How 4 Quick Fixes Can Make Your Event a Success

Hosting an informational seminar or event is a great way to introduce your community to your practice.

Here are our four of our favorite suggestions to help "punch up" your event and make the most of your effort:

1) Choose an event theme that corresponds to an upcoming holiday For example, if you want to offer an oral cancer screening, choose cancer awareness month.

2) Host giveaways. Give away free screenings or elective services – it’s a low risk way for people to experience your care and a great way to generate lots of interest.

3) List your event on as many online event calendars as you can find. Not only are you likely to create more buzz, but local publications will often republish your events.

4) Invite relevant bloggers or media contacts to attend an event for free. Check out your local news sources to find influential writers or those that cover health care topics. Make sure you have future events already scheduled so they can promote them or provide links in their write-ups.

If you’ve got any killer tips to add, we’d love to hear from you!

Email Marketing

WOW! Talk about a good return! According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated an ROI of $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2008!

Email marketing can involve new patient acquisition, lead nurturing, patient reactivation and retention, and of course increased treatment acceptance, which means that there are a lot of processes and services are potentially involved.


Many practices choose to have their administrative staff handle their email marketing in house. If you do, here are some considerations to help get the most out of your communication with your patients:

• Strategy & Research
• Promotional Planning (do you have a calendar of events?)
• Copy Writing & Content Development (content provides value so don’t let it be an after thought)
• List Growth & Community Building (are you sure that all new patients are added to your list?)
• List Segmentation (how can you segment your list to better target your messages?)
• Cross-channel Integration (do your emails connect to your website and blog?)

If the list above encompasses more than you’re doing, this may be a strong indicator that you’re under-utilizing this lucrative channel. It may be time to reevaluate your process or get some additional training so you can get your systems running in top form. 


If you are interested in a recommendation for an email marketing training course, email me at sarah@npressnewsletter.com and I can help you find a program that suits your needs.


- Sarah Nelson 
sarah@npressnewsletter.com 

Thoughts about Social Media and Healthcare from SXSW

The Npress and Practice Marketing Revolution team had the pleasure of attending South by Southwest in Austin, TX. We participated in a variety of great workshops and presentations on social media and health care with speakers like Livestrong’s CEO Doug Ulman, MD Anderson, Humana, and the University of Maryland’s Hospital.

We’d like to share some social media FAQs that we discussed with our colleagues in hopes of helping you with your practices' strategy.

Why is connecting with patients online important for shaping the way our practices work?

We need to be closer to patients to understand their experience and their needs. An online experience allows patients to open up and share in a more personal and frank way. The whole point is to demonstrate that you care and you respond. Your response tells story about your practice’s character.

Our patients want to get to the computer and Google immediately when given a diagnosis. How can doctors stay relevant as health information providers?

Instead of letting patients hit the web blindly and read every site they can find about their condition, doctors and practices need to be a part of the conversation. An easy thing to do is to send patients to recommended resources. It’s like a prescription for information and can help their patients to find credible sources and understand health literacy online.

How can we set the stage for using social media in our practice?

Here is a step by step breakdown:

* Create business case (why important for the practice)
* Gain senior leadership support (need but in from doctors)
* Define processes
* Listen online (what are other companies doing and what are your patients saying about you?)
* Connect with other initiatives (what else are you doing for patient service and marketing?)
* Establish a personality
* Interact – don’t broadcast

We'll be discussing these and other ideas in subsequent posts. If you have questions, please don't hesitate to send an email to sarah@npressnewsletter.com. If you have something you'd like to add, please leave a comment!

Npress introduces a new social media program

Npress is pleased to introduce our new Practice Marketing Revolution program. Over the years, many Npress newsletter clients and fans have asked us for help with social media, and we’re very grateful for that. With our new Practice Marketing Revolution Program, we now have the ability to meet your social media content strategy and execution needs.

Here’s How It Works:

1. Join our program and get a customized social media marketing strategy for your practice by sending an email to sarah@npressnewsletter.com

2. We’ll meet with you to determine your goals and needs and begin structuring your social media presence.

3. Build a content strategy. We’ll work with you to discover the best type of content for engaging your patients.

4. Get connected. Once we’ve figured out what you want to accomplish with social media, we will help you build a network to serve your existing patients and attract new ones.

But wait, there’s more!

To kick off this exciting program and say thanks to our clients, we’re holding a contest. Join the Practice Marketing Revolution before March 31, 2010 and you’ll automatically be entered into a drawing to win a $100 Amazon gift card. The winner will be announced in April.

We look forward to welcoming you as a Practice Marketing Revolution superstar!

Visit the Practice Marketing Revolution

What kind of status message does your practice create?

Whether your practice is proactively engaged in social media or just loosely experimenting, you have to consider the impact social media can have on your practice and "brand".

Increased social media access via Mobile devices is helping to drive the use and access of social media wherever we go. Facebook recently indicated that 25 percent of its users (or roughly 100 million) primarily access Facebook via mobile methods. That means, when patients are in your practice, they are likely logging on to one or more of their social networks.

Ask yourself:

Are you delivering an experience worth "posting a status message" about?
How can you create an experience that your patients want to share with their friends through social media?
Are you meeting where they are and engaging in social media too?

Your Patient's Pet Peeves

Last month, we conducted a survey of patients in medical practices to find out what they would like out of their relationships with their providers and what really irked them. Here are our findings:

Appointment wait time is still the number one cause for complaint for patients in health care practices. The study, conducted by Npress, aimed to discover current trends in patient satisfaction. Participants were asked to name their number one pet peeve when seeking the care of a health care provider. They were also asked to specify which types of practices they frequent.

The survey found that excessive wait time at an office prior to an appointment was the primary criticism of 72 percent of the 500- person sample.  Respondents suggested numerous remedies including: “an advanced courtesy call if the wait can be anticipated”, “check in to let me know what is going on,” or “offer me a drink after I’ve been waiting fifteen minutes.”

Additional findings from the survey:

• Frustration with the lack of upfront information about the full cost of care was expressed by 41% of patients with insurance.
• 19% of respondents who frequent specialty practices mentioned that they would like to feel remembered by the staff. As one respondent put it, “how does the receptionist not know my name with more than 10 visits in a 6-month period?”
• More than a quarter of survey respondents would like to be able to reach their doctor after hours or have a reliable message service available.
• What would be nice? Several respondents mentioned they would like to receive a printout of the day’s visit with stats like blood pressure, weight, etc, as well as what was discussed, and suggested actions.

One overarching conclusion from the survey is that if doctors want to differentiate themselves and provide an exceptional patient experience, they should provide outward signs that they are doing something patient complaints, specifically regarding appointment wait times.

Develop Your Annual Practice Marketing Plan

Your annual marketing plan will assist you in growing your practice and figuring out what it is that you need to do, how to do it, and when to do it. We have a new 6 day marketing course we will revisit your marketing goals and determine what it is that you hope to achieve in the upcoming year with your marketing efforts.

How it works:

Over the next six days I will walk you through the steps of creating a solid marketing plan for your health care practice. At the end of our course you will have completed the following:

• Preparation of your mission statement and vision for the next few months.
• Discover and define your target patients.
• Develop and plan your marketing strategy.
• Develop your marketing mix.
• Create a marketing calendar that serves as your schedule of marketing activities and events for the upcoming year.

When you have finished the course you will have a strong marketing plan in your hand. This will become a tool that will help you market your practice while attending to patients and your other responsibilities.

Sound good? Ok, now it is time to get started… 

Send an email to sarah@npressnewsletter.com with “Marketing Plan” in the subject line. Each day you will receive a new lesson and assignment to complete. I will be available to coach you through the 6 days and by the time you have completed the 6th day you will have created your annual marketing plan.