Marketing

Marketing is about:

• Anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer needs
• Seeing the business through a customer’s eyes
• Solving customers’ problems profitably for you

Before opening your practice you need to identify your target customer – the type of patient you want to work with – and build up an accurate profile of their likes and dislikes, interests and values so that you can provide a service which satisfies their needs. You need to identify the problems you will solve and the benefits you can offer to patients that other practices don’t.

The key to successful marketing is to differentiate yourself from the competition by stimulating interest – also known as purple cow marketing. Imagine you are driving through the countryside. What would you do if you saw a purple cow in a field? You’d notice, wonder, ask questions. Try to identify the purple cow in your business and capitalise on that.

Finally, marketing isn’t about advertising, public relations and sales campaigns. In a service industry like yours internal methods of marketing are just as important and often more effective in creating a buzz and encouraging the most effective and least costly marketing – word of mouth. For example if your customer service has the WOW factor or the design of the practice is striking, people will talk about it.