Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

How To Market Or Advertise A Doctors Office?

Posted by Anonymous on 12/28/2009 at 4:21 PM ET 50 Points
I have been asked to do some marketing and advertising for my current employer. It is a small doctors office which consists of 2 nurse practioner one does mental health and one does family practice, non narco pain management, and helps with male and female sexual disfunction or function for that matter. Do you have any suggestions?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by michael on 12/28/2009 at 5:40 PM Member
    Are you considered a "specialist" for insurance billing? Do other professionals refer people to you or are you normally contacted by the patient directly.

    Referals would call for you to target other health professionals. Direct would almost require a nice yellow page ad. By "nice" I mean great and by great I don't necessarily mean big.

    Michael
  • Posted by CarolBlaha on 12/28/2009 at 5:46 PM Accepted
    I've coached several clients on this.

    1st, we targetted the docs who can give us referrals. We cold called them, door to door. I designed a brochure they could just fax over. The key to getting referrals is assuring the docs their patient will still be their patient. They are paranoid referring a patient out of office means they won't return.

    One doc was in a field where the referral would come from a hospital for follow up care after a trip to the ER or other treatments.

    2nd, we went after the patients themselves, with non-commerical seminars. We also did health fairs. The doc (this one was eyes) did exams -- she did a specialized one vs the "read the chart" typical.

    We also got one on several TV shows (the eye doc) as they were doing a series on aging.

    Docs have local meetings by speciality, if your doc can't go -- you should to promote referrals. The buzz words are to assure them, their patient will be returned to them. Your doc will dicate their report to them in a timely basis (like at the time of appt). Ask to host one of those meetings at your office --especially if the office has had a redo or some new state of art equipment to demo.

    There are a lot of places to go with this-- have fun!
  • Posted on 12/28/2009 at 5:52 PM Author
    We are located in Vancouver, Washington. We take all ages and demographics. The providers are down to earth talk to you like you are a real person in terms you can understand. The minimum you will be with them is 30m. They are very passionate about helping people. They actually know you by name you aren't just a chart number they know what is going on in your life.
  • Posted by Gail@PUBLISIDE on 12/28/2009 at 6:27 PM Member
    I would focus on the down-home, personal aspect of the business...that these health care professionals will spend quality time with you and not shoo you out the door in the name of insurance quotas.

    I love Carol's concept of doing seminar type programs.
  • Posted by cef4 on 12/29/2009 at 9:43 PM Accepted
    Consider doing a "Dear Dr. Jones" column for all of the newspapers in your marketing area. Once a week, write a 200-400 word answer (keep it about the same length every week) to a question that you "receive" from the public. You will probably not receive more than a question or two per month, so you may need to write your own letters, then answer them.

    Be sure to include a small head and shoulder mug shot with the column.

    Submit to all newspapers (via email) as a free service to them and to the community. This helps to get your clinics name out to the community as an "expert facility".

    I did this when handling the PR for a 10 county public health district. It was a very effective way to promote activities within the Health Departments. Every newspaper we submitted to used the column every week. Submitting the column was way more successful than any advertising could have been. Ads are not trusted, but free advice on health issues is welcomed and accepted! At one point we had about 40 newspapers running the column.
  • Posted on 1/5/2010 at 2:49 PM Author
    Just a quick note to the community. I want to thank everyone for their ideas. It has been a great help thank you.
    sincerely,
    Dawn
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