Note: New Patient Marketing is a basic principle used in any dental or medical practice. Advertising is a part of getting more patients. However, without an important step called “UN-Advertising“, you will never get the quantity and quality of new patients that you are looking for.

Most companies and definitely almost all medical practices that do advertising alone are throwing their hard-earned money out the window. They might increase the total collection but almost never the bottom line.
The reason is simple: advertising is hardly noticed and definitely not believed. The amount of advertising in America is way up, but for most it means less and less profits.

Here are the some of the roadblocks you will need to overcome while advertising:

1) If your advertising message only talks about the benefits of your service and your experience and your qualifications, you will sound alike with your competitors’ messages. Patients cannot choose easily among services which ‘look alike’.

2) You are tooting your own horn. People do not 100% believe an ad. Your prospects already expect you to say, “We have new technology”, “We are experienced” etc.

3) Ads have little staying power in creating long term impressions. The minute you stop advertising, no one will remember you.

4) Your prospects are bombarded by 500 advertising appeals a day. You are trying to get your message heard in an overcrowded marketing environment. Thus advertising cost goes up and returns go down.

How about traditional word-of-mouth and networking activities?

1) Many offices depend on word-of-mouth as their primary source of new patients, but depending only on internal marketing alone could not help you to break through production plateaus. You will reach a peak and then stop growing.

2) Networking meetings and luncheons to stimulate patient referrals from other doctors and related businesses are time-consuming. You can send your staff to bring donuts to another doctor’s office to thank them for referrals but how many ‘donut’ trips can you make to ALL the possible referral sources? This time-consuming and costly ‘gift-giving’ will eventually dead-end for most – due to not enough time for the doctor and for the staff to do.

What can I do to get more from external advertising?

There IS a place for advertising but it is after — and only after a reputation, trust, name, etc. has been recognized by the public. It would not matter how long you are in this neighborhood already and how many people you think know you – maybe they do know you, but IF they are not coming in large quantity to your practice then your “brand” is not known, trusted, liked, remembered, looked as better or different!

The missing link with most business people is that they do not know that Un-Advertising is the ONLY thing which can and will start the fire – it is the spark – and without this spark, there is no fire – thus no wind can spread this non-existing fire! Advertising is the wind and doing advertising without first establishing a position or perception which was put in people’s minds by other sources than you will be a waste of money.

Your message must be believed, build trust, increase patient loyalty and make your practice stand out from your competition, especially in these trying times of economic recession.

Now is the time to have your messages stick out more so than ever before.

Remember: Advertising can help get new patients and grow your business but the practice of using it must be consistent. The more consistent you are, the more patients will come in on a consistent basis.

Helmut Flasch
Author and Founder
Un-Advertising Marketing Strategies

Note: Following proper marketing principles in your dental practice, for instance, will improve your dental practice management skills. Marketing is simply part of good practice management. Establishing management skills by learning new patient marketing skills is essential to stable growth for your dental or medical practice.

Certain basic laws or principles govern the universe, and that includes our bodies, our businesses, etc. The law of gravity is such a principle, which cannot be ignored. Great professionals in any subject matter are great because they thoroughly understand the underlying principles in their field.

A doctor might have to try several different medicines or approaches to get the blood pressure down or increase circulation. The doctor of course will also have to be aware of some slightly lesser principles, which are right below the basic principle of “blood must circulate”. He will be aware of which body parts need more circulation, reasons why circulation might slow down, etc. In short, the doctor knows his basics and can now handle almost any situation regardless of individual differences of why, when and what!!!

If he is in the jungle with no equipment he might simply immerse a person in the cold river and then put him in the big cooking pot with hot water and repeat this whole procedure 50 times to achieve his desired result and in a super hi-tech hospital in NY he will obviously do something else. In the case of a doctor who is only educated in the use of a certain machine or medicine but not thoroughly know, even in his sleep, the basic principles and the slightly lesser principles, he would have lots of people dying on him.

Sure, the doctor needs to know the mechanical steps perfectly as well, but all those things are mere mechanics of which are many more in number than basic principles and which are all derived from underlying basics. A good diagnosis is half the work if not virtually all in some cases. A doctor who is only good in administering treatment and not familiar enough with the fundamentals could not diagnose very well. Business and/or Marketing are no different.

Many doctors believe that a certain marketing action will not work in their area or their profession or their practice. Usually they are right but only about that mechanical action. Those doctors have some knowledge of mechanical actions of marketing, which they may have observed to work or not work as the case may be but they do not know how to connect the dots and to make an intelligent business diagnosis – due to the missing basic fundamentals.

Knowing those basic principles of marketing would give any marketing individual the ability to adjust the marketing vehicle used to get the desired result. Usually this is more business, more money in the pocket and more free time to do whatever one champions. Please remember the doctor in the jungle who puts the sick person in hot and cold water to get circulation going. A marketing expert will know the marketing principles so well that he will be able to “cure his patient” (the company), with minimal resource availability.

In short, a true marketing guy who has been in the trenches and has learned his basic principles well will be able to make any business grow, even if there is little marketing budget available. And he will be able to do it for a doctor in Chicago or a dentist in Kansas or an oil company in India just as well as for a printer in NY or a publishing company in Taiwan or a hotel in Africa.

The business guy, just like the good old doctor whose prescribed treatment does not always work as predicted, will here and there embark on a marketing activity which does not bring the desired results – but he won’t be without many more successful activities up his sleeve and he will use and adjust them as needed and he will in the end succeed.

Most small business owners think only with the mechanics of the marketing and completely ignore the basic principles so they are surprised when a marketing step, which worked for some one else, does not work for them. Then they don’t know what to do when things don’t go as hoped for.

Imagine a really good martial arts fighter! He, at any time, no matter what the position of the opponent in relation to his own position knows what to do; he knows how to bend or kick or clinch or draw. But a less experienced fighter will only be able to do his fighting successfully if the opponent stands and attacks him exactly as in class drills.

Now imagine a good chef, maybe a housewife who cooks well? Could she draw together any meal despite bad equipment, and with little food in the refrigerator even with only leftovers? Could she mix and match spices in ways, which you never even thought of and which make you come back for more? If she is good, yes, she definitely could!

The inexperienced martial artist knows some mechanics but not yet the principles. He simply can’t think fast enough to do what needs to be done and will get beaten up where as the housewife knows the principles of cooking and cook with whatever mechanics she has available to her.

Remember when Hypocrites said something like this. “Don’t be ashamed to admit I don’t know and consult with other practitioners who might know.” Every time you ask for help you will get better at it yourself. And even though there will never be a time you will know it all, you surely will become more and more knowledgeable yourself. And knowledge, if applied and used, is undoubtedly the most powerful weapon one can have in any situation.

So the moral of the story – get the big picture and learn it well. Only then will you be able to correctly use the numerous “mechanical steps” which are needed to achieve your objectives.

Remember: In creating new good paying patients for your medical practice the big picture simply is you must use the skills necessary that may come from third parties to establish a trust within your practice.  It is only with good new patient marketing and practice management skills that your business will grow strong and thrive.

Helmut Flasch
Author and Founder
Un-Advertising Marketing Strategies

First and foremost we must deliver a service and/or products which are needed and/or wanted by someone. This means we must be of help to someone. In the medical field this means we must make people healthy and more importantly we must keep people from getting sick in the first place.

We must realize that people come to us, the experts, for expert advice and that we cannot make our decisions based on what insurance companies cover or do not cover. Insurance companies unfortunately have made themselves “self proclaimed health experts”. Any non-medical, non-licensed man on the street would go to jail were they to attempt to say what treatment is needed or not needed for a particular patient.  But the insurance companies get away with it by hiring their own medical doctors – who of course have lost all their integrity by being nothing more than hired guns for the insurance companies.

We must realize that if we do not perform all the necessary and possible tests and treatments, we can and will be sued for medical negligence. However, if we do tests and treatments which we feel are needed because they could help to prevent future illnesses, we also might be attacked for “overreaching”.  But our first priority is to help the patient to stay healthy, and to get them well if they are already sick.

Perhaps it should also be mentioned that providing this valuable service does not exclude us from being allowed to make a profit because we do also want to get paid for our services and for those products which will accomplish that.

How do we achieve our primary goal and also get paid for it with money left over after the costs of delivering such a service?

First, we need to have a standard way of doing things. This seems easy at first because medicine is scientific. But then again medicine is also an art. So, what we do, and not so much the how we do it, has to be more uniformed than we currently operate. The “what we do” should be guided mainly by the fact that we need to do everything we can to keep the patients healthy and/or get him well.

Second, we must let as many people as possible know that we can and will keep them healthy. To achieve that we must have the contact information of as many people as possible and contact them and let them know about our intentions and our abilities to keep them healthy. We call this marketing, internal and external. There are many, many different ways, but however it is done must be done in large and in uniformed ways.

Third, once people know about and are coming for some initial desire or problem, we must of course fix it. But for now we must also make sure that we enlighten/educate the person on all medical possibilities which could make his life more enjoyable in the future. That is our duty to the patients; never mind that we must do that in order to protect ourselves from lawsuits for negligence.

In order to achieve that, we must have a rigorous checksheet, like an airplane pilot has before taking off. After all, a pilot does this to make sure nothing is left out so that everything is done to prevent any accident which, in the case of flying an airplane, almost surely would mean the loss of life. Well, what do you think we doctors are dealing with? Toys? No, we deal in human lives and must at minimum adhere to as rigorous a checksheet in finding any existing illness or any potential illness, as any airline pilot would use to check for potential malfunctions.

Fourth, finding potential and existing illnesses, and telling the patient about it is, however, not enough. We now must insist, with great patient education that the patient follows through with our recommendations. This is easier said than done.

It takes immense caring for the patient, time and of course, money to educate the patients. It can probably easily be compared with the raising of children, or the taking care of our elders. Suggestions, recommendations, and orders are not necessarily followed at the first attempt. Oh no! But what does a caring mom do? She keeps at it. She uses any and all tools and knowledge available to her.

Let it be said that her most important tool is that of caring. Sure, you say, those are her children. Yes, you are right. And to the degree that we do not take the time and effort to explain the necessity of any and all treatments or tests which we deem to be useful, we are not caring about our patients to the degree that we should be.

We have not only taken an oath, but we will not ever feel fulfilled with our lives if we do not give our last bit of energy to get the patents the procedure they need. Despite the fact that we might not be able to prevent it from happening anyhow, we must give our very best medical treatment, and perhaps more importantly, we must care like the best mom or dad in the world would care. Otherwise the patient is doomed.

Fifth, after we have successfully managed to administer all necessary tests and treatments, we must, of course, have a close to perfect way of collecting payments. This has become more difficult over the years with insurance companies having codes, which constantly change, and which are designed for as slow as possible payment to the doctor. It is also made difficult in that the insurance companies have managed to create the belief in the patients that if they (the insurance company) do not cover it, it is not necessary.

Therefore, as a practice we also need to spend money to keep this administrative step in order, otherwise we will go broke delivering great patient care. Going broke would help no one — not you, your family, nor the patient, who then has no caring doctor to go to. Patients do not want you to go broke – trust me!

It is imperative that we do what is needed no matter the cost. But, if we spend the time and  money to perform all the needed steps of marketing, patient education, administrative work, and spend the time and money it takes to learn those things, then and only then will we be able to keep our patients healthy.

Remember: Being successful in a medical or dental practice is not just about being a good doctor. Invest time and money to learn about medical or dental practice management, staff management and new patient marketing and you will have a smooth-running prosperous practice.

Note: Keep patients coming back and get new patients by applying superior practice management skills. Dental and medical patient marketing is more than just advertising your dental or medical practice, but also the actions shown through medical practice management.

Doctors are actually quite fantastic at diagnosing, when they are given the opportunity – meaning, that they have the time.

Cancer — any type of cancer in a patient — is pretty bad, but what about the cancer in a doctor’s practice which eats up the possibility for the doctor to be able to spend enough time to do a thorough examination on any and all patients?

What we mean by thorough examination is a diagnostic session in which the doctor probes the patients to find out any and all signs and symptoms which possibly could be influential, maybe even detrimental, in the patient’s well-being 10 or 30 years down the road.

The “practice-cancer” I am talking about is called time, or another way to look at it: not enough re-imbursement from the insurance companies to spend the needed time with the patient.

Low re-imbursement from most insurance companies along with the rising cost of all other expenses force the doctor to see a patient and make the best treatment/diagnosis plan that one can make in only a few minutes.

Here is the thing, many doctors do great with even those few minutes, but the patient does not perceive so. They feel shortchanged by a mile or two. And they are shortchanged – no matter how good the doctor’s diagnosis actually is.

Patients do not have eight years of doctor training and cannot really evaluate the doctor’s expertise.   The only thing that they can evaluate is what they perceive.

It boils down to whether the patient perceives whether he is cared for, listened to, and understood.

This perception of “being cared for” simply does not come with a few minutes of chatting and a few prescriptions.

Oh sure, patients across the country have largely settled for it as a whole, but boy, give them the attention they deserve, give them a diagnostic exam where you probe for answers and your patients will rave about you. However, as said, there is not enough time to do that.

Well, you fight fire with fire. So mainly you should take a look at “fighting no time” with spending more time. Crazy? Maybe not!!!

A good diagnosis is most of the work in helping a patient to get healthy or stay healthy. A good diagnosis differentiates the great doctor from the quacks. A good diagnosis can usually not be done without an array of tests, which will result in more tests. Tests are the essence of science. Medicine is based on science more and more – is it not?

However, medicine is also an art, which to a great degree is the artfulness with which you can talk to the patient so he feels heard and listened to so that he may feel as though he is being taken care of. This feeling of ‘being taken care of’ will happen if you probe and probe about his or her well being, and if you do ALL the tests possible to uncover a potential illness in the making or in which you eliminate the existence of a potential illness.  I am sure you have experienced the incredible feeling of comfort that you have given a patient by finding out and making him aware that there are no “large and potentially dangerous” situations lingering in his body.

The end result will be that you will get much, much more tests and treatments accepted by the patient, as well as by the insurance companies.

Even though insurance companies are trying to dodge as many payments as possible, they still do somewhat readily pay for most tests, no matter how expensive, because they do not want to spend all that huge money on operations which could, in many cases, have been avoided by finding and correcting early oncoming diseases.

Insurance companies also cannot just deny tests just as you the doctor cannot avoid doing a certain test, because the patient’s future hangs on it and the insurance company, as well as you, could be battling lawsuits which could give you great stress should you have missed some early condition.

Patients want to know where they stand – good or bad – and they deserve it. It is your duty to use all scientific tools available to find out where they stand! Patients will love you in return to being that caring doctor, and you yourself will have a load of unnecessary stress lifted from your shoulders when doing so.

Be honest, you would much rather do what I described. But you have somehow been pulled into believing it is not possible in today’s economic world.  On the contrary, it is even more possible today than before because today 95 % of doctors do not operate the way I described above, and thus anyone doing it will stick out as an incredible doctor and will be a “wonder doctor” with celebrity status in his or her area.

And that, my friend, is a guarantee.

Take whatever steps it takes to learn and implement the above and be willing to endure whatever hardships you might have to endure to reach the above. Any hardships will be a walk in the park compared to the hardship which awaits you (and your patients) if you continue on the road you and the rest of the medical establishment is on. Work harder and make less, and yet at the same time neglect the patient’s health and desire to live not only long but live those years with some agility and dignity.

On the other hand your willingness to make the transformation will bring great health to your patients, great personal satisfaction to you as well as the very well deserved financial rewards which once upon a time have been synonymous with a doctor. And why should a doctor, who pretty much possesses one of the most sought after knowledge in the world, not also be rewarded handsomely like any other great achiever? Why NOT?

Remember: While it is important to focus on dental and medical practice management, it is also important that to work on dental or medical patient marketing in order to get new patients. Focus heavily on quality new patient marketing and you will have a lot of patients to keep your practice flourishing.