Marketing Your Practice Like a Professional

Marketing is the perfect blend of art and science. It’s an art because we create beautiful infographics, well-crafted content, and catchy titles with beautiful CTA (call to action) buttons. It’s a science because of all the data that we can collect about people’s actions, when they read the well-crafted content, or click on the beautiful CTA button.

The question on every business owners mind is, how do you make your marketing strategy unique and successful? It’s not the easiest question to answer, often times you have to try, fail, try, succeed, try, fail and try, try, try. It’s all a beautiful balancing act. You have to take risks and be innovative.

Let’s chat about five actions that can help you go from doctor to business owner to marketing master:

Be Original – It should go without saying that it’s important to keep an eye on what your competition is doing with their marketing strategy. But I want to emphasize how important it is to define your practices unique, individualistic voice and create marketing content that is all you, 100%. Don’t try to follow what the industry’s standards are. You’re allowed to break out in song and capture it for a Facebook Live video. You could also decide to donate money to a Kangaroo farm in Australia because that’s a cause you care about. Whatever it is you do to gain marketing traction, be authentically you.

Find Your Audience – It’s vital that you go where your audience is rather than waiting for them to come to you. If you know that you’re looking to increase elementary aged patients, I recommend sponsoring a youth soccer team. Your logo can be seen on every player’s jersey for the parents to see. If you do the math, a team on average has 12 people, times 2 teams that’s 24 players, who have mostly two parents, then you’re looking at 48 people and those people have friends. Anyways, the math problem is beside the point, the point is to find your audience and show them why you’re the best doctor!

Be Exceptional –  A solid marketing strategy starts with a good storyteller. We’ve been telling stories for centuries; from cave drawings, to radio, to books, to the internet! The one consistency is that we’re still trying to tell our story. You’re unique, use your experience and your story to help market your practice. Talk about that year you traveled abroad in Africa, talk about your family, or share how you won first place in a unicycle race when you were 12! Whatever it is, it’s part of your story, it’s part of your practice, it should be part of your marketing.

Give, Give, Give – There is one thing in the digital marketing realm that is key: you must give, give, give before you ever ask for something. Even though your ask is small, as small as asking a patient to fill out this form with their name and number, you have to provide them with value to get them to 1) trust you and 2) want to fill out that form. So you may be thinking, how does one provide value in their marketing content?  That is what we’ve been talking about throughout this blog; know your audience and be unique. You’re the expert in your industry, people don’t understand what a filling is, they don’t get why they have to come in every six months for a cleaning, or why you have to take x-rays. I mean really, what is a root canal? If you write a blog about a root canal, a potential patient may be more inclined to learn about the process and surgery if they have resources to access. Always give as much content and information as you can before asking for them for something!

Measure and Improve – In digital marketing, you get to consistently measure your marketing campaigns. You then take that data and find ways to improve what you did. Maybe that Facebook Live where you broke out in song didn’t get any views. Now you know that next time you should change up the content. Or if donating to the Kangaroo farm got you tons of likes, maybe now you decide to pass out stuffed kangaroos to all your patients. All of a sudden all the youth soccer players are coming in for free Kangaroos. Congratulations, you just created a successful marketing campaign!

All in all, marketing is an art form that you have to beautifully craft and analyze. You don’t always get it right—but you can measure it and improve on it. Here at Sesame, we’re always trying to find ways to help you and your practices be more efficient. I hope this blog gave you some insight on how to be a better storyteller, they may seem basic, but when implemented right, it’s a game changer. I mean seriously, who wouldn’t want a free stuffed Kangaroo?

— Alexis Mallos, Senior Marketing Manager, Sesame Communications