topic: Marketing Your Clinic

Good marketing is all about selling a business’s value proposition.

You should be able to clearly and concisely explain what your value proposition is, why you believe in it, and how this defines your clinic. Rather than simply listing what makes your clinic different from others on the market, think about your purpose, cause or belief behind it. When marketing yourself and your clinic, it’s this purpose that you’re going to want to put at the center of your strategy.

Check out this TED talk for a more thorough explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA

Flyers

Flyers may seem old school but they’re still an effective means of disseminating information and letting people know that your business is out there.
They’re especially effective for local advertising.

Keep the flyers simple and interesting; have them display the name and address of your clinic, and highlight what you do as well as some great examples of savings that enrolling in Direct Care can bring.

Asking a printing company to make flyers for you can quickly become expensive. If you can, print them in your office. Post them anywhere community members gather regularly – local coffee shops, bakeries or farmer’s markets.

Local Groups

Local groups are a great resource for meeting large numbers of potential patients.

A good starting point is to join the local chamber of commerce. Once you join you’ll have access to all of their events and, by extension, their members. Other groups worth exploring include:

• Rotary International
• Lions
• Church Groups
• Meetups
• Facebook Groups

If possible, ask to speak at these events. Remember, because you’re offering a valuable service to the local community, people will want to hear what you have to say. Doctors also don’t normally attend these types of meetings, so so people will be excited to meet you if you put yourself out there.

Open Houses

Another strategy worth pursuing is to plan a few open houses at your clinic to discuss potential memberships. Have some free food and beverages on offer, and use social media such as a Facebook event to promote it. These meetings can be quite hit and miss, so keep it simple and don’t spend too much time on each event. That being said, host these events frequently. Word of mouth is a very powerful marketing tool, so even talking to a small group of attendees can create a ripple effect within the community.

Contact Specialists

As someone running a clinic, you’re going to be both, directly and indirectly, working with medical specialists. It’s worthwhile to drop by specialists within the area and introduce yourself. After all, they have families and employees that could also use affordable care.

Online Marketing

Being present online is absolutely crucial for tapping into a digital market of potential patients. It allows you almost limitless reach for targeting very specific demographics as well as the ability to communicate directly with patients should they need help or information.

While this guide has already covered how to set up and maintain social media accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, you should also be optimizing your website for SEO. Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of optimizing your website so that it can be found more easily on search engines like Google. This is quite a process in its own right, but one that shouldn’t be ignored. 

Coupling DPC with Employer Groups

Pitching to employers provides a significant opportunity for rapid growth within the DPC market. Most large employers have or should have a partially self-funded insurance plan. These are very valuable because they are exempt from the Affordable Care Act rules and regulations for employer-based insurance. Also, they are very flexible which allows the employer the space to design their perfect “wraparound” plan. Finally, but probably most important, a self-funded plan financially benefits employers immediately from the savings on copays, procedure fees, wholesale medicines, labs, imaging, pathology and decreased ER/Urgent care usage.

The important thing when talking to employers is to demonstrate how mutually beneficial – and how financially prudent - signing up to your clinic is. Show them the objective savings and how you are able to decrease specific costs compared to their previous financial year. Explain how their employees will benefit with regards to unlimited doctor visits, no copays, less time off work, the ability to contact their doctor when they need them, weekend coverage, and more.

Use the below attachments from a company we pitched to and sold to. Let the facts of this case study speak for you. Facts such as 31.8% of the insurance claims came from office visits (each $40 copay not factored into this), and that 34.4% of their claims were for medications. Demonstrate that this group was paying $12000 per year, per employee yet a single individual never claimed over $3000 per year.

You have to show them the massive savings that can be had when converting from a traditional, fully-insured plan to a partially self-funded plan. Be specific here. Demonstrate specifically how Direct Care can save money with regards to medication, labs, pathology, specialty referrals, etc. Emphasize how working with DPC will lower their premiums and their claims while improving the health of their employees at a much lower cost.

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