Best Practices For Marketing Your Private Healthcare Practice.

So, you’ve decided that after plenty of questions and soul searching, you’re planning on opening a private healthcare practice.

Great!

It’s a wonderful feeling to cast off the shackles of a corporate healthcare job and strike out on your own.

But there’s more to private practice than just practicing medicine.

You’re not just a healthcare provider anymore – you’re a business owner.

So you’ll need to understand all the elements of running a business.

That includes everything from the soft skills you’ll need to understanding digital marketing for private practices.

The latter is what we’ll take a look at today.

Tempted To DIY Your Digital Marketing? Don’t

When you first start your private healthcare practice, you’ll find there are a lot of expenses.

Some of them you can’t avoid – insurance, staff, and your actual practice space are just three examples.

As a result, you might be tempted to cut costs where you can, and DIY the things you feel you can do.

And hey, you’ve seen all those ads on YouTube telling you how easy it is to build your own website.

And setting up social media accounts is free too.

So why would you pay when you can do it yourself?

The truth is that digital marketing is a highly complex and specialized industry.

Folks dedicate their professional lives to mastering each element of the process – website design, search engine optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, etc.

Could you master these things to the same level they have?

Sure you can.

But you’ve already mastered your domain – healthcare.

Your time and energy are better spent doing what you already excel at.

Avoid The Temptation Of DIY Tutorial Programs

Okay, you think, you have a point – there’s more to this than I realize, and I shouldn’t try to figure it out myself.

But you still want to cut costs, so instead of hiring somebody, you buy a course online promising to teach you how to do everything yourself.

This still isn’t a good idea.

Why?

Because folks who build courses have a vested interest in telling you everything you want to hear in order to – what else? – sell more courses.

That’s not to say they’re all bogus, of course.

But unless you’ve spent enough time with the subject matter to consider yourself highly competent, how will you be able to separate the hucksters from the folks who legitimately want to help?

And besides, the goal of your marketing strategy is to get more patient referrals to your practice.

But if you’re spending time learning how to execute your marketing strategy, and then executing it, you’re limiting the amount of time you have to do what actually makes you money.

Simply put, you might save a few bucks today, but it’ll cost you in the long run.

How To Know Which Company To Hire?

Now that said, at this point you might have a question.

If you ought to leave your marketing to the experts, and you don’t have the knowledge you need to decide whether you’re buying a good course, how do you have the knowledge you need to hire the right marketing company?

Good point.

Consider the following five points.

1. Know What You Need, And Recognize That You Can’t Do It All

Website development, SEO, Facebook ads, Google Ads, Instagram ads, healthcare blogging, email marketing, patient reviews, Myspace ads – the list goes on and on.

There’s a lot you can do when it comes to marketing your practice online.

But while you can do anything, unless you have an enormous budget behind you, you can’t do everything.

At least, not well.

Spend some time getting to know the types of strategies that work well for a business like yours.

Speak to some of your peers to find out what they’ve been successful at.

With the average small business budget, you can generally only afford to do one of these really well.

So instead of spreading your budget thin, doing a little bit of everything and seeing no success, focus on what works.

2. Know Your Goals, And How To Measure Them

Being a business owner means having goals.

You’re probably used to that – as someone who made it through schooling, you’re a naturally goal oriented person.

The important thing, however, is to stay focused on what your goals are and what you can do to meet them.

Many marketers will focus heavily on things like click through rates, time on page, ad dollars spent vs. conversions, etc.

These aren’t a waste of time, but at the end of the day clicks won’t pay the bills – new patients will.

So if you find someone who focuses far too much on technical details at the expense of what really matters, you might want to keep looking.

3. Find Someone Who’s Worked On Similar Projects

Your business is unique, but at the same time, it’s not.

As a healthcare provider, you have a unique approach that none of your peers can touch.

But at the same time, when it comes to marketing, similar strategies ought to work for similar businesses.

But when we talk about similar projects, we’re not just referring to projects that are exactly the same as your business, but a similar style.

After all, if you strip away the visuals and the written words, the strategy used to grow a medical doctor’s private practice might not be too different than that used to grow a physical therapist’s practice, or a chiropractor’s, or even a lawyer’s.

As a private healthcare provider, you’re a locally based, service oriented business.

Finding a marketing company with experience in that area is a must.

4. Check Their Reviews And References

Of course, anyone can gather fake reviews on a business.

But what if you reach out to the people who left those reviews?

That’s where you can get some real, honest feedback.

This one is pretty simple – ask for references, and follow up with them.

5. Go For The Best Value, Not The Lowest Price

And now we come full circle – the old price vs. value debate.

Yes, you’re looking to save money.

You’ve spent a lot of money to start your private practice already, and you’d like to cut costs wherever possible.

But just looking at the price won’t do it.

You can’t compare marketing companies based only on the price of their service.

You have to consider the actual value you’ll be getting out of it.

Good digital marketing isn’t cheap, but it delivers results.

That doesn’t mean you need to go for the most expensive option out there either – often it’s somewhere in the middle where you’ll find the best results.

Cheap digital marketing, on the other hand, usually looks cheap and will make you look like a cheap healthcare provider.

Contact Symbiosis To Start Your Own Private Practice Today

If you’re looking to start your own private healthcare practice, there’s a lot to consider.

On top of general healthcare practice management, Symbiosis offers comprehensive digital marketing plans customized to your business.

We can guide you early in your private practice to ensure you avoid the common hurdles many healthcare providers run into.

We can also be helpful at the end of your career when you’re thinking about winding down in your retirement years .

Contact us today to find out more.

Contact Symbiosis, and take your first step toward starting your own private practice today.