Internal Marketing 101: Tips for Your Medical Practice

Our team at McCauley Marketing Services has a unique set of specialties. Not only do we know how to market a healthcare practice like the back of our hand, but we also have extensive experience working within medical practices and helping them optimize their processes, make better use of their staff, add new treatments and options to their businesses, and more. Those distinct specialties combine to make us experts in another area as well: internal marketing.

While most marketing campaigns focus on bringing in new patients, internal marketing involves advertising to the patients you already have, encouraging them to purchase more services and products from you. We’ve seen strong internal marketing make a powerful difference in the balance sheet for one practice after another, especially considering how much more cost-effective it is to get revenue from new patients compared to seeking new patients, and yet so many practices neglect it.

If you want to boost your business through internal marketing, start with these tips.

Stay in Touch

We all have those friends who only call us when they want something from us, and you don’t want your patients to feel as if you’re doing the same thing. The solution is to maintain a more consistent relationship with them through regular communication and appropriate follow-ups.

One helpful way to do this is with a monthly email newsletter. It keeps your name in your patients’ minds and nurtures the relationship with them. It also gives them a consistent way to find out about your latest special discounts, events, and news. Just be careful to get patients’ permission before putting them on your email list. If you don’t do this and they report your emails as spam, your emails are more likely to land in other patients’ spam folders too, which hurts all your email marketing campaigns.

Educate and Inform Your Staff

The core of internal marketing lies with your staff. They need to recommend services and products to patients, tell them about upcoming sales, etc. To do that, however, they need to know about those sales and services.

Make a point to keep all your staff well-informed about the goings-on in the practice. You could do this with a staff letter, weekly staff meetings, or whatever works best with your team. On top of this, make sure your staff knows that part of their role is to encourage services and products to patients when appropriate. You’d be surprised how many opportunities staff members miss simply because they don’t think about offering those recommendations.

Have Easy Handouts

One of the keys to marketing your services and products to patients is to have an easy way to distribute the information. That’s where flyers come in. For every event, special offer, and new procedure, create a flyer or one-sheet summary that tells patients everything they need to know. This way, all your staff needs to do is hand each patient the flyer and say, “Have you heard about our new wrinkle reduction treatment?”

Think About Your Signage

Another important way to market to your patients is through the signage within your practice. Take the time to put yourself in your patients’ shoes. What path do they take during a typical appointment? Do they start in the waiting room, then wait a few minutes in an exam room before seeing the doctor?

One option we may recommend is a slideshow on a TV in your waiting room. The picture catches patients’ eyes more than a flat poster would. Whether you do a slideshow, posters, or both, try to change it up every so often so patients don’t start tuning it out.

Track and Analyze Data

For every practice our medical practice consultants work with, we press that one of the most important things they can do for their business is to track patient data. Track the treatments, comments, and concerns each patient has, what they’ve expressed interest in, how much they’ve purchased in the past, etc. Then use that data to market your new or existing services and events.

For large and small practices alike, internal marketing can make or break you. It’s no secret that healthcare marketing is challenging because you need to earn a person’s trust before they’ll become a patient. With your current patients, you’ve already earned their trust, so letting them know about more services and treatments they might enjoy can pay off in a hurry. For more help with your internal marketing or more ways to improve your practice, call McCauley Marketing Services.