Understand the best way to implement your medical marketing plan

People often get lost at the most important stage of their medical marketing plan, implementation. It may feel as though, once you’ve outlined a strategy, you’ve already done everything at this point, but you haven’t. Now that you have done all the hard work, you must actually follow the plan you have invested so much of your time in and see it through to the end. Otherwise, you will lose all of your momentum, not to mention money, time and brain cells.

Nominate someone to be in charge of implementing your medical marketing plan and to be responsible for staying on time and within budget. It doesn’t matter whether that person is external or internal, only that the person has the time and energy to dedicate to your success. Unless you actually set aside time to work on your plan, it will be pushed aside in the daily grind and forgotten. Then you will have lost your investment because the key to a successful marketing plan is consistency and repetition, fuelled by enthusiasm. If you work your plan only sporadically or at the last minute, then you lose the awareness you are building.

Planning for a marathon, not a sprint

Once the medical marketing strategies have been determined, put them into a calendar or timeline to ensure that those who have been tasked with the responsibility can execute the plan.

Careful thought should be given to the timing of each activity, and marketing activities should be scheduled and spread throughout the entire year, with focus given to the slower times of the year when prospective patients aren’t necessarily looking for medical care.

Tracking your marketing plan

Tracking is perhaps the most essential aspect of your medical marketing. Without it you’re shooting, or rather spending, in the dark. You have to know in detail how many patients each type of advertising is generating. This can easily be done within your practice management software. Virtually all practice management software programs have a place to enter ‘referral source’, and most will run a variety of reports that will tell you exactly how your advertising is working.

If a certain strategy does not yield acceptable results, it does not necessarily indicate that the idea was a complete failure. Sometimes simple tweaks can produce improved results.