According to Tim Boyd, president and chief operating officer of Mediplay, physician groups are beginning to understand the benefits of strategies geared toward their existing patients. His team at Mediplay has partnered with The Practice Pros to offer a 5-step solution to help doctors make impactful marketing decisions:
1. Acknowledge the importance of patient education, marketing and retailing within the medical environment. The sooner physicians realize their patient base has become more inquisitive and knowledgeable, the sooner they can provide more depth of understanding about medical conditions and offer service solutions.
2. Experiencing a down economy does not mean decreasing or eliminating a marketing budget. It means refocusing to become more strategic. This is done by addressing current patients sitting in the waiting room.
3. Track where marketing dollars are being spent. Measure marketing costs by return on investment (ROI) for each marketing strategy. Understand the cost per lead (CPL) for each new patient and evaluate allocation of marketing spend.
4. Focus marketing dollars on areas that have the lowest CPL and highest ROI for the practice. In most cases, the answer will be current patients, who want to better understand a physician group's services, procedures and products, but may not be fully aware of the breadth of services offered.
5. Highlight services, procedures, and products by improving patient education. Current patients already know, like and trust their healthcare provider, so why not educate those patients on the full breadth of services available to improve their health? It is much easier and more cost-effective to increase the number of current patients who come for multiple healthcare services, verses looking to increase new patient volume.
A creative way to address these issues is by installing a Mediplay digital signage system to make waiting room time more enjoyable and informative for patients, providing them with valuable product and service details at the point-of-care. The Practice Pros and Mediplay have customers that run the spectrum of health care -- from ear, nose throat practices to dentistry, plastic surgery and dermatology, among many other medical groups.
1. Acknowledge the importance of patient education, marketing and retailing within the medical environment. The sooner physicians realize their patient base has become more inquisitive and knowledgeable, the sooner they can provide more depth of understanding about medical conditions and offer service solutions.
2. Experiencing a down economy does not mean decreasing or eliminating a marketing budget. It means refocusing to become more strategic. This is done by addressing current patients sitting in the waiting room.
3. Track where marketing dollars are being spent. Measure marketing costs by return on investment (ROI) for each marketing strategy. Understand the cost per lead (CPL) for each new patient and evaluate allocation of marketing spend.
4. Focus marketing dollars on areas that have the lowest CPL and highest ROI for the practice. In most cases, the answer will be current patients, who want to better understand a physician group's services, procedures and products, but may not be fully aware of the breadth of services offered.
5. Highlight services, procedures, and products by improving patient education. Current patients already know, like and trust their healthcare provider, so why not educate those patients on the full breadth of services available to improve their health? It is much easier and more cost-effective to increase the number of current patients who come for multiple healthcare services, verses looking to increase new patient volume.
A creative way to address these issues is by installing a Mediplay digital signage system to make waiting room time more enjoyable and informative for patients, providing them with valuable product and service details at the point-of-care. The Practice Pros and Mediplay have customers that run the spectrum of health care -- from ear, nose throat practices to dentistry, plastic surgery and dermatology, among many other medical groups.
Our take:
WireSpring remains bullish on the prospects of medical digital signage networks. Even as consumer spending in retail slows, health care spending has accelerated. An aging population of baby boomers and plethora of new health products on the market designed to address every conceivable health need has created a situation where doctors are able to offer advice and product-based solutions for more ailments than ever before.
Digital signage systems in hospital waiting rooms, medical offices and other health care related areas have the opportunity to both inform and educate, while still generating ancillary revenue for network owners and physicians alike.
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