Advertising from the Inside Out
For your campaign to succeed, a lot has to happen inside your practice. Here's advice from an expert.
By Wellentina Greer

We all know of practices that fail to achieve success despite beautiful facilities, experienced doctors, state-of-the-art technology and healthy advertising budgets. Their potential to grow surgical volumes and profits is obvious -- yet their advertising fails to do the trick.

Then there are the diamonds in the rough. Despite enormous practice obstacles and setbacks, advertising helps them achieve unprecedented growth.

Common causes of failure include:

• not creating a comprehensive, written marketing plan that addresses everyone's goals and expectations
• not budgeting to support the plan
• keeping the plan a secret from the staff
• not believing that advertising will really produce results (guaranteed to become a self-fulfilling prophecy)
• delivering lackluster service
• not making changes to accommodate new prospects brought in by the advertising, who have no prior reason to favor the practice
• not bothering to track results.

Said simply, "It's the internals, stupid!"

To illustrate, let's look at a practice that decided to start advertising and -- with a little outside guidance -- achieved tremendous success.

The story of Practice A

"Practice A," as I'll call it, originally relied almost exclusively on the optometric community for referrals. With two ophthalmologists, one optometrist, a staff of 30, and a beautiful, 21,000-square-foot multispecialty clinic and ambulatory surgery center, life was good . . . until the medical director made the practice's comanagement policies less favorable for the referring O.D.s. Suddenly, referrals dried up. Almost immediately the bottom line suffered.

To deal with this, the administrative team decided it was time to market directly to consumers. So, they hired a marketing director to get the job done. This turned out to be a wise decision -- the strategies employed by the new marketing director tripled practice revenue within 3 years.

What did the marketing director do? She:

• created a comprehensive, written plan based on thorough research of historical data and current practice expectations
• got financial and attitudinal support for the plan
• kept everyone in the practice involved and informed throughout the process of creating and executing the plan
• upgraded the practice to capture new patients drawn in by advertising
• implemented tracking systems and follow-up strategies
• hired a dedicated laser vision correction coordinator
• based advertising on market research and patient needs.

By using the same strategies Practice A used, you can help ensure that you get a sound return on your marketing investment. Let's look at each strategy more closely.

Getting off on the right foot

To be successful, your marketing campaign has to be based on a plan, and that plan has to be created through a process that takes everyone's expectations and experience into account. The plan also has to be supported -- both financially and by the attitudes of practice members.

To accomplish this:

Identify expectations and study historical data. First, find out what goals and expectations doctors and management have regarding revenue, new patient volume and surgical volume. Then, compare these with actual data, to see whether the goals and expectations are realistic.

Practice A's new marketing director interviewed staff and management, studied historical practice data and spent 2 months observing and working with the doctors. She found that their goals were, in fact, achievable. Once that was established, these goals and expectations provided clear starting and ending points for her game plan.

Develop a comprehensive, written plan. Don't start by developing the creative side of your marketing plan. Instead:

• Take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Then, create a list of missed opportunities that would take advantage of your practice's strengths. For example, Practice A's marketing director noted that summer was considered "dead" in the practice, so she planned a number of special summer events to generate interest and attract patients. Eventually, these changes led to summer being one of the practice's busiest times of the year.
• Eliminate ideas on the list that are unreasonable because of budget or time constraints.
• Prioritize the ideas that remain based on their probable impact on the bottom line.
• To keep your practice from becoming totally dependent on advertising, identify other marketing options that can also generate new prospects.
• Use this list of opportunities as the basis for a comprehensive, written plan.
• If possible, plan to try every idea at least once, unless there's a legitimate business reason not to move forward.

Establish a budget that supports the plan. Conduct research to determine how much of an investment would be required to implement the plan and reach the targeted goals. (For Practice A, the answer was roughly 8% of gross revenue.) Then create a budget that will fund and support the plan.

One word of caution: If you don't have enough money to effectively execute the plan you've created, revise the plan.

Get commitment from management. Each idea should be submitted to management. Once everyone has voiced his or her opinion, make a decision about whether to proceed.

Once your plan is completed, make sure that all doctors and managers agree to publicly support the plan. (Without this kind of total commitment, any plan will flounder.)

Keep your staff involved. The management team at Practice A openly shared its plan with staff and invited their input. This was not an idle gesture; they took the staff's input into consideration, making modifications in the plan when they felt the feedback was important. Then, as the plan was enacted, the doctors and managers made a special effort to show support for the plan and keep the staff informed about the results. As a result, the staff supported the plan.

Take action rather than waiting for perfection. Some practices choose to wait until everything is "ideal" before investing in a marketing campaign. Practice A adopted a far more practical philosophy. Although perfection was their goal, the staff at Practice A chose to see their practice as a work in progress. They didn't postpone their marketing plan, and they continually made improvements and adjustments to it as they executed it.

Keeping the momentum going

Once you have a plan in place:

Keep staff up to date. It's important to keep your staff abreast of the specific details and timing of the campaign. You don't want a caller to hear a staff member say, "I don't know anything about that. Management never tells us anything." Have copies of your ads available in the break area along with the media "flight schedule" showing the dates and times the ad(s) will run.

Keep communication open to prevent negativity. At Practice A, the growth that resulted from enacting the plan was dramatic, and from time to time, the staff became overwhelmed. As a result, negativity began to creep in. However, the naysayers were kept at bay by frequent and honest communication from the management team that always focused on the bigger picture.

Hire a dedicated LVC coordinator. If you have a laser vision correction practice, hire a sales person who focuses exclusively on growing this part of the business. Don't expect to grow your volume significantly if this person is also serving as your technician, administrator or marketing director.

In many respects, this person is your front-line sales person. Training -- meaning everything from taking courses, to networking at meetings, to reading books on marketing, communication and eyecare -- should be an ongoing process for the person in this position.

Implement a system for tracking results. The only way to adequately measure the effectiveness of a campaign is to track the results. For example, every phone call should be counted, and your staff must be trained to elicit multiple referral sources. (If you don't track results, a bad idea can snowball into a financial disaster. If you do, you can catch problems long before they become practice-threatening.)

To accomplish this, Practice A designed a simple call intake form that's given to the marketing director at the end of each day so the data can be entered into a software program.

Develop a follow-up strategy. Not every prospect who calls is ready to book an appointment today. How will you keep your practice in front of them until they're ready to schedule?

One good strategy is to implement a database system and hire a committed salesperson for this express purpose. This will ensure that you don't lose leads, new patients or income.

Share results with management on a regular basis. The marketing director for Practice A doesn't keep management in the dark about how things are going. Once a month, like clockwork, the doctors receive a report showing the number of incoming calls, consultations, new patient appointments, surgeries scheduled, conversions, and current cost-per-lead.

Enhancing the patient experience

Patients who are brought in by referral or word of mouth already have positive expectations about your practice. For that reason, the experience they have (when calling the practice for the first time, for example) may not be a key factor in practice success.

This isn't the case when prospects respond to advertising; they have no preset positive expectations. As a result, winning over these patients may require upgrading aspects of your practice that were previously less important.

To address this issue, Practice A conducted an assessment of every aspect of their service-providing capability. They made it their goal to create an experience so unique that patients couldn't stop talking about it. Every point of contact was reviewed; anything less than extraordinary was unacceptable.

Ultimately, the practice decided to:

Provide training for the call intake team. Profes-sional sales techniques give staff members confidence, make their jobs more enjoyable and help them build positive relationships with patients and prospects. Practice A decided to be proactive; they developed a telephone sales system before the phones started ringing with nonbonded callers. They made sure their telephone staff received training, which included role-playing anticipated objections and rehearsing scripts.

Ultimately, Practice A discovered that the way they handle incoming calls is often what differentiates their practice from the competition.

Limit responsibilities of the call intake person. It's amazing how many practices place this vital team member in the center of distraction -- at the front desk. There, the employee is constantly pulled between angry patient glares, frustrated callers and discourteous teammates.

Practice A moved their call intake person into a private office where the only distraction was another ringing line. Calls were handled more efficiently and conversions increased.

Insist on the team concept. Making the patient's experience a pleasant one is everyone's job. The first time I visited Practice A, I was amazed at the warm greeting I received. Several technicians and opticians asked me if I had been helped while I was in the reception area. They even offered me a beverage. (No, these employees had no idea who I was. To them I was just a patient.) It was obvious these folks loved their jobs and their happiness rubbed off on me.

If you need to warm up the impression your team is giving, consider doing away with "sign-in sheets." Have your staff greet your customers as if they are arriving at the Ritz Carlton. And to impress upon your employees that your practice really is moving toward the team concept, shred your old job descriptions and distribute new ones that contain a section on customer service.

Make the outside of the practice inviting. Start in the parking lot. Do you have adequate parking spaces? If not, consider providing valet parking. Do you have trash blowing around? Practice A has a maintenance team dedicated to making the outside look as good as the inside. (Doctors and managers have also been known to pick up unsightly trash.)

Make the inside of the practice sparkle. Whether you like it or not, patients judge your practice by its appearance. Practice A makes every effort to insure the practice is aesthetically appealing by:

• replacing stained chairs
• making sure that carpet, tile, walls, and window treatments are fresh
• using artwork and plants to take the edge off of a potentially sterile environment
• making sure that exam lanes aren't used as storage areas.

Keeping the faith

Yes, I'm sure that a few of you have tried some of these suggestions, but you still find your patient volume locked in neutral -- perhaps even in a downward spiral. Maybe you can legitimately blame the economy, negative publicity, or something else. But don't assume those are the only factors influencing your results, and don't give up hope. In fact, if this is your situation, consider hiring a secret shopper with no marketing or ophthalmology experience -- an outsider who can "test the waters" and give you an honest assessment of your practice.

Meanwhile, if you've been throwing money wildly at advertising and you're frustrated by the dismal response, stop advertising. Dissect what you've been doing and compare it with the strategies offered here; then make revisions and re-implement your advertising strategy.

The outcome should be a lot closer to the results you were hoping for.

Wellentina Greer is the director of sales and marketing for Network Affiliates (www.MedicalAdvertising.com), a leading ophthalmic marketing and advertising firm in Lakewood, Colo., serving a national clientele. She can be reached at 800-525-3332 or at wellentinag@netaff.com.