Feature Article:

Looking Ahead for Marketing Success

By Shelley Simon, RN, DC, MPH, EdD
Founder, Beyond Practice Management

Where does the time go? It seems like yesterday that I was writing about making resolutions and setting goals for the New Year. But here we are, almost halfway through 2007. As you enjoy these early days of summer and think about what the second half of the year might hold, what comes to mind? Are you still feeling energized by the practice development goals you set back in January? Or are you slipping into ?the lazy days of summer? mode? If you?re in the first category you?ll enjoy this issue of Practice Your Way, as it will support your practice marketing activities. If you?re in the second category, this article offers encouragement to keep you engaged with your goals during the coming months.

Looking Ahead for Marketing Success is the first article in a three-part series about planning for the future. There is synchronicity associated with making marketing the focus of the first installment in the series. This week, Dynamic Chiropractic published an article I wrote on marketing mindset (see sidebar below). In addition, I?ve recently become part of a small group of consultants certified to use a marketing model — a fast track approach to attracting new clients — developed by Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Over the past year, I?ve become keenly interested in the marketing challenges that healthcare practitioners face. For many of my private coaching clients, sustainable practice growth is their most pressing concern.

In part two of the series we?ll examine the process of looking ahead more broadly. We will explore how most of us tend to envision the future and compare that with how professional futurists think and work. In part three we?ll cover important trends emerging in healthcare, discuss how practitioners can stay ahead of the change curve, and how to use heightened awareness to achieve marketing, practice management, and life goals.

How can you envision, plan, and shape your marketing so that you are positioned to effectively meet the health demands and needs of the public today, six months from now, five years from now? Answering these questions requires looking ahead, making predictions, observing trends, staying ahead of the curve, and taking calculated risks — all critical success factors in effective marketing.

Projecting into the future is something we all do. We look ahead positively and intentionally by planning, forecasting, and visioning. We also look ahead negatively and habitually when we worry, imagine worst-case scenarios, and anticipate disappointment. Of course, we?re much more likely to look ahead and move forward with our plans if we adopt the positive, intentional approach. Because marketing involves effort and risk, if you get bogged down in worry and focusing on what won?t work, it?s unlikely that even your best marketing plans will come to fruition.

Success in an unpredictable, unstable industry like healthcare requires looking ahead with a sense of confidence and determination that may be, at times, difficult to muster. Here are some questions that can be applied in a variety of situations to gain clarity about how to move forward. Answer each question as it relates to your view of marketing.

• What do I observe about my own experience — past and current?
• What is my level of confidence and optimism about the future?
• When do I tend to resist or become discouraged?
• In what areas do I see things as I wish they would be, rather than how they are?
• When have I missed an opportunity waiting for the ?right time? to act?
• If I were to act primarily from abundance and contribution, what would I do?
• In what ways do I personally thwart my own efforts?
• How clear is my vision about the future?

Thoughtfully answering these important questions is the first step in looking ahead effectively toward marketing success. When we take responsibility for our own behavior, attitude, and point of view we are then in the position to, as needed, shift into a more productive way of functioning. For example, if you recognize that when you think about marketing your mind immediately goes to what?s gone wrong in the past and why your efforts aren?t successful, you can make a conscious effort to adopt a different (i.e., more positive) point of view. This is easier said than done and it takes practice. But shifting the quality of thinking is the prelude to shifting toward more effective behavior.

To approach growing your practice in a more positive, confident way it helps to be familiar with some of the challenges and basic principles associated with marketing. The rest of this article is about marketing fundamentals and offers ideas and tools to help you look ahead at your own marketing efforts with greater enthusiasm.

You need look only as far as one of the monthly or bi-weekly healthcare publications to see that marketing must be a challenge for many of your colleagues. There are offerings on every third page of these publications for seminars, systems, and gimmicks promising to help you grow your practice. The reality is that there is no seminar or system or gimmick that can guarantee marketing success.

There are universal challenges that everyone faces relative to marketing. The sooner you come to terms with the fact that these challenges exist, the sooner you can overcome them and get on with growing your practice. Here are five challenges that practitioners face when they engage in marketing, along with common mistakes frequently made in an attempt to deal with the challenges.

Interestingly, the remedy for all of the mistakes mentioned above is the same: developing yourself professionally and increasing your marketing know-how. It?s not a new tactic or script that you can learn at a weekend seminar. For most practitioners, effectively addressing these universal marketing challenges requires developing interpersonal competence, increasing emotional intelligence, improving listening skills, and learning to communicate more clearly. In Tom Asacker?s book, A Clear Eye for Branding, he emphasizes that there are no perfect marketing techniques. What you want to focus on (instead of simply techniques) are the feelings, experience, and results of the patients you treat.

As you look ahead to the marketing activities you have planned, consider where these challenges and mistakes come into play. Failure to recognize and correct mistakes will result in repetition and diminishing returns. You will handle marketing moments more effectively by noticing where a patient or prospective patient is along the marketing continuum. When you are fully present — listening and responding appropriately — you increase the likelihood that an individual will engage your services and/or return for further care.

Over the years I?ve observed clients and colleagues who seem to have a knack for promoting themselves and marketing their practices. They make it look easy. The three distinctions I?ve noticed that these ?naturals? have in common are:

• Commitment. They are dedicated to their work and to a marketing plan that is based on their professional and personal values and long-term goals. They don?t view marketing as a sprint or one-time flurry of activity. They pace themselves and market continuously.
• Know-how. They?ve done their homework. They read and learn about not only practice marketing, but also about marketing on a much broader scale. They understand the language of marketing. They?ve tested a number of promotional activities to find out which ones work. They constantly review, measure, and refine their marketing plans.
• Support. Successful practitioners who have become skilled at effective marketing don?t do it alone. They typically have a coach or mentor, a mastermind group, and/or a team of people around them who are as committed to their goals as they are.

In preparing to launch a new service (see below for details) I?ve been synthesizing what I believe to be the best marketing ideas and concepts to use in coaching and mentoring my clients. I?d like to share with you now the foundational principles of Action Plan Marketing. These principles, developed by Robert Middleton, have helped thousands of service professionals produce stronger results from marketing. See how these seven principles might offer direction, context, and support to your marketing efforts.

1. Marketing Ball: The Game of Marketing
   Successful marketing is not a random set of activities; it has an underlying structure and set of rules you must follow to be successful. When you understand that marketing is game that has a clear process for moving prospects from strangers to committed patients, you begin to play it with confidence.
2. Marketing Mindset: The Inner Game of Marketing
   How you think about marketing your practice is a big key to success. If you avoid marketing, if you are afraid to implement plans, or if you?re confused about what to do next, you need to change your marketing mindset to be successful. It?s not as hard as you might imagine. This step includes powerful tools to help you create intentions and work with the negative intentions or beliefs that pull you off course.
3. Marketing Syntax: The Language of Marketing
   At its core, marketing is all about communication. It?s about communicating the value of what you offer in a language that prospective patients will understand. Most people don't realize that marketing has a language. If you use the right language, you generate attention and interest. If you use the wrong language, your prospective patients won't pay attention to you. It's absolutely essential that all your marketing messages and communications adhere to the language and syntax of marketing.
4. Core Marketing Message: The Value of Marketing
   When you have a marketing message that speaks clearly to the needs and desires of patients, you have a foundation that can be utilized in all your marketing. This sounds simple, but it takes real focus to develop a message that communicates with impact. A great marketing message tells a prospective patient what's in it for them to choose you as their healthcare practitioner.
5. Marketing Information: The Currency of Marketing
   Once you have the attention and interest of a potential patient, the next thing they want is more information. We call marketing information "currency," because it actually buys you attention, time, credibility, and trust. Marketing information includes everything from your business card to your web site to brochures and even to the quality of your staff.
6. Marketing Strategies: The How-To of Marketing
   Once you have the foundation of your marketing message and information, it's time to implement some strategies and tactics following the ?Marketing Ball? model. Strategies are the various activities you use to get the word ?out there? and might include networking, speaking, generating referrals, direct outreach, and publishing, among others. You need to develop and implement the most appropriate and effective marketing tactics for your practice (and stage in practice), for your area, and for what it is that you uniquely provide.
7. Marketing Action Plans: The Structure of Marketing
   Effective marketing requires the development of a detailed marketing action plan. It's not enough to know the strategies you are going to use, you need to map them out like a blueprint with specific objectives and action steps. Your Marketing Action Plan starts with determining where your prospects are located on the ?Marketing Ball? model. Once you have a solid plan in place and take the initial steps toward implementation, you are well on your way to attracting all the business you need.

Having a successful, sustainable practice is an ongoing endeavor. It requires constant attention. But it does not have to be a laborious process. It can be creative, even fun — if you have the right mindset. Looking ahead, what can you take away from this article to apply to your marketing activities? The effort you put in now — during May, June, July, and August — is what will have new patients showing up in your office once the lazy days of summer give way to autumn.

What's New:

Marketing Mentoring — A New Service

Attract and retain more patients by learning to play ?Marketing Ball?

For 27 years I?ve watched healthcare practitioners struggle to market their services. I?ve listened to practitioners say ?they should not have to do this.? I?ve watched them try one idea after another without much consistency and with varying degrees of success. I?ve seen clinicians give up completely on marketing because it?s so frustrating for them. I?ve also noticed that once practitioners accept the need for marketing and understand the basic principles, process and rules of the game of marketing, the better they become at consistently attracting and retaining new clients.

As I look ahead at my own business and, more importantly, as I look ahead and think about what my clients need, I?m excited to announce a new service — Marketing Mentoring. I am one of only thirteen certified Action Plan Marketing consultants worldwide. Marketing Mentoring uses a fast track approach and seven steps to help service professionals develop simple, powerful marketing plans that work.

The biggest marketing obstacle isn?t external. It?s internal. We all have beliefs that sabotage our marketing efforts. When you work on Step #2, Marketing Mindset, you?ll be introduced to very powerful tools that will help you dramatically shift your marketing perspective. I am excited to offer what I believe is a highly effective approach to dealing with both the inner and outer challenges of marketing.

Marketing Mentoring isn't for people who need a ?few marketing ideas? or ?a little coaching.? You already know far more than you can implement. If you?re like the majority of practitioners, you simply get stuck while trying to implement your ideas. You get caught up in the daily details and distractions of practice and your plans never come to fruition. Or you slip into avoidance mode. Or you try this and that and pretty soon trial and error wears you down. Marketing Mentoring is for practitioners who are ready to get serious and take their marketing efforts to a new level of effectiveness.

Marketing Mentoring might be right for you if you . . .

• Are genuinely committed to becoming a better marketer and growing your practice.
• Are willing to invest a certain amount of time, energy, and money to marketing.
• Are open to trying things outside your current comfort zone.
• Are patient and understand that results can take some time.
• Can take both direction and decisive action.

How does it work? Mentoring sessions are conducted by phone. In between sessions you will work on assignments to increase your marketing skills in each of the Seven Fast Track Steps. Depending upon your current situation (which we?ll discuss during an initial intake conversation) I might recommend that you begin with a series of focused coaching sessions to more effectively position you for success with the marketing program. As your understanding of marketing increases you will begin to communicate more effectively about your services and start generating more interest, attention, and business. You?ll start ?playing the game of marketing? to win.

Due to a busy schedule working with committed clients, it is only possible for me to work with highly motivated people. If you?re looking for a quick fix, I?m not the one to help you. But if you?re ready to jump in with dedication to building your skills and growing your practice, I?d like to hear from you.

Marketing Mentoring is now available on a one-on-one basis. Later this year I?ll be forming groups. I?ll be sending out more details about Marketing Mentoring in the coming weeks and months. If you?d like the inside line on how it?s developing and when it will be available, please e-mail me. I?d enjoy hearing about your marketing challenges as I finish developing this program and prepare to launch it to practitioners nationwide.

Upcoming Issues:

Looking Ahead: Part two and three in three-part series

June: Lookig Ahead - Part Two
July: Looking Ahead - Part Three