What makes your practice stand apart from the competition? Why should a patient choose your practice over another’s? Differentiating your practice from others in your specialty and within your community is essential for success. If you are working hard trying to keep up with what your competition is doing, you are always going to be second. If you want to be first, you must do something unique. Break away from the mold you have created. Here are some tips to help get you started.

Assess the Situation

Look at your marketing. What are you doing? Compare that with what your competition is doing. If you are doing everything the same, you are probably getting comparable results. To get the best results, you must be an innovator. Be the first in your community to create a Facebook page or start a practice blog. Create an event that is unique to your community. Come up with something new for the remainder of this year that you can implement and see what happens. Keep in mind that with social media marketing (blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube), results take time.

Know Your Market

It is impossible to be the best doctor to everyone. You must know which patients will benefit from your services. Define your market by demographic information such as patient age, income level and geographic location. You should then determine how that segment of the market get’s information. For example, you should not market to 60 year olds the same way you market to 20 year olds. They seek information in different ways. You must be in tune to how they find information and they use that as a tool in your marketing arsenal.

Become an Expert

What makes you special? Almost everyone claims to be an expert in business, so it can be hard to know who really is. While it is important to educate the community on why you are best suited to treat them, you should also share what makes your practice stands apart. Do you have a 99% patient satisfaction rating? How about an in-house ambulatory surgery center? Were you the first to do something in the area?  You get the idea. Brainstorm. Consider how you are special and let that be known to your market.

Keep in Touch

A prospective patient who has not moved forward with your services is not one to write off unless they have told you they are not interested or have chosen another provider. You should keep in touch with your prospect list by contacting them at regular intervals. A couple examples to consider is reaching out through eBlasts and blogs. Sharing information that is important to them and not just about you will mean a lot to prospective patients. If you lose contact with them, they will most likely forget you. Then when the time comes that they need your services, they won’t remember who you are and will choose another provider. Don’t let that happen. Keep in touch.

Remain Fluid

Marketing is a process and what works one year, may not work the next. Your marketing should therefore be fluid and constantly evolving with the needs of both patients and prospects. Keep track of your marketing results and measure each item separately. That way if you need to change things up due to something not working, you will know what to remove.

By taking the time to be unique and effective with your marketing, you position your practice for success. If you need assistance coming up with how to help your practice stand out from the competition, give us a call.