Strategies to Market Your Practice for Success

Any successful realtor knows how important it is to stage a home to attract the right buyer - the same principal applies to medical practices. There are tons of ways you can "stage" a practice to attract the right patients; some are legally required, some are practical, some are fun, and some are just plain smart-business. One of the key ways to stage your practice for success is your marketing program.

Many practices have interpreted their professional responsibility as an obligation to see and treat virtually any patient who can use the telephone and present his body in their office. But this can lead to a revolving door of acute patients, rather than long-term patients, and can leave you stressed and strap your practice marketing budget.

I am not suggesting that if you have the capacity to serve those seeking care, you deny them access. What I want you to do is to stage your practice for success by identify characteristics of those patients you especially enjoy serving, and make a specific marketing effort to attract and retain those patients.

Patients that you especially enjoy seeing are called "ideal patients." Every practice, and possibly even practitioner, will have a different set of qualifiers that create their ideal patient. There are a few qualities that universally belong on all ideal-patient profiles. All ideal patients are patients:

• You enjoy working with;

• That need your help;

• Who will happily pay what you are worth (privately, via insurance, or a combination); and

• That will get great results from the services you can or do offer.

Now taking a look at just that short list of criteria, can you imagine what it would be like to have a practice full of these types of patients? I challenge you to stage your practice for success by taking the steps to identify and market it to your ideal patient, rather than casting so large of a net that you are seeing patients you don't enjoy seeing, and who don't stick around your practice.