Healthcare marketing resources for private practices.
Mastermind groups have been around for several decades, but have you ever thought of creating or joining a healthcare marketing mastermind group? A mastermind is a group that meets on a regular basis (typically monthly or quarterly) to share challenges, successes, and ask for feedback. The participants can be from the same profession or from a variety of professions. For a healthcare marketing mastermind, I’d recommend working with practitioners from various healthcare disciplines.
Healthcare marketing and Zonkies? Seriously, what’s the connection? Healthcare providers often do the same, old, tired events and activities for their healthcare marketing. Certainly there’s a place for those things…they became “standard marketing” (or “workhorses”) because they were effective or provided useful information. We don’t want to throw them out completely…but consider enhancing them with some new, fresh, and interesting healthcare marketing activities where you dare to be different! (The zonkey!)
That’s right! Think outside of the box. Pretend there is no box! Be clever. Be unique with your marketing. Stand out from the crowd of healthcare providers clamoring for the public’s attention…
We examined the concept of internal marketing for healthcare practices in a previous blog. Let’s turn our attention now to the concept of external marketing for healthcare practices. Simply stated, [external marketing] for healthcare practices is any activity or event done outside the walls of your office to promote your practice. The most effective marketing strategies utilize a combination of internal and external marketing for practice success.
Chances are, when you graduated from your healthcare education institution, you didn’t have a strong background in marketing. If you had to define internal marketing for healthcare practices could you do it? For most providers, the answer is no, yet internal marketing is critical to the success of a practice. If you’re among the majority in this case, take a deep breath. I’m going to give you an easy definition you can use when developing your marketing strategy.
Can you believe we’re halfway through the year! It’s time for a mid-year goal check so we can see how far we’ve come and how far we have to go before the end of the year. 
Earlier, we discussed setting goals . Because summer is slower for many practices, now is the ideal time to track your progress. Look at each goal. Why was it important? If you don’t have a good answer for that question, you aren’t likely to stick to those goals. Reaching a goal requires sacrifice, and if the goal isn’t compelling, you aren’t going to be motivated to work towards it.
Healthcare Marketing Mindset Series: Pace Yourself
The way in which you think about marketing your healthcare practice – what I call your healthcare marketing mindset – is critical to the success of your business. In my last blog, we explored the difference between looking at your practice marketing as an expense versus as an investment. (To briefly recap, marketing your practice is an investment in the future health and success of your business, and should be viewed as such.) In today’s second installment of the healthcare marketing mindset series, I’d like to consider attitudes about time and pace as they relate to marketing.
If you spend any amount of time speaking with healthcare professionals in private practice, it’ll quickly become clear as to their healthcare marketing mindset. In other words, what do they think about the concept of marketing their healthcare practice? I find this topic so interesting that I decided to write a series of blogs on the subject of practice marketing mindsets. This first installation will discuss the two main mental perceptions regarding the financial aspect of healthcare marketing.
As Seth Godin, marketing genius, once commented, “Everyone is not your customer.” In the solo healthcare practice realm, this can be re-stated to say that everyone is not your patient. What?!? A healthcare marketing consultant and published author is telling you not everyone is your patient? It’s true. On a superficial level, of course every single one of the billions of people on this planet aren’t your patients. Let’s look closer and use a specific example.
Are you attractive? I don’t mean to get too personal with this question, so let me clarify. Are you “attractive” to other people in the sense that you draw people to you and your healthcare practice? This isn’t a discussion of the sort of attractiveness which includes cosmetics, clothing, accessories, or physique. Instead, I want to talk about your personal ability to interest and engage people.
A couple of weeks ago I attended several sessions of the virtual Influence and Impact Summit produced by Michael Hyatt of Platform University. It was seriously one of the best online summits I’ve ever participated in. (If it happens again next year make sure you sign-up for the free event!) The speakers were insightful, the topics were impactful, and the take-aways were truly meaningful. In my last blog, I reviewed several quotes by the legendary John Maxwell. (Missed it? Check it out!) As I mentioned in that blog, I actually had two favorite sessions. And because I couldn’t pick a winner, I chose to talk about them in alphabetical order.
