Your medical practice is a business. Everyday you are competing with other practices for customers and resources. We tend to focus on the patient care aspect of the practice, but to keep your practice running you need to consider the business aspects as well. Marketing, public relations and advertising are an important part of how you keep your business operating. These activities bring in new business—both patients and referring providers—and enhance your visibility within your community.
There are many simple steps you can take to promote your business and build community relationships.
- Reach out to referring providers and maintain those relationships
- Communicate regularly with your patients
- Develop value-added services for your patients
- Create a presence on the web
- Establish your providers as experts or resources in your community or specialty
If you are ready to take more comprehensive action to market your practice, read the Nine Steps to a Strategic Marketing Plan by Rebecca Anwar, PhD and Judy Capco, which ran in Family Practice Management, a publication of the American Academy of Family Physicians*. The authors laid out the basic steps for developing a plan and marketing your practice on a broader scale.
Sage Software Can Help
Products from Sage Software provide many valuable tools to support your marketing efforts. These tools allow you to compile reports on your referring providers and patients to more effectively target your marketing using both demographic and clinical information. Once you have a plan in place you can use these tools to support those efforts:
- Use the award-winning Sage Intergy Practice Portal to create a web presence and offer new services to your practices
- Maintain relationships and market to referring providers with special tools for referring provider maintenance and marketing
- Easily generate individual or batch communications with letters and labels that can be customized to your practice and your patients
- Access print and mail services that enable customized communications such as reminders, recalls and notices about special events
Ready to Get Started?
Your Sales Representative can provide information on these communications tools and more. To learn more about how Sage Software can support and transform the way you work please:
* Nine Steps to a Strategic Marketing Plan, Rebecca Anwar, PhD and Judy Capco, Family Practice Management, American Academy of Family Physicians, November/December 2001.
