Important to consider when promoting medical services

The sphere of paid medical services is one of the most competitive. Yet, over the past few years, this area has seen explosive growth – literally hundreds of retail clinics, centers, dental offices, beauty centers, etc. have appeared.

In other words, this market is developing very actively, even aggressively. The development is both quantitative (there are more and more institutions) and qualitative (the range of services is wider, and the professionalism of doctors is higher).

The result is increased competition. These clinics share the “pie” of the solvent target audience as vigorously as possible. At the same time, it cannot be said that it is hardest for beginners – it is often the old-time institutions that suffer. During the quiet years, the local leadership is not accustomed to active and constant marketing, just as it is not accustomed to the struggle for the target audience. And today, they have to accept the consequences of such carelessness.

The situation is also acute for the newly created offices – they need to stand out, attract clients in the shortest possible time and gain a foothold in the local market.

As a result, absolutely everyone faces the same problem – the promotion of medical services.

We’ll make a reservation right away – we don’t take the liberty to reveal such an extensive topic COMPLETELY within the framework of one short article. So Let Instead, let’s look at a few basic theses and common pitfalls.

For promotional activities to be successful, it is necessary to take care of solving several systemic problems in advance.

Strategic mistakes

Some clinics are on fire not because of bad advertising. Advertising is useless if the institution has nothing to compete with other clinics. If you don’t have sensible specialists, the medical services are meager, and there is no “chip” – marketing will not save, no matter how much money you pour into it.

Perhaps it will be possible to attract a certain number of primary patients with good advertising, promotions, and other tricks – but such a flow will not be large. In addition, the most important task (forming a stable, loyal group of patients) is unlikely to be realized.

Another massive mistake is an unsuccessful choice of location for the clinic. Practice shows that either it is more or less convenient to get to you, or few people go to you. Unless you can offer patients something for which they will go even to hell in the middle of nowhere. That’s right – you need to be head and shoulders above. People value their time too much (and they often avoid any unnecessary gestures).

Low marketing activity

Some managers and owners of commercial medical services live with frankly outdated realities. A business card site made almost on the “knee,” ads in 1-2 newspapers, and stories to friends about what a cool clinic and what professional doctors it has – and that seems to be enough.

Some believe that the money that “these advertisers are asking for” is not worth the whole thing.

Unfortunately, this approach does not work in reality.

So, the main mistakes of this kind:

• There is little advertising and a frivolous attitude to this advertisement.
• Lack of a full site. Today, when the vast majority of patients use social media in medical marketing look for doctors on the Internet, this is simply a failure. They don’t know about you.
• Ignoring social media. It is simply criminal to miss them – this powerful communication tool allows you to deploy as efficiently as possible with advertising, feedback, and increased loyalty and targeted mailings.

Planning

When deciding how to promote medical services, many do not think through their actions further than a step ahead. Meanwhile, one cannot do without a serious strategy calculated many stages beforehand – attempts to solve problems as they become available usually lead to time pressure, blockages, and final failure.

Without a plan, you will most likely be in for a constant “Brownian movement” between agencies, web studios, and freelancers in search of profitable momentary solutions. Unfortunately, this path will not give any benefits or solutions. Effectively, you can only burn your advertising budget and some more money on top.

And since we are talking about finances, simply throwing money at the problem usually does not solve the problem either. However, a reasonable amount of well-prepared and implemented advertising will give more output than thoughtless investments in “everything and more.”

A complex approach

Today it is impossible to bring a private clinic to the top due to any one marketing direction. This will give both quantitative and qualitative coverage and good prospects for promotion.

However, here, again, the principle of reasonableness works. Any “capacity expansion” should be adequate regarding investments, integration, and evaluation results. A prerequisite is the maintenance of detailed statistics because this is the only way to determine the real effectiveness of the methodology used.