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Can Doctors & Dentists Advertise in USA?

Can Doctors & Dentists Advertise in USA? Answer is YES.

However, doctors and dentists cannot advertise if it is misleading & aggressive and without factual and accurate information per AMA.

Most Doctors Ask Us: Do I Need to Advertise? The Quick Answer is Yes, if You Want to Compete Online With Your Competitors.

As a practice manager, you have to focus on 

1. Offline traditional advertising and 

2. Internet online advertising. 

As majority of the patients search for medical services online, healthcare advertising for doctors using the internet is on the rise.  We highly recommend online advertising for 99 percent of healthcare medical practices.   Our data shows consistent increase in patient count and overall business improvement. In some cases we have to stop online advertising for our customers (physicians & medical practice) reason : they could not handle the volume of new patients.

What Percentage of Doctors Benefit From Online Advertising?

Our data shows that proper advertising produces more patients for 99 percentage of the clinics/doctors.  However setting up and managing Google, Facebook, Instagram ads is not a simple task.  Just one or two mistakes can waste your budget.  Our data shows that over 73% of the campaigns have issues, they have incorrect settings, wrong targeting,  not enough branded images (for display based campaigns), or improper negative keywords or no negative keywords.  List goes on and on. We have seen disasters, but we have also seen good campaigns.  In summary, online advertising for doctors, works – question is how efficient is the campaign? and is it optimized?

Physician and Dental Marketing for Healthcare Practices Can Be

1. Offline Traditional Marketing

2. Internet or Digital Marketing

We highly recommend digital marketing for 99 percent of healthcare practices.  Both of these approaches have merits and limitations, costs and ROI (Return On Investment) is not the same. Online advertising is a big part of digital marketing. It can be the most expensive part of your overall online marketing plan. The actual cost of advertising is always extra, with any service. Some clinics/doctors are very aggressive and spend $1000 per day (or more) and some spend $1000 a month on advertising. We also have few clinics/doctors who do not spend any money on advertising.  Our data shows that proper advertising produces more patients for 99 percentage of the clinics/doctors.  

13 Examples of offline advertising for physicians and dentists:

1. Newspapers (see list of top newspapers in USA)
2. Yellow pages (see list of  Yellow pages in USA)
3. Billboards : Out-of-home advertising – Out-of-home (OOH) advertising or outdoor advertising, also known as out-of-home media or outdoor media, is advertising that reaches the patients while they are outside their homes.3. Referrals from peers and other entities like hospitals. 
4. Networking with other physicians – This has been traditional way to expand. For many specialties, this still works. Building a nice referral network of providers who do not compete with you, will always benefit you. 
5. Printed flyers – This has worked for physicians since late 1800’s. For example for a 5000 print run, 8.5 inch by 11 inch full color both sides, tri-folded on 100 lb gloss paper will cost you approx $492.48. Then delivery cost is extra.  For example to mail this to 5000 residents close to your practice will be extra cost. Some techniques used for delivery are direct-mail, packaging inserts, point-of-sale display, leave behinds and sales helpers.

6. Business cards & event marketing – This approach has been very successful for physicians who offer a complex service. For example a medical practice that offers medical weight loss program. The practice may decide to offer a 2 step process.  In the step 1, a free seminar is offered and promoted. And in steps 2 the attending patients are “sold” the package.  Consider costs below:  in this example  you print 1000 flyers and distribute them to many places.  Design setup $500, printing $172, distribution $500. Total costs $1172.  

 7. Indirect messaging / co-branding – Using this strategy, some physicians have seen very good results. For example, the manufacturer of CoolSculpting  offered you a co-branding campaign. They pay a part of the marketing costs and you pay a part.  The end result is that both parties benefit.

8. TV Ads – These ads work.  Digital Ads for specific medical procedures are on the rise.  However cost can be much higher that other mediums. Ultimately, the ROI from each medium determines the value.
9. Radio Ads –  Physicians who use radio advertising to promote services over the radio, typically in 30 or 60 second spots. Radio can be more expensive than some newer advertising methods, but it is a very strong medium, reaching 93% of American adults weekly according to Nielsen data. With an adequate marketing budget, you can use radio to work for your medical practice. Radio advertising costs can range from $2000 to $5,000 per week depending on your location. You will also need to factor in the cost of producing the commercial, including copywriting, voice talent, and audio / visual editing, which is additional cost.
10. Magazines – Marketing and advertising in magazines has been effective to create awareness. 
11. Car Wraps – Cost of full wrap is between $2,500 and $5,000. With proper messaging and exposure, compared to other outdoor advertising, your vinyl car wrap pays for itself within the first few months on the road! However this type of marketing is not for every medical practice.
12. Local movie theaters – This has been effective for many providers. However it is difficult to measure the net impact. Local movie  theaters marketing costs $1000 to $4,000 per month depending on your location. 
13. Mail drops – Still the easiest way to be placed in your local patient’s mail boxes, marketing costs $500 to $1,000 per mail drop per 10,000 residents, depending on your location.