Effective Practice Marketing

Since President Obama’s health care reform has officially become law, we have been getting lots of questions from our physician clients wanting to know, “So what now?" and "What can we do improve our group's financial picture during these uncertain times?” In light of all the recent changes with health care, this post is meant to serve as a special guide for physicians to understand how to effectively market their practices.

Let's start with the history of practice marketing. Years ago, marketing a practice might have involved something along the lines of purchasing an ad in the Yellow Pages or simply interacting with doctors at hospitals to acquire more referrals. While these strategies may have worked well 20 years ago, the times have changed, and physicians are now faced with a completely different marketing landscape. But many physicians today are still marketing their practices by using these outdated techniques! Let me ask you a question: how many people do you know who are still using the Yellow Pages? I can count the people I know on one hand. Now let me ask you this: what are the chances that someone will happen across your Yellow Page ad and decide right then and there that they need to make an appointment at your practice? Slim to none. Look, here’s what you need to know: today’s physicians do not get their referrals from an ad they placed in a newspaper or magazine...they get their referrals by effectively marketing to the referring physician community!

Plain and simple, the old ways of marketing are no longer effective. Specialty physicians need to think about more effective ways of marketing their practices to gain referrals. How, you ask? Let me explain. Fulcrum Strategies has developed a revolutionary new program so that specialty physicians can build and maintain their referral base. At Fulcrum Strategies, we believe that all specialty physicians must have a well-executed Physician Outreach Program to remain competitive in the ever-changing world of medicine. Fulcrum Strategies’ Physician Outreach Program is a proactive public relations initiative to establish solid, lasting relationships with current and potentially referring physicians in your market. This program can include research and information about your specific market, up-to-date brochures and effective marketing collateral, a dedicated marketing representative to make in-person contact with referring and potentially referring practices, and complete reports on all issues and findings.

Our Physician Outreach Program is an effective way for specialty physicians to secure relationships with currently referring practices, to build new relationships with potentially referring practices, and to provide valuable feedback in the form of issue reports and executive summaries to help your practice maintain and increase its referral base. Here is a basic description of our revolutionary program: 

Physician Outreach Program

A Fulcrum Strategies representative, armed with your practice's marketing collateral, will make face-to-face contact with office managers, referral coordinators and physicians who could potentially refer patients to your practice.

The Physician Outreach Program is essentially an effort to build and maintain your referral base. All issues discovered will be reported to you immediately, and a final analysis and executive summary will be provided upon completion of the program.

Included services in the program are:
• Market research
• Dedicated marketing representative
• Face-to-face representation
• Issue tracking
• Periodic reporting
• Executive summary 

This is a revolutionary program that was developed by Fulcrum Strategies specifically for specialty practices that are concerned about their referral community. We’d like to take this time to encourage you to contact us today to find out more about our Physician Outreach Program. For more information, please contact our Director of Sales & Marketing, Amy Hutton at a.hutton@fsdoc.com.

At Fulcrum Strategies, we are Superior Provider Advocates. We are dedicated to helping our clients, physicians and their practices to finally succeed.