Christmas is one of my very favorite times of year - not just on a personal level, but on a professional level as an Medical Practice marketer. There are so many fun and creative ways you can incorporate the holiday season into your marketing plans. 1. Deliver a Hot Cocoa Bar One of the members of my marketing team came up with a really creative idea this year. She delivered "Hot Cocoa Bars" to area businesses to promote our Medical Practice. The investment was minimal, but the smiles it brought made it much easier for her to be able to share information about our Medical Practice facilities…

Have you ever had a really good marketing idea, implemented it, and it went off super successfully? Then you tried to emulate it the following year – or perhaps in another market – and you didn’t have the same results? Congratulations! You haven’t failed at marketing, you’ve learned one of the cardinal sins of marketing. Strategies and tactics vary by market, time of year, and the audience you are talking to. The number one question I get whenever I speak at a conference on marketing is, “What is the one thing I should be doing right now to market my…

If your community is anything like the communities where we have Medical Practice clinics, you are not limited on the number of publication sales reps frequenting your business, leaving you voicemails, or filling up your inbox, all in hopes of getting you to spend your advertising dollars with them. With so many options, how do you know which publication to pick? Step 1: Look at Magazine Racks If the publication you’re looking at advertising in is a community magazine found free around town, make it a point to look at the magazine racks when you frequent different establishments where…

Just because you have a position open at your Medical Practice doesn’t mean your inbox will instantly be flooded with resumes – at least not with resumes of qualified and top candidates. So what can you do to get the word out about your new positions and recruit top employees? Post Your Career Opportunities On-Line The first place to start is by posting your job on-line. Every job posting should go on as many free places as possible. Your website, Craigslist, Facebook, LinkedIn are great starting points. Having an on-line job application is also a great way to increase the number…

In Marketing 101 you learn there are two types of ways to classify a business. The first is commonly called B2B, which stands for business-to-business. When a business caters directly to consumers, it is called B2C, which stands for business-to-consumer. So what is your business? An Medical Practice may be both. While your primary services are B2C, if you also offer occupational medicine, you are also B2B. While it is good to understand the difference between the two from an operational perspective, from a marketing perspective, I think it is more important you get to know their less talked…

There are so many options in social media today that it can be overwhelming to decide where to start, how to keep going, and what new avenues you should explore in your Medical Practice marketing. Twitter is the fastest growing social media of 2013, but Pintrest, Instagram, and YouTube are also really growing. And even though it was announced this week that Facebook is losing on average of 6 million users in the United States each month, it is still the site most marketers deem their core platform for social media marketing In your social media marketing plan, Facebook is your launch pad for…

People often ask me, “How do you get so much done in a week?” And I tell them, “I have a fantastic to-do list system.” I actually thought I had really perfected the system last month when I switched to using the Planner Plus Pro App on my iPad instead of the traditional paper-pencil planner method. I now keep a running to-do list on paper and schedule my activities in the App. I love that system because if I’m unable to accomplish something, I can easily bounce it around to another date on the calendar with a simple touch of the finger. Nonetheless, I…

Do you ever feel like you could get so much more done if people would just leave you alone? Last Thursday I had 11 interruptions in the first 2 hours I was at work and 43 interruptions by the end of the work day. I wish I could say other days were different, but that was the first day I had tracked it in a while. It is no wonder some days I put in 12-14 hours, and I still don’t get finished with everything. This weekend while I was reading, I stumbled across this interesting statistic: “Researchers estimate that workers are interrupted every 11 minutes and then spend almost a…

By: Tina Bell Each time I interview a new person for our marketing team, I always ask them this question, “When selling, is it more important to you to make someone happy, or is it more important to you to get their business?” If you haven’t done sales before, you may be surprised to learn this is not a trick question. I am specifically looking for one answer, “To get their business.” Yet after interviewing close to 100 marketers over the course of my career, I’ve only received the correct answer from one candidate – and he got the job! You may be…

Tomorrow we will open our seventh Medical Practice, and this go around I have been less hands-on than ever before, allowing my marketing team to take the reigns of opening this clinic. When we open our eighth location later this fall, I will be even less hands-on because each time we open a new clinic, we fine-tune and update our Policy and Procedures manual for how-to open a clinic. From checklists and timelines, to inventory lists and supply houses, every step of our opening procedures is spelled out. As the new chief brand officer, this was the first clinic opening since I started in 2006…