Doctors: Do You Need Marketing?
DOCTORS: DO YOU NEED MARKETING?
It depends. Many doctors do not. If you have a large referral network and patients from 3-6 months out waiting to see you, certainly, you do not need to market your practice.
And if all you want is to practice medicine, you may not need to market. But if you want to build a business, then you need to approach your practice like any businessman approaches his company. Marketing is a crucial function of every growing, thriving company.
This is often a difficult thing for physicians to accept. Doctors are the best and brightest. They were the best students from kindergarten through college. They rarely received anything but an A, even in advanced courses. Teachers loved them. Once when I visited my son as an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis, a history teacher walked up to me and thanked me for letting my son be in his class. And that was a HISTORY class – my son’s best subjects were science and math. (He scored 99th percentile on his MCAT, stayed at Washington University for medical school, and today is an Anesthesiologist in Florida.)
So I full well understand the view most doctors have of marketing. They have always been THE smartest kids in school, they were surrounded by brilliance both in medical school and their residencies, and then they went straight into high paying jobs keeping people healthy and saving lives. Who can blame them for believing that they don’t need marketing? Or, if they do, that they know better than the marketing experts — better Internet marketing, search engine optimization, media advertising, direct mail, public relations, strategies, tactics, graphic art, copywriting, etc.
They begin to believe their own press clippings — a fatal business mistake.
I have enormous respect for physicians and readily admit that the least intelligent doctor is smarter than I am. But when it comes to marketing, which is all I have done for 39 years, I know better than them. What’s more, my experience, insights, and talents combined with theirs will produce the best possible marketing efforts for their groups, clinics, surgical centers, or hospitals.
Now THAT is smart business and great medical marketing.
Ed Sucherman
The Marketing Machine
847-433-6182
http://www.edsucherman.com/edsblog
Just wanted to say HI. I found your blog a few days ago on Technorati and have been reading it over the past few days.
Please keep reading! And don’t hesitate to contact me and ask questions.
Ed Sucherman
edsucherman@gmail.com
http://www.edsucherman.com
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