FEATURE HEALTHCARE MARKETING
you tell your story will determine not only if someone chooses you, but also sets the expectations they bring with them on their first visit. In order to set the right expectations, your external message should capitalize on the strengths of your practice and convey the unique experience that you offer. This leads us to internal marketing. If your external marketing was done
correctly, it has created true perceptions of the unique experience you offer and set high expectations based on your strengths. This will help get people in the front door. It’s what happens next however, that will determine the ultimate success of your practice. Your patients will be happy with their experience with you if you can meet their expectations, or even better, exceed them. The more value you can add to a patient’s experience, the more likely you are to exceed their expectations and create loyal customers.
«If you aren’t creating an impression proactively, then it will occur by default and that may not be the preferred one»
Whenever someone is unhappy with your practice it is because their expectations were not met. While it is impossible to always meet everyone’s expectations, you should look at it as your responsibility to set expectations and understand them. This gives you the best opportunity to ensure you meet expectations. There are three essential ingredients to exceeding expectations. First you have to understand what
your patients are expecting and what they are looking for in their experience with you. In order to do this, it helps to know the message you are conveying in your external efforts. Since it is these efforts that are determining their expectations, it is important that all the employees internally understand the external marketing message so they can reinforce the messaging in your practice. Reinforcing the external marking internally helps put people at ease and helps them feel confident about their choice.
Arab Health Show Issue 2012 119
Second, you need to be constantly
looking for ways to add value to their experience. This can be as simple as looking for ways to make the patient more comfortable, or helping them better understand your policies, adding convenience tools to your website, or even creating a social network that helps build a community with your patients. This can also include patient giveaways, customer service and good follow-through. Third, ensure consistent customer
feedback. Honest feedback on how you are doing can help you understand your strengths and weaknesses. This allows you to exploit your strengths and recognize and fix your weaknesses. When your customers feel like you’re listening, it helps them feel like you are doing everything you can to meet their expectations. If you can consistently meet or exceed your patients’ expectations you will have happy patients. Happy patients become loyal patients. Loyal patients are ideal patients. They trust you; they pay their bills, accept their treatment plans and keep their appointments. Finally, loyal patients are the most likely to refer others to your practice. You can see that even though the marketing process starts with your
external marketing efforts, it is what you do internally that will ultimately determine the loyalty of your patients and the quantity and quality of your referrals. All your marketing efforts help to set the right expectations, help meet or exceed expectations, and form the foundation to create loyal patients and an effective referral programme. Marketing is a sophisticated
combination of being in the right place at the right time, with the right product, and is arguably the most important aspect of business
growth.Prospects won’t know what you make, so they won’t buy it. If they don’t buy, there’ll be no floor to sweep. No need to buy coffee cups. And no invoices to send out. By knowing your community, offering a unique and distinct product and tailoring your promotions to your particular business philosophy, a successful marketing strategy can mean the difference between business won or lost and ultimately whether a company is able to connect with its customers. Without your marketing (and the requisite second half; the sale) you’ll have nothing. To conclude, everything is marketing… and yes, marketing is everything to the success of your practice. ■
AH
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