Today I wanted to talk to you about a question that we get all the time, especially with new clients. How long is it going to take to actually see results from your marketing efforts?
Now that it's a new year, maybe you're thinking about how you need to step it up and increase your revenue. You want to see new patients and expand your practice by doing some marketing. First, when it comes to marketing, you need to build a foundation and that takes time. If you build a solid foundation first, such as building an email list, and getting on social media, it will pay off exponentially in terms of the results that you're going to see from your marketing.
What does a good foundation mean?
- You need to have a good website.
- You have to evaluate your online reputation (Google reviews are the most important!)
If you don't take care of these things first, you will waste time and effort with marketing because your efforts will not convert into calls.
The next thing you need to have in place is a social media presence. So where do you start? Facebook? Instagram? Linkedin? Youtube?
Start with Facebook. Start branding yourself with a Facebook business page and building your audience. A Facebook Business page is now considered a basic marketing necessity these days.
You need to build your email list. If you don't have a great email list right now, start today. This s a key component of building a solid marketing foundation.
You have to have all of these things in place before you're going to start seeing results in your marketing. If you start marketing without having your foundation built, you're not going to see results. It should take you approximately 30 days to get that foundation in place. Then you will start to build momentum.
I think of this is like weight loss. You put on 20-30 pounds, and you didn't do it overnight. You did it over the span of the years and it's going to take you more than a month or two to see results in your weight loss. Same holds true for marketing. So, you really need to be patient and realize being consistent and having that solid foundation are the most important things for you to be successful as quickly as possible.
What the 5 key things you need to be doing? You need a mobile responsive website, a 4.5+ star reputation on Google, a Facebook Business page, and a monthly email newsletter. The reason for this, is you need to reach different people in different avenues.
At first, when you think about all of the things that you need to be doing to truly successfully market your practice, it seems like a lot. But with a solid marketing plan, it's totally achievable. When you look at what big companies do, they're on TV, they're in magazines, they are on social media - they're making sure that they can hit a wide audience in multiple different ways. So this is why as a physician, it's not enough anymore just to have a website, or just a Facebook Business page. You need to be on multiple channels.
The next point is consistency.....you have to post content frequently. We recommend at least 1 post per day on social media. Why? The rule of marketing is that prospective patients will need to hear your message seven times or more before they take action.
Let's say you see a commercial for this awesome new shampoo. Do you go buy the shampoo the very first time you see the commercial? No. Then, maybe a few days later you see a magazine ad for it or you see it in your Facebook newsfeed. Then you happen to see your friend and her hair looks amazing, so you ask her, "what have you done with your hair?".... and coincidentally she uses the same shampoo!!! Now, you might actually think you need to test out this shampoo for myself.
Well, the same thing holds true with medical marketing. You need to present the message to patients multiple times before it will registers.
When I see doctors get frustrated and they feel like they don't have a hundred new calls coming in the first month, think the marketing isn't working. But it is....you are building the foundation and building momentum.
So the message that I really want to drive home today is that you have to build a solid foundation, you need to be marketing in multiple different ways (facebook, emails, websites, google reviews), and you need to be patient and consistent. You can't do it for one month and then give up and then try it again two months later. If you're not being consistent, you're not going to see results. The fastest way results is a solid foundation, multiple channel's, consistency and patience.
Hope that helps! Here's to your success!