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Medical and Dental Practice Management: New Patient Marketing Without Using Your Own Money

By: Helmut Flasch

Note: This marketing plan will help get new patients into your dental practice or medical practice inexpensively. Using correct marketing plans will resolve the majority of frustrations that you may have in new patient marketing.

One thing is for sure, and that is that marketing for any product or service is even more problematic during any recession, such as the current low consumer spending on discretionary items. I remember a saying I learned about 20 years ago in the real-estate business: "Other people's money" (OPM). Even if you do not use other people's money for down payment, or the renter's money to cover the mortgage payment, you probably still use the bank's money to get the loan, right?

You see, OPM is more present than you might think at first glance. Of course, - use other people's money for your marketing. Why didn't I think of that? But how do you go about that is the big question.

First of all when I say OPM, I must point out that getting money only for your marketing is an extremely limited thinking. After all, what would you rather have: $100,000 in marketing budget - given to you by some organization and you never have to pay it back or several small and large organizations promoting you - actually endorsing you and your service - to millions of their clients, members, etc. over and over again?

To make the choice a bit simpler - advertising is less and less believed in bad economic times, and it hardly has any pull at all.

A doctor who some years ago was even a consultant for a national practice management consulting company, realized the truth of the lesser pull on advertising when he put out 6000 direct mailers and paid $1700 for it, and even when he had used all the marketing knowledge he had learned and even taught to the doctors when he was a consultant, he got not even a call. He made (and was teaching) the king of all mistakes in marketing. He is trying to build a marketing system by his own, without the help of organizations which have already built such a system and is actually willing to put his message on.

To contact millions, even only hundreds of thousands of your prospect via organizations which already have an "in" with your prospects is worth much more than the $100,000 spoken about above. Besides, do you really think that anyone will ever give you $100,000 for marketing which you do not have to pay back?

So, the key is to get the same $100,000 and more, in legwork, support, distribution of marketing materials and endorsements. You don't need money if you have "friends" (very powerful friends, in the form of organizations, media and people living in the community) endorsing and promoting you to millions over and over and over again.

You see, most business people try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to building (marketing) their business. To a certain degree all small business owners, including dental and medical practice owners, have a small and outdated thinking - which is very much the only reason that their businesses are small.

Most (literally all) doctors and small business owners try to build a full marketing infrastructure from scratch with their own money. Doctors, all over the country, soon realize that this is very expensive and does not bring all that much result (simply because the effort to create such an infrastructure is usually too big for the small business and what an individual business owner can put out in terms of effort is too small to amount to anything).

The next step doctors usually take is to stop marketing or cut it down even more (even though one of the reasons it did not work in the first place was the insufficient amount of marketing despite that the doctor had thought it was a lot). Trying to create your own marketing infrastructure can easily be compared with trying to build your own car or for a person to try to "reinvent" root canal without going to school and without using the already invented tools.

But that waste of misspent marketing money and misspent time is NOT the saddest thing in this whole story. No, it is the non-attainment of a big and booming practice, the lack of satisfaction of not being perceived as an extraordinary practitioner because of the successful practice and of course not making the money, which comes with all that, which is the much greater loss. There is a lot of money lost - never made - because of trying to build a marketing infrastructure from scratch and on your own.

Use other organizations' power to reach lots and lots of people with their already existing infrastructure and already existing audience. Why build roads and trucks when you can put your message for free on big trucks, which are already running down the highway towards your destination at great speed? Why try to invent a car (despite the fact that you are not a car builder) which is already invented and offered for free?

What if you could get the corporate world as well as the non-profit world, and the media sponsoring and endorsing you, your services and your practice? What about if those entities will be endorsing you as an absolute expert and a community leader? What if well-known companies and non-profit organizations start carrying your messages?

You see, just as there is a precise technology for pulling a tooth, getting rid of a cold, building a bridge etc, there IS a technology on how to get the sponsorship of corporations, non-profit organizations, media, other medical practitioners etc.

Don't try to build your own marketing train, when all you need to do is to hook on to a high speed train!

Remember: Whether in a slow economy or fast economy learn how to market for new customers with using resources other than your own. Good new patient marketing will keep your business strong and thriving!

Article Source: http://www.newarticledaily.com

Helmut Flasch is a marketing consultant who uses Un-advertising rather than the traditional advertising methods. Find out more information about his marketing strategy at www.unadvertise.com

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