How P2P Can Help Grow Your Business
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 about sister…P2P! What is P2P? People-to-People or Person-to-Person marketing recognizes that neither consumers nor businesses actually select a service or buy a product from a business. Instead, all transactions are based around people buying from other people. At the end of the day, any service or product in any industry can be replicated. What can’t be replicated is the unique personal touch your business provides to each person who utilizes your services. In the Medical Practice industry, people expect your doctor to be well trained and knowledgeable. They expect your front desk person to know how to check them in. They expect your nursing staff to be able to take and record vitals. They even expect that as an Medical Practice you’re able to treat a wide variety of medical non-life-threatening emergencies on a walk-in basis. What they often don’t expect is an amazing customer experience, where they leave feeling touched by the people they encountered at each point of patient contact during their visit. Your true competitive advantage in the market place is not that you are open an hour later than another medical facility in town. It is not that you have only doctors where your competitors also staff with midlevels. Your competitive advantage is not that you have a larger marketing budget or a bigger lobby. Your competitive advantage really comes from your human resources and how they treat your patients. That is why it is so important that you take time to invest in building your employees. At the end of the day, your employees are your brand in the Medical Practice business. So forget B2B and B2C. Train them to understand that you are in the P2P business, and then give them the skills and tools necessary to be successful. Their success is your success. What are you doing to ensure each person who comes in contact with a patient is making their experience what my colleagues at HealthCARE Express define as a Wowza! Customer Experience? Resources for Success Not sure where to start, check out some of our past articles on staff training: The No Complaining Rule Everyone Needs a Ms. Patty Secrets to Keeping Your Best Employees Entropy Happens, Training Can Help Managing Staff in Multiple Locations Meeting Unmet Expectations
Article By: Tina Bell Tina Bell is the Director of Marketing for HealthCARE Express®, where her responsibilities include spearheading the company’s social media and internet strategies, leading the in-house physician recruitment team, and developing aggressive programs to promote patient satisfaction and effective service recovery. Tina speaks nationally at industry conferences including the Medical Practice Association of America and the National Association of Occupational Health Professionals. She is the director of business development for Medical Practice Success and an independent Medical Practice marketing consultant.
