Medical Marketing Goals, Ideas & KPIs

Many doctors confuse ideas, goals and KPI’s. Simple guide to improve your medical practice’s marketing.

When you are thinking about improving your medical practice’s marketing, the initial thoughts, ideas or strategies are just that. They are your starting point. The real work starts after your have decided to take some concrete steps for your medical practice.

When you put together a medical marketing plan, you often set a series of goals you would like to achieve. Unfortunately, many owners and managers of medical practices often confuse these goals and objectives with medical marketing KPIs. While the two concepts are related, it is crucial to know the difference between the two or your medical marketing plan will not run as smoothly as it could. If you do not recognize the differences between medical marketing KPIs and medical marketing goals, do not fret. Confusion in these concepts is not uncommon. Once you understand the differences, you’ll have a leg up on your competitors.

What does KPI stand for?

A KPI is short for Key Performance Indicator. These are measurements that indicate you are moving towards the desired result. There could be many indications that you are reaching your goal, but instead of focusing on every single one, you are monitoring the more critical or “key” indicators. These “keys” to your performance are why it is called a Key Performance Indicator. These measurements help you track your ability to reach the goals you set in your medical marketing plan.

To use an analogy, your marketing goal is the destination, and your KPI are the landmarks you pass while you are traveling to get there. If you are traveling and realize you haven’t seen what you should have passed while getting to your destination, it’s an indication you are not on the right path. KPIs help you get your medical practice to where you want it to be.

What makes for a good KPI?

A good KPI should be something that can generate evidence that you are reaching your stated goal. This measurement should have the ability to be compared to previous measurements to demonstrate any improvements. Often, the best KPIs are numbers over a period that can be compared to numbers from the same metric in the past.

What are some good examples of medical KPIs?

• Number of patients seen in a week compared to the last several weeks
• Number of new patients seen over a month compared to that month last year
• The number of positive flu patients seen during this flu season compared to the previous year to date.
What are some examples of bad medical KPIs?

• How the front staff is feeling
• Number of strep throat tests conducted this year when it was not offered the previous year
• How often there is no parking in the parking lot in front of the medical practice

What is a medical marketing goal?

A medical market goal is an achievement you would like your medical practice to reach over some time. Generally, a medical marketing goal should have a metric assigned to it so it can be defined. An ill-defined medical marketing goal can be challenging to achieve and challenging to determine if you have met it. This can lead to frustration and some tension between an owner and medical marketing manager, often leading both to be not on the same page. Firm, defined, medical marketing goals should be the goal of any medical marketing plan.

What are some good goals and objectives for a medical practice?

1. Increase daily patient count at the urgent care center by ten patients per day in the next 12 months
2. Increase patient satisfaction by 25% at an urgent care center over the next 12 months
3. Reduce patient acquisition costs by 15% over the next six months

What are bad examples of goals and objectives for a medical practice?

1. Be the #1 foot doctor in the community in 2021
2. Expand patient count in the community
3. Increase revenue

Bad medical marketing goal with a bad KPI

If you review your goals in your medical marketing plan, you may be surprised how often you provide ill-defined medical marketing goals and fuzzy KPIs. For example, if your goal was to “increasing revenue” and your KPI was “how often there is no parking in front of your medical practice,” you will have a tough time reaching that goal definitively. Why? Let’s this break it down.

Goal – Increase Revenue: What does that mean? Increasing revenue can mean a lot of things. Let’s say your medical practice made $300,000 last year in revenue. If this year, it made $300,100, then technically, you’ve achieved that goal. If you made $300,100 last year, but double expenses to do that, then again, you’ve achieved that goal, but it was done in a way that cannot be sustained. “Increase” is not defined, and “Revenue” is not something to look at alone without also considering expenses.

KPI – How often there is no parking in the parking lot in front of the medical practice: On the surface, like increasing revenue, this might seem like a straightforward KPI. It is something you can count and assign a number to. But as a KPI, how useful is it? Just because your parking lot is full, does that mean everyone there is a patient? Are some cars, your staff? Does a contractor who comes in to paint your facility count towards this metric? Do you share your parking lot with another medical practice? Is there a massive snow pile over winter that takes up three spots until spring? How many patients are coming in per car? As you can see, this KPI quickly is not a great indicator towards a goal.

A good medical marketing goal with a good KPI

Let’s break down a good goal with a good KPI.

Goal – Increase daily patient count at the urgent care center by ten patients per day in the next 12 months: This is a great goal. You’ve set a metric you would like and during a set time. Assuming your medical practice has been open for at least 12 months, you can see if you achieve that goal by comparing the average number of patients per day to the previous 12 months. You will either make that goal or not. There is no way for you to talk yourself into being successful or unsuccessful. It is cut and dry.

KPI – Number of new patients seen over a month compared to that month last year: Again, this is a clear KPI that can help you achieve your goal. If, after the first month, your average patient per day count is the same as it was compared to that month last year, then you know that you are not getting any closer to that goal. If you make changes and in the following month you see that number improve, then you know you are on the right path.

The key to having reasonable medical marketing goals and KPIs is being able to measure and define the metrics associated with them.

Outside Factors To Consider

One mistake that some medical practice owners make is considering the validity of the data they have despite having excellent medical marketing goals and KPIs. Using the “good examples above,” let’s say after reviewing the data, an owner notices that in June after months of improvement, numbers dropped deeply and then recovered the next month. One might think that the staff or a medical marketing manager got lazy or made a critical mistake. While possible, as an owner, you should also make sure there were no external factors that are beyond the control of your practice. In this example, it would be wise to see if any issues caused this drop-in patient. For example, maybe a critical bridge that people take to visit your practice had to close for two weeks for emergency repairs. Perhaps a severe storm knocked out power to the area for a week. Maybe the tenant above your medical practice had a burst water pipe, and it took several days to clean that up. In these cases, throw out that data and consider the bigger picture with untainted information.

Medical marketing goals need to have KPIs to determine if you’ve met them or additional work needs to be done. Your goals should be as clear and measurable as your KPIs. Ask the experts at PatientGain.com to review your medical marketing goals and KPIs to see what improvements can be made!

4 Important Tactics For Online Healthcare Marketing Strategy

Focus on Patient Acquisition – This area focuses on your website, SEO, online advertising (Google, Facebook, Instagram etc), tracking of leads, secure HIPAA compliant CRM.
Patient Engagement – This area focuses on your ability to engage patients. For example, Facebook and Google posts, Texting/SMS from your website so you can capture leads. Referral strategy, monthly Email marketing, auto-follow up emails and texts. Building a fan base on social media.
Patient Revenue – This area focuses on your ability to monetize your marketing. Many doctors are doing a great job on marketing, but they are missing out on maximizing revenue per patient. Life time value of patient has 2 aspects. First initial visit and revenue generated by the first initial visit. Second part has to do with Life-Time-Value (LTV) of each patient – This could be a much bigger number and when calculating ROI – Return On Investment, should also be calculated. The second area is most overlooked by doctors.
Reputation Management – This area can be a headache or a winning differentiator for your medical practice. As you service your patients, your plan should be as every patient ( shortly after providing service ) asking them “Based on your experience with our medical practice, would you recommend us”. This is probably the most important question you can ask. This can be done 4 different ways. 1) Personally asking them – This approach is most effective, however in real life, it is simply not possible. 2) Using Texting/SMS app sending a similar question and asking if they are happy with your service and willing to recommend you. If they say “yes” then software sends them link to a review site. 3) Using Email similar strategy is implemented. 4) Using an I-Pad in the lobby, similar strategy can be implemented. However this requires some clever software for changing the IP address.

4 Important Components of a Advertising & Marketing Plan for Your Medical Practice & Clinic

Traditionally, marketing experts tell us that there are 4 key components of your Medical Marketing Plan.

The Product or Service – This will be service offerings for your medical practice. For example, if you an Urgent Care clinic, do you offer service to patients based on 12 major categories. Examples will be Onsite X-ray, DOT Physical exams, Lab-test results, Ports Physicals, Simple Fracture treatment, Travel medicine, Immunizations etc. If you are MedSpa / Esthetic based practice, you may want to define your product/service strategy based on competition and availability of your staff’s credentials. For example, if you want to offer “CoolSculpting”, you will need to make an investment in purchasing this technology and then training of your staff. So each medical service you offer has a cost associated with it, and of course there could be tangible benefits for your medical practice. So your marketing plan must have a focus on which “services” you are going to offer. And each service deserves its SWOT analysis.
The Price of the Service – In many cases, this is driven by the insurance company payouts to you. But there are certain procedures that are not covered by the insurance payments. There are additional strategies available to you here. Each patient can be divided into 3 main categories.
1. PPO or Full Insurance – These insurance plans pay fixed amount for each procedure for in-network vs out-of-network procedures.
2. Self-Pay Patients – Patient pays directly to the provider – you have leverage to provide better service than your competitors and charge more.
3. High-Deductible plans – In this case, as an example, patients typically have to pay initial $4000-$10000 out of their pockets. After ta patient has spent these amounts on deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance, then the medical insurance plan pays 100% of the costs of covered benefits. Many patients consider that first $4000-$10000 as something that have to “shop” for prices, hence you have an opportunity to apply your own marketing strategy on how to attract these patients to your practice.
The Place or Location of Service – For most parts, healthcare delivery system in USA and Canada is very local. Telemedicine can change this in the future, but for now patients typically go to a “local” provider. This is evidenced by 2000% plus increase in Google searches for “Urgent care near me” or “Sleep Apnea doctor near me” or hundreds of other variations based on mobile patients searching for services “near” a patient. So your Place or Location matters.
The Promotion(marketing) or Advertising of Service – This is one area, where you have true leverage to dominate your medical field. Your medical plan must include the promotion of your service. There are generally 2 main sub-areas for promotion of medical services:
1. Traditional Advertising & Promotions – Traditional marketing – includes newspapers, yellow pages, billboards, referrals from peers, networking with other providers and suppliers.
2. Online Advertising & Promotions – This refers to digital marketing and digital advertising to acquire more patients and retain existing patient base. This area is exhaustive. It includes, Website, SEO, Social Media, Email Marketing and many other areas.

PatientGain.com is a proven medical marketing solution, includes apps, websites, SEO, HIPAA compliance and account management.