In the world of digital marketing, strategies that were once on the horizon have now arrived with a bang. Blink, and you will miss the opportunity to jump ahead of the competition. Planning proactively ahead for the coming year is not only practical, but can help you save in the long run.
So what new marketing strategies will work for your practice? How do you know what is right for you? Mapping out your future goals is important if you are looking to increase revenue and/or grow your business in 2020.
Looking Inwards
Before allocating precious marketing dollars to your 2020 plan, take a look at the things that did and didn’t work this year. Was your staff given the opportunity to be properly trained before launching that campaign? Did you accurately track results, or could the success you are measuring be based on anecdotal evidence? Chances are, if your lead intake process was sluggish, inconsistent, or — worse — absent, then a sizable portion of your ad spend was wasted.
After you’ve thoroughly evaluated 2019, it’s time to look ahead to 2020. What do you want to achieve in the coming year?
Let’s Talk about Goals
A SWOT analysis is a brainstorming technique that helps you understand your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The outcome should increase your value to your patients and clients while distinguishing your practice from the competition.
In addition to answering objectively for yourself, discuss the following with individual staff members:
- What are your strongest assets? What unique resources and differentiators do you have?
- What’s not working so well, and what needs improvement?
- How can you maximize new opportunities in the market, including new trends?
- Who are your competitors and what are they doing better than you?
Getting Started
After determining the answers to SWOT, you can set goals that are measurable and achievable. For example, your medical practice wants to increase mommy makeover patients this year. Determine who that audience might be and set a budget you are comfortable with.
Ask yourself: does your staff have the bandwidth to handle a 10% increase? Do you need to hire more staff? Following the sample outline below is a great place to start. Lean on your agency to guide you through this process and help you answer the more difficult questions.
1. Determine what your measurable development goals are
Note: 3 is a good start. Once you identify these overarching goals, work backwards to identify quarterly and monthly goals to reach them by the end of the year (see #2). For example:
- Goal 1: Increase Patient Volume by 10%
- Goal 2: Increase New Patient Acquisition by 10%
- Goal 3: Increase Annual Revenue by 20%
2. Determine what efforts are needed quarterly/monthly to reach your goals.
Once you identify your quarterly/monthly facilitating steps, identify what your current capacity is to accomplish these steps, and what capacity you need to obtain (see #3).
- Overarching Goal for the Year: Increase Patient Volume by 10%
- Monthly Goal to Facilitate: Increase monthly patient volume by 25 patients
3. Determine what marketing investments you’ll need to make in order to meet your operational goals.
Here is where you compare the results of day-to-day business operations with what you spend (and the ROI) on marketing and advertising. To understand the data, your marketing agency should be able to provide you results for your campaigns. With those in hand, you can compare what you spend with the consultations, cases and closed business in your ledger.
Look back at your previous year’s performance to assess. For example, if you know that you want to increase client volume by 10%, take a look back at the numbers for your practice, then work backwards. What percentage of consultations turn into clients? If 60% of your consultations turn into clients, you can do the math to figure out how many consultations you’ll need to have each week in order to produce a 10% increase in clients.
Do you know to which phases of the Marketing Funnel your budget is currently allocated? Make sure you are reaching audiences after the Awareness stage. Are you spending 100% of your budget on Brand Awareness and Exposure? If the answer is “yes,” then work with your agency to develop programs that will convert and nurture leads via email campaigns, newsletters, downloadable premium content, loyalty programs and rewards.
With your digital marketing goals in place, your marketing consultant can help you determine where to allocate your monthly marketing budget in order to target traffic, leads or consultations/conversions, as well as retention. Each of these steps in the consumer journey represent a different area of the marketing funnel, and distributing your marketing budget appropriately will help you achieve the operational goals you have laid out for the year.
4. Determine your operational capacity
Increasing your goals from last year is great, but more business often means you need additional resources to handle new leads and clients.
- Overarching Goal for the Year: Increase Patient Volume by 10%
- Monthly Goal: Increase monthly patient volume by 25 patients
- Capacity Needed: 4 additional hours of available clinic time per month + two more staff members scheduled
5. Make sure tracking time is included and a process established
How do you plan to evaluate the results when the campaign concludes? What is the best way for your staff to record and identify whether a lead came from one marketing strategy or another?
- Overarching Goal for the Year: Increase Patient Volume by 10%
- Monthly Goal: Increase monthly patient volume by 25 patients
- Capacity Needed: Four more hours of available staff time per month + two additional staff members scheduled
- Tracking Method: Excel Spreadsheet
Bear This in Mind for Your Strategy Session
Consumer expectations have never been higher. There are endless ways to connect with your target audience, and in our multi-channel, uber-connected world, people demand instant gratification. Consumers want the best answer to their question that presents the most qualified and valuable solution. In search of these things, they may reach out via voice search, through your website, or through your social media platforms – without consistency in their behavioral patterns.
You want your clients to be able to connect with your practice via all of your communications channels, and have the ability to pick up where they left off on one channel and continue the conversation on another. Working closely with your agency will help you to determine the right platforms and channels.
Find out how MyAdvice can help you build an effective marketing strategy for 2020. Our agency takes into account all stages of the customer journey to ensure maximum results for awareness, retention, conversion, and more. Please call 435.575.7470 for your complimentary marketing evaluation!
