Marketing Matters
What is Your Product?
The answer is your first step toward successful marketing.

BY BRAD RUDEN, M.B.A.

As we remind ourselves in each installment of Marketing Matters, marketing is more than ads. To market your practice effectively, you need a marketing strategy that involves many interdependent efforts, as illustrated by the Marketing Triangle to the right.

But before you can create your practice's marketing strategy, you have to define your product, which is the entire range of services that you offer. In other words, you have to know what you're marketing.

PRODUCT DEFINITION IN ACTION

Take one of my clients, Iredell Eye Center in Statesville, N.C., as a good example of this concept in action. IEC has identified its product as convenient eye care using the latest ophthalmic technology.

Like most ophthalmology practices, IEC provides routine eye exams and a full range of effective treatment options for ocular disorders. However, IEC goes a step further than the other rural practices in its area by offering the latest technology to enhance its medical service product.

The practice has significantly enhanced its retinal services by incorporating the Panoramic200 nonmydriatic scanning laser ophthalmoscope. With this instrument, the doctors and staff can perform the Optomap exam, which is designed to detect retinal disease without the need for pupil dilation. IEC also installed a Topcon nonmyrdriatic retinal camera. The images from this retinal camera are immediately inserted into patients' electronic medical records.

In the context of the Marketing Triangle, IEC offered the convenient, cutting-edge service of a nondilated retinal exam (external marketing), empowered its staff by providing them with the technology to provide the service (internal marketing), and then delivered on that promise of convenience to its patient base (interactive marketing).

Also for patient convenience, IEC has an on-site surgery suite, an optical well stocked with a variety of high-quality frames, and a contact-lens reordering feature on its Web site.

As practice administrator Sheri Raymer explains, "We know that patients don't always have time to come to our office when they simply need to reorder their contacts. With this service, they can place their order online and have it shipped to them in as little as 3 days."

Again, a good example of the Marketing Triangle at work. IEC promised convenience as part of its product (external marketing); it empowered the staff to provide that convenience (internal marketing); and then delivered on that promise via its on-site surgery suite, one-stop-shopping optical, and Web site contact-lens reordering service (interactive marketing).

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF

As you define your practice's product, ask yourself these questions:

• Can I succinctly and accurately define the product(s) we offer to our patients?
• Are we offering any products that conflict with our mission?
• Are there any products we're not offering that would enhance our mix of services?
• ADoes our marketing message(s) support all of our product lines or do they favor one service over another?

You needn't support every product line in every message, but every product line should have some marketing support. For example, as part of your marketing strategy, you may emphasize refractive surgery on odd-numbered months and other services on even numbered months.

The key is to make sure that you promote each service so that current and prospective patients are aware of what you have to offer.

And two more questions to ask yourself as you define your product:

• Am I sending an accurate message to our patients about the products we offer?
• Are our patients aware of all the services we offer?

KNOW WHO YOU ARE SO YOU CAN SPREAD THE WORD

If you can't define your product in a clear and cohesive message, you won't be able to support or promote it.

Know who you are and what you have to offer, and repeat that message again and again in your marketing efforts. A triangle needs all three sides to stand. If any one side is weak, the triangle can't support itself. Your marketing effort is no different.

Brad Ruden, owner of MedPro Consulting & Marketing Services in Phoenix, Ariz., is a frequent author and lecturer on ophthalmology practice management topics. You can reach him at (602) 274-1668, medpro@uswest.net, or via his Web site at www.medprocms.com.