Marketing—Getting Specific

In order to market your practice, you will need to create a specific message. What do you do for your patients? What specific services do you provide? How do people benefit by being your patients? Your message goes beyond office hours and the fact that you can write prescriptions. What can you say to bring them in? You want to emphasize that NPs really listen to their patients in addition to educating, assisting, diagnosing, and treating them. You help patients learn how to help themselves, which can be empowering. You may want to develop a slogan or tagline that can be expanded upon in your written materials and on your website.

Marketing Plan
Effective marketing requires a plan. In addition to an executive summary, you will need an analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; a budget; and a forecast. Identify your goals and objectives. What do you want to get from a marketing campaign? Who is your ideal patient? Determine your marketing budget. Decide on a strategy and who is going to implement it. Then, track your results and return on investment. Once you have followed the steps for creating a marketing plan, repeat the process to refine it. The plan needs to be laid out very clearly so that others can carry it out.

Tracking how patients hear about your practice can help you evaluate your marketing strategy. If you have an ad in the yellow pages, what percentage of new patients do you want to come from that ad? Do you send out a newsletter? How many patients do you want to call and schedule a followup visit in response to something in it? How many additional patients need to attend a special diabetic screening for it to be considered a success?

Make it easier for other people who are responsible for carrying out specific parts of the marketing plan by putting it on a calendar or spreadsheet. You can find helpful tools, such as the Google spreadsheet and Google calendar, free online. List what, how, and when a marketing activity is going to be done, plus who is assigned to do it. Make note of the estimated and actual costs, and track the results.

Linking your marketing to special events can give it focus and make it easier. There are national observances for all types of health-related topics, including nutrition, many diseases, and health promotion, among others. Check out the extensive list of national health observances at www.healthfinder.gov/nho/2011nho/2011nho.pdf.

People are often overwhelmed by the plethora of advertising messages we all receive on a daily basis. Experts estimate that between seven and nine contacts are necessary before someone actually grasps a message and acts on it. This need for continued exposure can be problematic when a marketing budget is tight. Analyze your particular situation, and decide what approach is best for your practice. Try one method at a time, and track the results to let you know what does and does not work. An unsuccessful marketing program may only need to be tweaked, not entirely abandoned. Retest a marketing approach after each change. And, always watch your bottom line.

Marketing Venues
Evaluate a number of marketing venues. Ultimately using more than one approach will allow you to reach patients in various ways.

Magazines/other publications. For magazine advertising, consider a niche publication aimed at your target group, eg, The Senior Times, parents’ magazines, or a health news magazine. What about advertising in newsletters distributed by a local pharmacy, health food store, senior center, gym, or neighborhood association? Do nearby restaurants allow local businesses to display their cards? These approaches tend to last longer than daily newspapers.

Printed materials. First, you need a good business card, which should list your website address. You may also want to consider colorful brochures that provide good information and include your picture.

Outreach. Outreach is especially useful for a primary-care practice. Let the hospital discharge planner and the staff at the nearest hospital emergency department know you are taking patients. They can give your card to patients without primary-care providers. If some providers in your area are not taking new patients, let their receptionists know you are available, and ask them to pass along your contact information. You may receive referrals from other NPs and social service agencies. If you see younger patients, you may want to talk to schools, from kindergarten to college. For a geriatrics practice, contact long-term-care and assisted-living facilities. What about contracting with big chain stores to see their employees right away in case of an injury? You might negotiate a retainer guaranteeing your availability for an immediate injury evaluation. Contact small business owners who cannot afford healthcare premiums for their employees and work out an agreement to see their employees for a specified fee.

Direct mail. Go online or check with your local Chamber of Commerce for a mailing list, and send out a notice to new residents in your area. Use zip codes to contact everyone within a 5- or 10-mile radius of your practice. Hundreds of list brokers are available to provide specialized mailing lists broken down by defined criteria, eg, families with children of a specified age, people with a certain income level, or families with two cars and living in a particular type of home. Send a postcard or, if available, a newsletter. Write a newsletter with information on current health topics, health tips, and news about your practice. Of course, you will need to do more than one mailing in order to be read. You should know that direct mail is an expensive method. In addition to the cost for the list, multiple mailings have repeated costs for printing, addressing, and mailing the card or newsletter.

Social media. You may want to think “outside the box” and use social media to reach patients. Although younger patients may locate you more easily on Facebook, for example, take care when using social media to avoid potential huge legal implications.

Promotional materials. Handouts can help patients remember you between office visits. You come to mind when they see your name on blood pressure or medication cards, the notebook where you write down instructions, hand sanitizers, key chains, and/or pens, among other promotional items.

Off-line media. What about writing a weekly or monthly wellness article for your newspaper? Have you considered being a guest on a local morning talk show or even hosting a show? Cable-access TV, which is very inexpensive (typically less than $100), is a way to reach a specific population. Here again, you have to do this repeatedly in order for it to be effective.

Online media. Your practice needs some type of web presence. This can be a website or a Facebook page. It costs nothing to list your practice in local searches on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines, and this simple process does not require a website. For Google, go to www.local.google.com, sign up for an account, and list your practice information (eg, what you do, your location, insurances accepted, and the kind of patients you see). When someone types in “urgent care” and your location, your practice will be listed. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more people are going online these days to consult provider rankings or reviews.¹ Be sure to list your practice at www. npfinder.com and/or www.npclinics.com. What about joining with other NPs to list each other’s practices on your respective websites?

Electronic newsletters. Many practitioners use email newsletters (ie, “ezines”) to communicate with patients, sending them health tips, educational articles, reminders about needed tests, and much more. These communications cannot include protected health information and are primarily designed to bring patients back for return visits. First, obtain the patient’s permission to email him/her. Once set up, electronic newsletters are very inexpensive to maintain. What about increasing your exposure by using your iPhone or Android to do videos of your practice for YouTube? Provide a health tip, and invite viewers to your practice.

Email contact. Consider using email communications to remind old patients who you are and bring them back to your practice. Although a 2003 survey found only a small percentage of patients communicated with their healthcare providers online, these patients reported that email streamlined scheduling appointments and prescription refills.² Remember that you must first get a patient’s permission to initiate one- or two-way communications to avoid violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Community events. Taking part in community events helps you become a familiar face to potential patients in your area. For example, an NP who volunteered her services for 1 day to people without insurance was joined by her collaborating physician, a medical resident, and a lab; various pharmaceutical representatives provided samples that she and the other clinicians dispensed to the uninsured.  Media coverage of this event provided a tremendous amount of free advertising for her practice. What about volunteering at schools or senior centers or having a booth at the local health fair? Check your local Chamber of Commerce for business activities.

Networking. Take advantage of community education groups and local conferences as sources of referrals for your practice. Be careful about social networking because people often want free advice. In spite of what you might have heard to the contrary, it is quite legal to display testimonials in your office and include them in marketing materials. If patients have expressed why they like to come see you, just obtain their written permission to quote them, and let them specify how they want their name used.

In Summary…
Marketing should be as automatic as providing the best possible care to all of your patients. You can only help people who know who you are, what you do, and where to find you. Careful planning is essential in order to use your marketing dollars wisely.

Assess your current situation, have a clear picture of your preferred patient population, and evaluate the various avenues available for marketing your practice.

1. The Social Life of Health Information, 2011. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Available at www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2011/PIP_Social_Life_of_Health_Info.pdf. Accessed
   8-11.
2. Internet Health Resources. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Available at www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2003/PIP_Health_Report_July_2003.pdf.pdf. Accessed 8-11.

Barbara Phillips, NP, is the founder of Nurse Practitioner Business Owner™ (www.Nurse-PractitionerBusinessOwner.com) and the creator of the NPBO™ Practice Startup System (www.NPBOStarterKit.com). Barbara’s blog can be found at www.NPBusiness.ORG. After owning Aberdeen Primary Care in Aberdeen, Washington, for 5 years, she recently transitioned to a specialty practice in pain management in Olympia, Washington.