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Marketing For Doctors Offices

Marketing For Doctors $799/mon

Patient acquisition costs can be anywhere from $8 to $27 per new patient in most of USA. New patient acquisition costs vary due to your specific medical practice discipline, local online competition, software used and online techniques embedded in your marketing strategy.

Most doctors offices and practices have a great location, a dedicated and professional medical staff, proper equipment, and many hard earned certifications and qualifications. They’ve got the tools, knowledge, and ambition to provide amazing medical care to their community.  However, they struggle to fill their calendar. The key factors that contribute to this struggle are 1) lack of understanding of modern online healthcare strategies 2) distrust and some bad experience in the past 3) lack of understanding of ROI (Return On Investment) 4) majority of the doctors think that any money spent on modern marketing is an expense as opposed to investment.  5) lack of adoption – change is difficult and specially for doctors – it is not easy for them to go to google and search for “online advertising for doctors” and get some fresh ideas.

GOLD Service is used by the top healthcare medical practices in USA and Canada.

Many doctors offices aren’t able to acquire the patients they need to keep their practice in good financial health due to a lack of an effective online advertising strategy.  Some practices have taken some of the first steps by creating a medical marketing website, but they lack the tools and strategy to drive visitors to them online. 

Marketing For Doctors

Very Effective Example of Using Visuals and Promotions

Physician Marketing for Medical 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:

1. Newspapers (see list of top newspapers in USA)
2. Yellow pages (see list of  Yellow pages in USA)
3. Billboards : Out-of-home advertisingOut-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.

Online marketing for physicians can be further divided into sub areas:

  1. Search or PPC ( Pay-Per-Click ) Marketing – Google, Yahoo and Bing are very common examples for this type of advertising. Some physicians equate this to Search Advertising. There are hundreds of variations within this category alone.
  2. SEO – Search Engine Optimization – This refers to techniques and content placed of your website so search engines like Google can find you and rank you higher for specific keywords. Consumers (your patients) use mobile devices and computers to type in phrases like “Medspa Near Me West Palm Beach FL” and search engines display relevant listings. More and more patients are speaking to devices rather than typing text. This is call Speech Based SEO.
  3. Local SEO Optimization – There are over 200 directories for medical practices. Most of them have no to marginal impact on your practice. The most important business listings are 1. Google Business Page  2.  Facebook Business Page  3. Yelp Business Page.  4. Healthgrades and few other healthcare specific directories are also important.  As a practice manager, you need to make sure that your listings are accurate and that you are posting on Google Business Page and Facebook Business Page regularly.  
  4. Speech Based SEO – New Emerging Area – As more patients are “speaking” to devices.
  5. Display Advertising – Interest Based Advertising – there are many variations.
  6. Video Advertising – Advertising on YouTube for doctors can be effective.
  7. Social Media Advertising – Interest Based & Demographic Advertising. Can be visual, textual, video based.
  8. Mobile Advertising – Based on mobile ads and user’s location.
  9. Geo-Targeted / Geo-Fenced Advertising – Used by Apps, Search, Social Media and Location Aware apps, among others.
  10. Re-Marketing – Based on a User’s Past History, Past Interests and Predicted Behaviour.
  11. Similar Competitive Interest Based Advertising 

Some physicians consider SEO (Search Engine Optimization) a part of Online Advertising.  There are dozens of other variations based on these 6 major types approaches.

6 Pillars of Healthcare Marketing for Physicians.