Marketing Tips

Collect and tabulate information such as age, occupation, gender, income and location from your current patient records to get a profile of your typical patients. Then tailor your promotion and public relation events to target this majority group

Conduct a Referral Survey to find out if your patients are referring. Discover why they do or do not feel comfortable referring others to your practice. The information you get will help you generate more referrals and give you more control over your internal marketing.

A Quality Control Survey of patients gives you feedback regarding whether or not you’re meeting their expectations and what, if anything, you can do to improve your service to them. Patients appreciate being asked if they are happy with the level of care and service they’re receiving and will be happy that you care enough to ask.

Design a series of questions you can ask of potential patients to find out what they need and want – find out such things as what services they are interested in receiving, what they value most in a health care provider and what has disappointed them in previous practices. Enclose this survey in your new resident letters and use the information you get back to help you write and design ads, brochures and other promotional items.

When surveying by mail, encourage response by enclosing a postage-paid return envelope or reply card. If needed, mailing lists can be purchased to target specific groups you want to attract.

Use phone surveys to get back in touch with inactive patients. Ask them questions designed to find out what you and your staff can do to reactivate them. They will appreciate the personal contact and you’ll have an opportunity to interest them in returning to your practice for services.

Set aside time to work with your staff on getting referrals from patients. The best way to get referrals is simply to ASK FOR THEM. Your staff will be more comfortable in making this a part of their daily routine if they get a chance to practice during staff training sessions.

Silkin Management Group has helped thousands of practices grow using marketing procedures that really work. How do we know they work? They get results! Our tailor made marketing programs include some of the basic techniques mentioned in these tips, but reach far beyond what we’ve been able to include here. Our consultants develop surveys and questionnaires that health care practitioners all over the country have used to drive more new patients into their practices – and keep them coming back. As the number of patients increase, Silkin continues to provide management and organizational consulting that supports stable growth. This is accomplished by offering specialized administrative training for doctors and their staffs, job descriptions, office policies, organizational charts and much, much more.

I invite you to share any thoughts through our Discussion Forum at the Silkin Facebook Page BY CLICKING HERE.

Larry Silver
President, Silkin

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