Step 3 - How Your Healthcare Practice can reach your Marketing Goals

In part one of your marketing plan we explored the market, articulated our target customer and understood the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors. in Step 2, we set a clear direction for our marketing strategy which will drive all our actions in Step 3 - How do we get there. This is where the action will take place and you determine your marketing tactics to reach your goals determined in Step 2

Below I've included a video with all the content you need to develop your own marekting plan for your healthcare practice. The video is ~10min long but below is a walk through in text which does provide more detail. We all learn different ways so please choose an approach which helps you.

Remember, if you have have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to email me at contact@aquabluemarketing.com I have a great example of a whole marketing plan for a fictional healthcare company which you can use to help articulate your own marketing strategy.

The objective of this step is to determine the actions you're going to take to reach your goals. Recall the three to four goals you decided on in Step 2, what actions do we need to take to get there? What are the key messages for your business?It's important to spend time on your messages as these will form the backbone of all your marketing activities

1. Tactics and Action Plan for your Healthcare Practice Marketing Plan

Take your three to four goals and one by one determine what actions you'll need impliment over the next twelve months to achieve them. Let's look at an example: You goals was to attract more elderly patients so they become the core patient for your practice. You know from your research that these patients value the opinion of their physician and their recommendation is vital. They also value supporting the local community. Your action plan will require:

1. Visit local physicians who treat the elderly and provide education about the specific skills your practice provides for their patient.

2. Send material outlining your practice so physician can provide this to their patients

3. You could advertise in local papers

4. Support/sponsor local elderly activities/ morning teaser games nights

5. Why not provide educational events for the elderly, helping them understand how they can stay independent longer. Help them solve their personal frustration

You also know that getting to your practice will be difficult for this target audience, this is a threat you need to overcome. You could implement the following:

1. Partner with local transport to help patients get to your practice that is affordable

2. You could offer a mobile services

There are so many ideas you could brainstorm and these are simple examples. These patients would love a printed page with an explanation of their problem and how they can care for themselves between appointments. The work you did in Step 1 will inspire many ideas but choose wisely based on your budget, time and expertise.

You've probably realised how important an in-depth understanding of your target patient to help determine the right marketing activities. Your marketing activities should be positioned where your audience is not where you want to be. They should be at the centre all all your marketing activities. I see so many healthcare practices promoting themselves on Instagram, Instagram is an amazing platform but it's time consuming and not always easy to attract the target market you're interested in. Choose wisely if you want to be successful, keep it simple and measurable. There are more great examples in the sample Marketing Plan for Healthcare practices

2. Developing Marketing Messages for your Healthcare Practice

It's important that your marketing plan articulates your key messages as these will form the backbone of all your marketing activities and any content you plan on developing to support your action plan.

You recall from Step 2, you developed your "positioning statement". This is a great source of inspiration for your messages as this articulates what you're good at, who the target customer is and how your different from your competitors

When developing the messages please keep this things in mind:

• use the language of your target patient.

• Clear and simple - get to the point

• You show you understand the frustrations or problems of your patients - you empathise with them

Here is way to start articulateing your core mesages:

• What is the problem or frustration of your patient in their words

• How do you solve their problem - this is what you're good at

• Why are you different

Remember: Marketing isn't about convincing or tricking people, it's about understanding your target audience's frustration and solving their problem differently or better than anyone else

There's so many ways you can do messaging, and it's really important that you spend the time because this is going to attract the right people to your practice and you don't want to miss an opportunity. Here is a link to a great site which provides you with helpful tools

3. How to use your Marketing Plan everyday

The power of a marketing plan is in the consistency of using what you've learnt. I want to go through how you can utilise this roadmap everyday in all your marketing activities

Measuring Success

You now know where you're heading. You now have a direction. You know what marketing activities will work for you. The next step to incorporate this into everything you do it to measure how your marketing is performing. You need to measure where your patients are getting information about you and what made them decide to see you. Ask questions throughout the initial patient visit by person or in the questionnaire but keep a track and record this information. This will help you track performance. If you have a website Google analytics is an amazing tool to see if your social media is helping you. You can even measure if a site visit results in a call. It's great but can be confusing at the start. There are many ways to utilise analytics to measure the success of your marketing and here are some further examples

I would encourage you to keep a one page summary of your marketing strategy and plan stuck to your office wall and keep a monthly report of your performance. The reason I suggest this is because it provides direction of your marketing activities and keeps your goals top of mind. Here is an example of a one page summary

You want to keep your positioning at the top. Where do you want your product to be positioned in the mind of your customer? This is your ultimate goal. What are the three or four goals, key areas that you need to focus on to get to that positioning statement? And then the third is your tactics for the year. What are you doing to do to achieve to those goals? And once you have that one page summary, this will shape all of your activities and measurements you'll do throughout the next 12months. Through monthly measurements you'll be able to adjust, stop and start new activities will ultimately lead to saved money and better outcomes for your business. Time well spend

I've now gone through the 3 key steps to developing a successful marketing plan for your healthcare practice. it does take time but will be worth every minute.

I would love to hear your thoughts so please contact me at contact@aquabluemarketing.com I've been doing this for 20+ years and love helping and answer any questions or simply clarify any of my suggestions. I've included an example of a marketing plan for a fictional healthcare practice which may also help.

This is something I'm extremely passionate about and love doing. It can take time but really the time that you invest will be quadrupled in the revenue received

Good Luck and please share your success