Dr. Rothstein of North American Spine & patient Lyle R. being interviewed on the nationally televised Fox & Friends morning show this week.

This is a spine practice that is doing all the right things when it comes to medical marketing. To learn more about medical marketing strategies that work, get my FREE REPORT HERE.

Through a comprehensive medical and patient marketing strategy, North American Spine, based in Dallas, Texas has helped bring their proprietary AccuraScope procedure to thousands of patients across the United States, Canada, and patients of many other countries.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post entitled: What Are You Selling Your Patients…talking about providing the best”patient experience” possible.  After talking to a friend of mine this past week, it reminded me that I need to add another important comment about that.

My friend Matt, has some back injuries and had called me knowing one of my clients, NorthAmericanSpine.com has pioneered an incredible procedure that might be able to help him.  When we talked, I gave him some information, and also suggested he call some other surgeons to find out about other procedures  to ultimately determine the best possible solution for him. 

At our house every Halloween, it never fails.  We literally have a line of kids from the front door all the way out to the sidewalk waiting for their “Trick or Treat”.  It’s an absolute blast and a fun holiday when you have twin 7 year old girls.

If you see it , it really is amazing, however it’s not very different at several other houses in our neighborhood.  We happen to live in a neighborhood with a lot of kids and also get bombarded with the kids from the surrounding neighborhoods, so there’s no special reason the kids line up at our house instead of some of the others.  Yet,  there are many other houses that hardly get any trick or treaters.

As I said, there’s no special reason, but there is a reason nonetheless.  The reason is this:

We let it be known, that we are open for business!  We have the house lights on, inside and out, we have decorations in the yard, and we sit on the front porch with big buckets of candy.

You’re probably saying to yourself, “This sounds fun and all, but what does this have to do with getting patients to my practice”???  The answer:  EVERYTHING.

As a practice owner / business owner, you get tunnel vision.  You get complacent after time, even if you’re not satisfied with your practice.  In fact just today, I met with the executive of a group that manages over 450 physicians in all specialties, but mostly primary care.

I asked him, what are you doing right now to drive patients through the door.  His answer was interesting.  He said, “We don’t have to do anything right now.  It’s the peak of the flu season and our practices are overloaded with patients.  However, the Summer months were pretty slow”.  He continued to talk about the seasonal fluctuation of patients, which also means what to the doctor?

Fluctuating patient volume equals fluctuating income.

So here’s a simple strategy that, when done properly, will keep your patient flow steady week in and week out, having the same result on your income.

Targeted Direct Mail.

When done properly, a strategic and ongoing direct mail campaign will consistently drive new patients into your practice week in and week out.  It is one of the cheapest, and easiest forms of media to use that can generate fantastic results.  It’s an extremely effective way to let targeted patients know that you’re open for business – that your lights are on.  Most practices overlook this strategy, or execute it without proper planning.  Your practice is just like any other business.  If your “customers” don’t know you’re there, they won’t be coming to your practice.

Now on the contrary, if a direct mail campaign is done improperly, with no plan or strategy in place, the incorrect message, improper systems to handle and track the calls, you’ll get zilcho.

If you’ve not yet received my report on how to use this strategy and many others to propel your practice, click here to get the FREE REPORT: How To Avoid The Practice Death Sentence.

Until next time,

Adam

Are you chasing referrals or are they coming to you?

One of the key things that will prevent you from going to the next level in your practice is not having an automatic referral generation system in place.

My clients range from relatively new practices to well-established practices, and this piece is crucial for both.  For the young practice, it’s absolutely critical for survival & is simply not an option.

For the established practice, it’s essential in order for you to take your practice to the next level, and to protect your patients from the increasing competition.

One of my clients has been in practice for 18 years, and has a huge referral base.  He’s a great doctor, yes, but let’s face it.  Anyone in practice for that long, is going to build up some referring relationships over time by default.

However, even with him, we found quickly that many of the doctors referring to him sent many referrals to his competition because they were simply unaware that he offered the same specific service as his competition.

Having a well designed, tested referral generation system in place eliminates this problem as well as many others you might not ever think of.

You’d probably be surprised how many patients & cases you might be losing because your practice is missing this system.

To find the cure for this problem, GET MY FREE REPORT HERE.

Until next time,

The video below is an interview of an OB-GYN in New York who’s practice is being eaten alive by the cost of malpractice insurance.  There’s no doubt this is a sensitive subject for doctors across the country, but this post isn’t really to talk about how to lower malpractice costs.

It’s to bring up the point that in your practice, it’s more important than ever to master the things you can control to make up for rising insurance costs, and decreasing reimbursement.

Practicing “good” medicine, or being a “good” doctor is no longer enough to make a living. You must be an expert at constantly generating new patients, building an automatic referral machine, and knowing how to keep the patients you already have. If you don’t have these 3 key pieces in place in your practice, there’s no telling how many patients your missing out on, or losing every month.

To get my FREE REPORT that tells you 6 Things You Can Do Now To Have Massive Success In Your Practice, CLICK HERE.

Until next time,

Adam

Most of the practices I work with were doing very little marketing before they met me.  However, every now and then I come across a practice that’s spending a lot of time attempting overly complicated marketing tasks, or trying to be clever.

Every now & then this works, but most of the time it backfires, especially if not part of a well-conceived overall strategy.

Here’s a prime example of when trying to be clever or overcomplicating things just doesn’t work:

Most people enjoy not only watching the super bowl each year, but also can’t wait to see all of the entertaining commericals during the game. Big companies spend millions with the advertising agencies, and they put together all sorts of funny, clever & entertaining commercials.

What’s interesting is most people the next day may remember what was funny about the commercial, however rarely can they remember what the product was that was being sold on the commercial!

Here’s a test for you.  The day after the next super bowl, you’ll probably be able to remember some of the funnier commercials, but the test is this: See if you can remember the company the commercial was supposed to be promoting.  Most people can only remember what was funny or clever, but can’t remember what the commercial was for.  Now that you’ve been made aware, you’ll probably be more apt to remember, however the masses can’t.

So first start with the basics in your marketing efforts.  First focus on matching your message to your market, and make sure you marketing piece includes all of the key elements to maximize response, which I’ll talk about next time.

Adam

P.S.  If you haven’t received my FREE REPORT yet, CLICK HERE TO GET IT NOW.

As you perfect the systems in your practice, and your practice gets busier and busier, this it’s easy for patients to start to feel like a “number”.

The last thing you want your patient to feel is like they’re showing up to a public walk-in facility that doesn’t care squat about the patients in the waiting room.  You know – the ones that basically feel like the emergency room waiting area at a poorly run county hospital.

It’s a given that you have to provide your patients with a consistent message or better yet, patient experience that starts from first contact, all the way through the time they walk out the door after an office visit, procedure or surgery.

But how can you take it a step further?

If you have a busy practice, the reality is, most patients only get a little face time with you, so it’s imperative your systems, processes and staff can help to personalize the service for your patients.

So what does it mean to humanize your practice?

The whole key here is building the relationship & connection with your patients.  They don’t want to be another number waiting in line at the meat market.

3 Ways To Humanize Your Practice:

1. Create A Blog For Your Practice: More and more practices are seeing the benefit of blogging, but many are still missing the boat because they just don’t know what to write about, let alone, find the time to do it.  The purpose of your medical practice blog should be to show the personality of your practice, not overeducate.  Showcase a staff member each month, highlight a patient success story, talk about any funny things that have happened to you.  This should be 80% of your content, with the remaining 20% info about your practice, procedures you do, any promotions you’re offering that month.

2. Monthly Email Newsletter: The strategy is the same here as the blog – you’re just compiling more information into one monthly email newsletter.  This is easy to do, essentially free, and most importantly helps to remind your patients that you are their doctor!

3. Monthly Snail Mail Newsletter: This is the most overlooked strategy, yet one of the most powerful strategies you can use in your practice; not only to keep the existing patients you have happy, but to also generate tons of new patients.  Why?  Again, the same concept of the 2 strategies above, but better.  When your patients see you’ve taken the time to print a great looking newsletter each month, with good content they enjoy receiving, it is one of the best ways for them to remain connected to you.  Which creates the personal connection with your practice.

Furthermore, the benefit to you is, your patients stay, and just as important, they will refer many, many new patients to your practice.  Initiate all 3 of these strategies consistently, and you’ll be well on your way to joining the “special forces” of the most successful practices in the country.

By the way, this is something your practice manager could easily handle for you each month without you ever having to lift a finger.

If you want to learn how you can have all of this done for you, giving you practice much more leverage, CLICK HERE to get my FREE REPORT: How To Avoid The Practice Death Sentence.

Until next time,

Adam

With a crazy week in politics – mainly the Massachusetts senate race, it appears doctors are a bit antsy that Congress won’t do anything to prevent the massive Medicare fee cut coming in March (see the article here at Beckers ASC Review).

So with that big negative hanging out there as a possibility, how do you plan to cope with it in your practice?  Those with a large mix of Medicare patients obviously have the most to worry about, but this type of legislation at some point will affect most practices.  So there’s no better time to make sure you’re doing all you can to solidify the future of your practice, which means first starting with the patients you already have.

Here are 3 simple things you can do now to combat this legislation, and help fortify yourself against the laws trying to take away your livelihood.

1.  Start An Ongoing Patient Follow Up Campaign

The easiest way to do this is through an email campaign.  The goal with this is to give consistent updates to your patients about your practice and what you offer.  It also encourages ‘Top Of Mind Awareness”, which makes sure when it’s time they’re coming back instead of going to your competition.

2.  Mail A Monthly Newsletter To ALL Patients

If you’re not already using my Done For You, High Performance Patient Attraction Newsletter™(or a good monthly patient newsletter) you’re missing the boat, and same goes for my High Performance Automatic Referral System™ (you can sign up at www.DoctorMarketingSuccess.com).  These are publications your patients & referral sources will enjoy receiving, and it constantly keeps them up to date on your practice, and again, Top Of Mind Awareness.

3.  Holiday Communication With Your Patients

The major holidays can be taken care of in you Newsletter, but why not mail out a couple of Holiday greetings each year on holidays your competition isn’t acknowledging.  For instance Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day.  I guarantee your competition is not doing this—and it’s another easy & cheap way to promote your practice, while keeping your patients “in the family”.

Taking steps to cement the existing patient relationships you already have is one of the most important things you can do for the future of your practice.  You’ll be amazed at how just these 3 simple actions will bring in hoards of new patients if properly executed.

If you’ve not read my FREE REPORT, that goes into extensive detail on how to do this in your practice, get it HERE RIGHT NOW.

Until next time,

Adam

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This is something I’ve been talking about for awhile, and in detail in my free report: How To Avoid The Practice Death Sentence, and the latest report by Health Affairs shows that healthcare spending in 2008 rose at the slowest pace in 28 years (see the full article HERE in Becker’s ASC Review).

So, as a physician, what to do?

Well, many will cut back on their practice “expenses” like marketing to compensate for the decrease in revenue.  Which, of course, directly correlates to a decrease in income.  Those of you that do what I teach, will see the massive opportunity here, and jump at the chance to drive the stake through the heart of your competition!

I obviously mean no harm here to any practice, and wish all of them success.  The reality is, that your practice is just like any other business, so if your competition takes a misstep that you’re aware of, it’s your job as a business owner to take advantage of that to grow your practice now, secure your future (along with your employees) and maximize everything that you can while you can.

If patients are spending less on healthcare, it’s your job to work harder to get a message to, and build an ongoing relationship with the patients that will continue to spend money on healthcare.  Not only do you have the opportunity to grow your practice during the down economy, but to set yourself up to be miles ahead of your competition when (and if) the economy makes doing business “easy” again.

To learn more about implementing tried and true marketing strategies for your practice, without lifting a finger,  CLICK HERE to read my free report: How To Avoid The Practice Death Sentence.

Until next time,

Adam

Talking with an orthopedic client today, he told me about a crazy, but all too common conversation he had recently with another orthopedic surgeon.

His colleague was telling him how their group practice was just getting killed in this “recession”. He went on to say that they were cutting back on marketing expenses and other “costs” in their practice so they could deal with their business dropping off.

That may seem like the intuitive thing to do when things get tough, bit in fact it’s the absolute worst thing you can do.

The first and biggest mistake this doctor is making is looking at marketing as a cost.

On the contrary, it’s actually the biggest and most important INVESTMENT you MUST make in your practice now and in the future of your practice.

It’s even more important in a down economy.

My client & I went on to talk about how this was a good thing for him. See, he clearly understands the immense value that the right marketing strategy that is properly engineered brimgs to his practice.

To keep it simple, he doesn’t look at spending $3,000 this month on a targeted marketing campaign as an expense.

He knows that $3,000 investment will bring him between $10,000 & $30,000 in revenue.

Try getting that return anywhere else.

To get my FREE REPORT that tells you how you can do this in your practice, now, go to www.DoctorMarketingSuccess.com

Until next time,

Adam

All too often we as business owners have tunnel vision, and just assume we know what our customers or patients “want”.  It may come as a big surprise, but your patients aren’t really coming to you for good quality medical care.  In fact, most consumers really aren’t “buying” the physical product or the defined service at all.

I know what you’re thinking…”Of course my patients come to me for the best care!”  Well, Yes.  But, really, No.

One of the most important things to remember about your customer is this:  You Are Not Your Customer.

Your patients do want good quality medical care, but that’s mostly secondary.  What they really want is a great experience when they visit your practice.  An experience that provides them assurances that they’re being taken care of as a priority patient, and most importantly, that they have peace of mind regarding the hands their medical care is in, yours.  This is done by creating a great “Patient Experience”.

When your patient walks out the door, they should feel that they were the only patient that was being seen in your practice today.  If you’ve ever stayed at a Four Seasons Resort Hotel, then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.  When you check in, everyone addresses you by name, they don’t miss a beat getting your bags to the room & making sure all of your needs are anticipated.  They even memorize the guests names and address you by name the entire duration of your stay.

So the lesson here is this:  As a customer at the Four Seasons, I’m not really just looking for a very nice, clean hotel, though that is part of what I want.  What really keeps me coming back, is their ability to cater to what I really want, which is the customer experience.  I know I’m always going to be treated, and taken care of much better than most other places I would stay.

The same goes for your patients.  They don’t just want good quality medical care.  They want to have a fantastic patient experience in addition to the end product of the medical care.  If you engineer your practice to provide this, you can effectively put a virtual corral around your patients and they will never go anywhere else.  They’ll also tell tons of people about their experience, bringing you new patients by the droves.

If you can effectively do this in your practice by providing the ultimate patient experience, you can kiss your competition goodbye, no matter what they economy is doing, and no matter how long they’ve been in practice.

To learn more about how to engineer your practice, providing the best patient experience,  CLICK HERE FOR MY FREE REPORT.

Until next time,

Adam

Below is the link to an article in the Wall Street Journal discussing this issue.  I think there are some very interesting points to consider…

Here’s the link:

Does America Spend Enough On Healthcare?

One of the biggest sins in practice marketing is not being able to answer yes to the following question:

Is There Financial Accountability For ALL Of The Marketing In Your Practice?

Following are 3 of my top rules to make sure your answer to this question is a resounding, “Yes!”:

Rule #1: Don’t Ever Spend Without A Plan

The majority of practices and businesses I’ve worked with have virtually NO marketing plan or strategy in place before implementing my systems.  For the most part, everything they’re doing is scatter shot – some of the strategies getting results, some getting none.  What’s interesting about this is that most of the time, practices without a sound strategy in place spend MUCH MORE on marketing and advertising, primarily because what they’re doing is not generating results.  You must have a purposeful plan in place.

Rule #2:  Don’t Do It If You Can’t Track It

If you’re considering spending money on something you really can’t track, then you don’t do it.  Period.  If you can’t track it, you’ll never know if it works so there is no point in spending any marketing dollars on it whatsoever.  In reality, there really aren’t many things that can’t be tracked, it’s that most practices just don’t do it.

I recently worked with a plastic surgeon who had paid a lot of money to an advertising firm to have a commercial created for his practice which played on a big screen at a busy health club.  Other than the fact that the commercial did not have a specific marketing message, any potential calls from this ad were not being tracked. He had no tracking identifier for the ad, and his front office staff didn’t know how to gather this information from potential new patient calls generated from the ad.  The Result?  NONE (except money down the drains).  Which leads me to…

Rule #3:  Track It!

Once you’ve spent hours and hours and a bunch of money on a marketing strategy, if you don’t religiously track it, you’ve wasted TONS of time, and TONS of money for nothing.  Once you’ve created a message to your target patient, this is the most critical aspect of anything else you do.  You absolutely must know where every call comes from, have a system in place to compile the information, so you can ultimately determine the return (or not) on your invested marketing dollars.

Tip:  All of your tracking mechanisms must be in place BEFORE you initiate the marketing campaign.

Purposefully tracking all of your marketing efforts will allow you to follow your plan, focus on what’s working, and eliminating the waste.

To find out how to implement useful, proven strategies that get results, CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR MY DOCTORMARKETINGSUCCESS.COM NEWSLETTER.

Until next time,

Adam

Vance Wells, Executive Vice President of Marketing for NorthAmericanSpine.com, a national healthcare company providing the most innovative surgery for relief of back pain. Vance talks about his experience with Adam’s High Performance Medical Marketing Strategies.

As a practitioner you are most likely deeply immersed in your day to day activities of seeing patients, performing surgery & making rounds. You’ve endured years of training to provide your patients with the best care possible as well as a great patient experience, however the patient’s experience with your practice starts LONG before they ever set foot in your door.  The patient has to go through several steps just to get to the exam room, and if just one of those steps is broken, you may lose a patient.  Dan Kennedy calls it “broken bridges” within a business, in your case, your practice.

So the questions you need to ask yourself are:

What part (or parts) of my practice that affect my patient may be broken?

How do I even figure that out?

And furthermore, how do I solve the problem?

Click here to view the embedded video.