Note: Figuring out a marketing plan for your medical or dental practice will help bring new patients. New Patient Marketing is an essential part of any medical or dental practice management routine.

First of all you really do need to decide THAT you want to succeed!!

I know it sounds crazy to have to tell someone that he must decide to succeed in order to succeed and some doctors might well be putting this issue aside right here with the comment, “Gee, another kind of philosophical garbage.”

But that is too bad, because the truth is that if you are not where you want to be or are not at least moving fairly well in the direction of where you want to be then you simply have not yet decided that you want to go there!

The mechanics of marketing, advertising, public relations and management are important to success but not even close to being as important as the mental attitude.

A negative attitude brushes aside all the built-up dislikes toward all kinds of activities that someone could otherwise profit from. 15 percent of profit from one million is a lot better than 30 percent of profit from one hundred thousand (only an example).

One will usually always fail if the amount of marketing actions or marketing money is a rather “fixed” predetermined expense. Marketing actions and marketing money spent has to be calculated backwards, starting from the amount of money you want to make in your pocket.

In case you have tried to market and market until YOU run out of money before it starts bringing some returns – it was simply YOU who did not have the knowledge to make your marketing money go further and longer with better and faster returns.

In short, the professional knowledge of marketing is NOT for any reason one of the higher paid activities in the world. It is so valuable because the best product without sales = nothing. Actually it equals tears, stress, and domestic quarrels over money and how to spend it, or a feeling of losing in life.

So once, and only once, you have an open mind to the above will the following data actually help you! Here is an example:

Let’s say you make $100,000 net income a year. You are a dentist and have a goal of $300,000 net yearly income and you want to do NO dentistry yourself because you want to be free to do many other activities of yours and also want to have a practice which is (a) easy to sell in case you want to or (b) can bring income to you, until you die.

You will decide whether you sell or keep it when the time comes but you want to be set up for all options and surely want to be free whenever you feel so.

You know that if other doctors do the work you will have to pay them about 30-50% of their production (collection). Thus your profit margin will be lowered compared to when YOU do all the dentistry. There will also be other increased expenses with that new set-up such as personnel turnovers, mistakes, and even added personnel in proportion to what you have now. I don’t mean more personnel because of more production alone. Yes, even that too but that is easy to see. What most doctors don’t see is that with increased business they might need a supervisor due to the increased number of personnel where before they did not need one. You might need more machinery such as more computers, where before you got way with just a few. This may necessitate a steady computer technician. You can see where I am going with this? So, for the sake of this example we estimate your overhead factor including marketing at 80% even if it is currently lower. We use this example of a fairly high overhead office as a safety net and celebrate if it is lower.

So, this at once makes it clear that we need to produce (collect) five times as much as the money we want to take home. $1,500,000 is what we need to collect to take home $300,000 as a very safe operating rule of thumb.

It is important that you know that the only way to see whether YOUR estimated numbers are right is to do all the actions and to constantly adjust them and readjust them in all areas from the top to the bottom. Keep in mind; all the numbers are just numbers. Percentages and numbers mean nothing unless the end numbers (the amount you take home, and with the conditions you stipulated) are present.

However the most important thing is to reach our goal, which is $300,000 net profit and where we would not have to be the actual dentist ourselves. Now, how many patients do we need to get $1,500,000 of collection?

Sure, every patient spent a different amount and this amount can vary heavily. But if you look at the last two to three years you will see that if you simply divide the new patients by the dollar amount taken in the same time period you have a pretty good idea what each patients is worth to you.

Try it; it works very well where no major changes in new patients or a change in type of patients (such as changes from private patients to HMO) has occurred.
You could also see how many patients you now are getting and how much money you are making then increase the amount of new patients to see what it would take to make the $1,500,000.

It would be wise to calculate the increase of the new patients need by 20% – 40% higher as a safety net in case the newly gained patients spent somehow lesser or due to the increased volume in the practice you and your crew make some mistakes at the beginning. Anyhow let’s say a patient is worth about $1,000, which means you need about 1,500 new patients per year and about 125 per month or about 32 per week. Now and only now can you start to establish how much marketing will be needed.

Not necessarily an easy thing right away and yes, you will be wrong quite a few times; you will underestimate what it will take or overestimate what the particular marketing steps will bring (same thing).

Also it might not be easy right away to do all the marketing options needed because well, there might not be enough money to go around to do so.

All that is common and at first even normal considering that you usually want to grow because you do not have the money and free time you want. If you happen to be in a financial situation where you right away can start spending the money needed to increase then you are in good shape and will expand very fast.

Why do you think Microsoft has such an “easy time” out-dusting their competitors and can enter new markets better than anyone else? Money, of course, and plenty of it! But keep in mind that Mr. Bill Gates had to do the right thing for a long time to get there! And I bet he is calculating his expansion in a very similar way all the time – which again is why he always knows what and how much of it to do to succeed.

In the end, it still boils down to knowledge and some guts. Nobody asks you to play Russian roulette whereas you die if you were wrong. No, but a bit of courage, guts, or leaving the comfort zone is surely needed to put the icing on the cake (your practice).

In short, the money and fun you have today or the lack of it stems from not having marketed and managed correctly and in sufficient quantities in the past years. And the money you will have in a couple of years and up till you die will be determined by how much you know about marketing with the right message in the right quantity. The future of your financial state depends on the knowledge you possess to do the right quantity of marketing at the correct time and in perfect harmony.

There is no winning the lottery – only learning the right thing to do and then doing it! Doing it, and doing it, and doing it despite our shortcomings along the way. Winning the lottery or finding oil is based on luck, – the above is not.

Remember: Marketing for your medical or dental practice is for the survival and health of your practice. Good medical or dental practice management with marketing will keep your business strong and prosperous.

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Note: It is important to target the right market for your medical or dental practice. Finding new patients is necessary for your practice to prosper and practicing new patient marketing skills in the right market will help you find the right kind of patients in the market you wish to focus on.

Targeting to the type of patients you want is a lot simpler than it looks – even though it does require some effort and some understanding of how to accomplish this exactly.

Simple – yes; easy – not necessarily; but much more rewarding than only going after the masses with advertising eating up your profits, if there is even anything left over worth calling profits!

Choosing the right market can and usually does break or make you business.

Also the personal branding, meaning the way your targeted market sees you, is equally as important.

When you target a certain market you simply refuse to believe that in order to have patients you must hit every man and woman under the sun and hope that they will have an interest and/or the money to buy your service.

This is a very crude way to make a living, indeed.

No – go to the people who most likely have the money, the desire and the education to value your service. And make them your clients for life!

Those people with the wherewithal and education to value your service also are in communication with many more people during the day than the rest of the masses.

Thus your name has a chance to be heard more often and when it gets heard it is more believed because it comes from a somewhat influential source.

Can you see that?

Higher quality patients:
Instead of chasing every Johnny-come-lately you target the exact people who fit your most desirable patients, and they will provide you with more income simply because they can.

More effective spending:
Marketing to the ‘desirable’ costs the same (if not less) than to the ‘not-so-desirable’. So you save money on marketing and you can use that money for more marketing to the desirable group and thus snow-ball your return on investment.

More focused message:
An unfocused message, promoting everything to everyone, must be one of the biggest marketing mistakes. The belief that appealing to more people is better does not work – it does the exact opposite. It appeals to nobody.

When you have a targeted market you can focus your message and be heard!! Oh yes!

Less time selling:
Instead of spending time to convince the unqualified patient to use your service (or at least some part of it by doing at least some patch-up work) you will sit in front of able and willing patients, patients who, because of your personal branding from ‘Un-advertising’, are actually pre-sold already. What a difference that will make!

Greater profitability:
The above together simply makes for better profitability. It is a great synergy.

Stronger referral base:
Does it make sense to you that those able and willing patients, who are usually also influential in the community, will have better and more referrals? Maybe, maybe not, but the chances are high that they will! After all, it is a cinch that the same type of people usually hang out with the same type of people. Thus you have the added benefit of referrals from similar strata of people.

The moral of the story:
Would you rather be doing surgery or receiving surgery with a knife made in the stone-age or with the newest laser technology?

And that my friend is the difference between advertising to the masses with no particular focus and creating a high-quality patient base that is willing to give you cash for your services!

Remember: In order to get new patients in your medical practice you must establish a successful new patient marketing campaign. The successful marketing campaign will be a success whenever it is received by the right market.

Helmut Flasch
Author and Founder
Un-Advertising Marketing Strategies

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