TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Before making the transition to a membership practice, working from a strategic action plan often makes the difference between success and failure for a new DPC or concierge practice. While the plan must cover all the major pieces – finances, legal, staffing, marketing and sales – for now, let’s look at one important aspect, marketing.
When it comes to launching a membership practice there needs to be enough lead-time – allow for at least six months – to let the marketing process work well. Having certain crucial pieces in place at the right time helps avoid numerous costly mistakes that keep one from meeting the target launch date.
Why Start Early with Marketing?
Say you wanted to complete a home renovation project in time for the holidays. Many months earlier you would have found an architect to figure out the design. You would have next hired the general contractor, who would in turn have arranged for the necessary sub-contractors to show up at the right time, in the right sequence. For example, we would expect the foundation to be poured before the walls are built.
It’s tempting to wait to seek out marketing help until after the legal entity is created, space has been secured, and financing is in place. It’s not unusual to hear that a new practice name has been chosen for legal purposes before the practice vision and brand identity has been determined. Financial, operational and legal elements are all impacted by marketing. If not addressed simultaneously, and at the outset, it’s like waiting to bring in the electrician once all the drywall is sealed.
A well thought out strategic marketing plan identifies who to target with what message and which tools best deliver that message. And just as importantly, it outlines when the tactics will be put in place.
Why Does It Take So Long?
Some believe converting a practice to DPC or Concierge simply requires a new website and sending a simple letter to patients, not realizing a typical membership conversion or launch involves at least a dozen major core components. Introducing the practice to patients, prospects and referrers requires many tools: stationery, letters, website, brochures, ads, direct mail, signage, and email campaigns, among others. Each of these components not only involves a myriad of moving parts to coordinate and manage but requires strategic thinking to promote the practice in such a way to successfully convert patients to members.
Not allowing enough time and taking marketing shortcuts may well require later expensive and time-consuming fixes and keep the practice from reaching its conversion goal.
Just as completing a home renovation involves an entire design and construction crew, implementing these marketing tools effectively requires the combined effort of many members of a marketing team—a strategist, a graphic designer, a web developer, a photographer, a copy writer —and a project manager to pull all the pieces together. If that project manager happens to be you, and if you “know some people” who can help you with the key components, do consider that those individuals working separately under their own time constraints have the very real potential to throw your launch date off-track by many weeks, or even months.
There’s time needed to consider options and make decisions along the way. Starting the process early enough in advance will help to alleviate rushed decisions and compromised outcomes.
First Things First
The professionals hired for the renovation? They wouldn’t put up wall studs before laying a foundation. They wouldn’t put the roof on until the framing is in place. They wouldn’t order fixtures, paint or siding that weren’t part of the master plan.
It’s the same for rolling out your marketing campaign.
Stationery needs to be designed and printed before sending the letters introducing the new practice to patients. The name, URL, tag line, and logo needs to be explored and developed before creating the stationery package. And determining your brand identity, based on your value proposition and how you want others to perceive and experience your new practice, needs to be done before settling on a name and designing an effective logo.
Generous lead time based on a well-calculated action plan is the necessary framework on which to build these crucial pieces of marketing that will grow your practice and allow it to thrive.
COULD YOU BE A HAPPIER DOCTOR?
Is becoming a happier doctor – by transitioning to a membership practice – right for you?
Thousands of doctors have transitioned over to this model. The result: thriving practices that free physicians up to have the types of practices they dreamed of when they went into medicine in the first place. In other words—happier doctors and healthier patients.
What about you?
Diagnose yourself. Take the quiz here & get your score!
Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete.”
~ R. Buckminster Fuller
Let’s talk about happiness
Learn about the various membership practice options available. Email or call me to talk about how you might get on the road to well-being again.
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Latady Physician Strategies, LLC helps physicians convert to and grow Concierge, DPC and Hybrid practice models that allow them to treat their patients the way they want to be treated, while rediscovering their enjoyment in practicing medicine.
Call or email me with your questions about exploring and transitioning to Concierge or Direct Care medicine.
781.275.1415
