USP. Doctors may not even be aware of it, because subliminal suggestions, social media, and word-of-mouth marketing can be as contagious as a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign.

A medical practice is a business, and, in order to thrive, a practice needs brand recognition. In fact, if a practice doesn’t take the time to build a unique brand, patients will seek care elsewhere and may form opinions of the doctors and the practice that may not be what the doctors or the practice were hoping for. Perhaps the practice has had the unfortunate situation of just one negative online review giving the practice a one-star rating, or the practice may have a negative label or bad reputation that can’t be erased or prevented, such as long wait times, unfriendly front desk, and inability to get through by phone because of the phone tree. As in other businesses, the most successful hospitals and practices usually have a strong USP that clearly differentiates them from all others that provide similar services.

We recommend that you identify your USP and craft your message to your target market, emphasizing what makes your practice special and different. The goal of your USP is to answer the question, “Why would a potential patient prefer to become a patient in your practice rather than a similar practice in the area?” Most patients find out about your USP after they have become part of your practice. What we want to emphasize is that your USP is to be used to attract patients before they have entered your practice.

Third Component of Phase 1: Reaching Potential Patients Using Social Media

John Wanamaker, a media mogul, once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising [practice promotion] is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” That comment was made over 100 years ago, when tracking of marketing efforts was in its infancy. Today, we have readily available technology to quickly, inexpensively, and easily track our marketing effectiveness.

This usually cannot be accomplished in-house, especially in small to medium-sized practices that don’t have a marketing expert on board. To determine the success of your marketing using website and social media analytics, you probably will need to hire an expert who specializes in medical marketing and is familiar with your target market and the media that you use to reach that market, whether that is print advertising, direct mail, Internet, or social media. If you are going to be successful in marketing and promoting your practice, you will want to get a return on your marketing expenditures.

Let us give you an example of measuring the return on your marketing investment. You consider a direct mail campaign and send out 100 letters. The cost of printing and mailing your 100 letters to potential patients is $300. Your response to those 100 letters was 10 potential patients—a 10% response rate. From the 10 who responded, only two called for an appointment—a 20% closure rate. Carrying out the calculation a little further, you acquired two new patients at a cost of $300, or $150 for each new patient from the marketing effort. If each new patient had medical services of $200, you made $50 for each new patient. If you are in primary care and the patient stays with you for ten or more years, the return on your investment is going to be huge, especially if the patient has a good experience and tells others about you and your practice.

Our take-home message is: rather than just getting your name out there, you’ll do much better by concentrating on getting the names of potential patients in here, or in your practice.

Bottom Line: A successful marketing campaign before the patient enters the practice is based on three components:

1. Identifying the target market you are trying to reach;

2. Crafting the marketing message that will reach your target market; and

3. Choosing the right media vehicle to reach your target market.