This week I’m attending a professional conference in Orlando, FL hosted by the American Physical Therapy Association’s Private Practice Section.  I’ll be speaking on Saturday about the importance of “branding” to the future of direct access physical therapy, and on that theme will be posting a bit about branding this week on The Healthcare Entrepreneur.

Branding is of huge importance in all of healthcare; not just physical therapy.  Branding is of significance to healthcare for the same reason that it is in consumer goods and retail - intense competition and a changing landscape require that we crystallize our messages to consumers so that they will best know how, where, and when to use our services.

At its core, a brand is a promise; a promise of something that will be delivered by your practice.  A promise of quality, a promise of an experience, a promise of an outcome.  Just as you use brands to help you make decisions about which detergent or soda pop to buy, our patients rely on our brands to help them determine where and who to go to for their healthcare services.

You don’t have a brand you say?  Wrong.  You always have a brand - you just might not have created it deliberately.  There is nothing that says a brand has to cost a dime, that it has to be strategically developed, or that you even have to know what it is.  If you have customers (i.e., patients), you have a brand; a promise of the experience that will be received when interacting with you, your practice, and your staff.

Do you typically run 20 minutes behind schedule for patient care?  If so, that’s part of your brand - it’s what your patients will expect even after one behind-schedule experience in your practice.  Is your practice warm and inviting?  If so, you can bet your patients will understand this as well.  These elements, while having nothing to do with a logo, brandmark, or marketing plan, have everything to do with the promise you are making to your patients.

When thinking about your practice’s brand, take steps to “promise” a deliberate experience; one that you would prefer yourself.  This is the type of promise that is made through actions, which speak ever so louder than a crafty logo or brandmark can ever do.

Before becoming a physical therapist, I remember working for a few PT practices that had “marketing personnel” on staff.  I remember thinking, what a waste.  For crying out loud, take care of your patients and people will continue to come to the clinic.  Simple as that…I thought.

How funny it is that perceptions change over the years, especially when enlightened by a bit of real world experience, and in my case, the study of marketing in business school.

Healthcare, like any business, is not a simple as “do a good job, and people will come.”  The inverse can actually be true however, whereby you can actually NOT do a good job, and people will STILL come, if the right experience and/or image is crafted, making the services look desirable (even if they aren’t all that good).

Now, there are definitely problems inherent with bad services that only look good, and I would never suggest that this is a route to take, especially in the practice of healthcare.  I only bring it up to illustrate the power of crafting an image, as it is the image the precedes, and hence, creates [much of] the reality of the experience.

The practice of healthcare, whether in your small dental clinic or you burgeoning dermatology practice, needs a good image to attract customers.  In marketing, “image” is somewhat synonomous with “branding,” and without getting too technical in this short post, it is the “brand image” that is responsible for your customer (i.e., patient) volume, or lack thereof.

A “brand” is nothing more than a promise.  A promise of something good, or something desirable.  For the physical therapy practice, the brand may be the promise of rehabilitation, or improved function.  For the boutique medical practice, it may be a personalized, comfortable medical experience.

Many things can be done to craft a brand in healthcare, including (but absolutely not limited to) the development of an appropriate corporate message and brandmark.  Deeper though, and more relevant, is the actual “promise” that you are selling when you ask patients to come back to see you again or when you solicit referrals from your peers.  The promise that the experience will be desirable to those that use your services, and consistent from visit to visit - that’s what fills healthcare practices.

Here is a link to a great post from Bnet.com on the topic of branding, which includes a list of the “five things every manager needs to know about branding strategy.”  It’s a great post, and well worth the read.

And branding, that’s even worse. It doesn’t help that the name conjures up images of branding cattle, or somebody being branded a criminal. How about that, branding has a branding problem. Ironic, isn’t it?

If you don’t get the irony, you really need to read this.

Here’s how it works. Your company and its products and services have associated attributes that affect customer buying decisions, employee morale, and investor confidence. They also affect your company’s market share, profit margins, and bottom line. 

Branding strategy enables your company to measure and change the perception and affect of those attributes. It’s really important. No kidding.

Decision-making, despite its importance and prevalence in clinical care, has a hard time fining its way into the business side of healthcare.  Let’s face it, decisions are hard to make for a cohort that cites risk aversion as one of the most common reasons for not starting a private practice in the first place.

And no other place within the business of healthcare is decision-making more hard to come by than with marketing.

It’s not the decision as to whether or not to market that’s so tough (though controversy exists there as well), but rather the decision about who to market to that reminds me of some of the most labor-intensive decisions we have to make in life.  And while deciding on a market for a healthcare practice may rank up there with the other big decisions we make (you know, choosing a color theme for our bathroom linens, deciding whether or not to get the extended warranty for the DVD player), it really doesn’t have to be that hard. 

The problem is twofold: (1) We generally think we’ve got one chance to get it right and really don’t want to blow it, and (2) we actually think we can be everything to everyone, so we give it the old college try.

Both of these are myths of course within private practice, and if we can dispel these and bring a healthy level of focus and distinction into our business strategy, odds are the decisions will fall right into place and we’ll not only know who our target market is, but we’ll be able to do a pretty darn good job of serving it.

Myth #1: We’ve got one chance to get it right.  Generally speaking, we actually don’t want to screw up on choosing the right market for a medical, dental, or physical therapy practice - each requires a significant amount of capital, and for the risk averse, this by itself usually lends itself to healthy deliberation.  The thing is, choosing a target market for a practice isn’t like trying to find the one blue marble in a bag of 500 red ones.  Think of the bag as containing every shade in the spectrum from deep red to bright blue.  Yeah, we don’t want to choose brick red, but it’s also OK if we don’t get sky blue the first time around. 

If you’re starting a physical therapy practice and aren’t really sure if you want to go after the women’s health market or the general outpatient orthopedic population (as you’re dually trained), realize that there are commonalities to both (yes, women do have general orthopedic conditions that crop up from time to time) and that by choosing a direction, you’re not casting an eternal spell on your practice that will never allow you to change. 

Now, there are some considerations that should be made when making this decision, including how to back out if indeed it doesn’t pan out for the long term, but these are well handled through a sound branding and marketing strategy that builds into it a flexible architecture and messaging strategy that can unfold in a couple of different ways depending on the direction the wind ends up blowing.

What generally doesn’t work however, is making the decision (not much of a decision actually) to do it all.  Why wouldn’t you want to do it all you ask?  Doesn’t that open up many more doors by casting a wider net?  Well, yes, but in theory only.  The reason you don’t want to do it all is because you likely can’t, which brings us to myth #2.

Myth #2: We can be everything to everyone.  We’re not designed to think of ourselves as incapable of doing what we set out to do.  In healthcare especially, the level of intellect and drive is of the highest around, so why wouldn’t we be able to go in multiple directions at once; be kind of a one-stop-shop to all who need us? 

We can’t do it because like any other mortal, when spread too thin we can only scratch the surface in terms of quality, time, and energy (sort of important in healthcare), and even if we could do a great job at it, the lack of focus wouldn’t communicate to the marketplace that we are distinctly different from our competitors. 

Surprisingly, being good - or being different, is just as important as communicating that we’re good - or different.  Certainly an argument exists that many of us would rather be good than have others think we’re good - the problem is, that if nobody knows we’re good we can’t really help those that need us anyway.  This is precisely what happens when we lack a defined focus in our selection of a target market and/or specialty for our practice.

Now, it’s important to understand that the takeaway here is not that one can’t be a generalist and survive in today’s healthcare marketplace - on the contrary, generalists are one of the most critical components of the system as a whole.  What should be conveyed is that even a generalist who has selected her specialty (general practice) has many decisions to make about how to focus her practice around other elements that will influence the level of focus and distinction the practice holds in the market.  Decisions regarding which insurance contracts to solicit (drives patient mix and revenue diversity), which age group to target, and which referral sources will provide the best partnerships for the life of the practice, will have longstanding effects on the practice, and aren’t amenable to a “straddle-the-fence” kind of approach.

By making decisions that limit the need for the practice owner to be everything to everyone, the quality, enjoyment, and overall experience within the practice is elevated significantly for those receiving the focus of the marketing and operational efforts; a big win for all involved.

Here is a post on the Entrepreneurial MD blog that speaks to this very point, and I recommend it as a succinct, quick read on the benefits of focusing on a target market.

In order to immunize your business against recession, you need to discriminate. While this is not a comfortable word for the politically correct amongst us, one of  Webster’s definition of discrimination is “the quality or power of finely distinguishing”.

When I managed a clinical staff in the hospital environment nobody liked the word “productivity.”  We’d refer to it as the “P” word, because it had such negative connotations when discussing job performance and the overall operations of the clinical staff.  It was as if by discussing it, we were saying that production was more important than quality in the care that was delivered.  It was untrue of course, but the misconception was difficult to overcome, and the “P” word remained.

The “P” word was my first exposure to the world of misconceptions in the healthcare industry with regard to the juxtaposition of “business” and “healthcare.”  There are many others though, and often times talking about issues such as profitability, collection of patient co-pays and controlling expenses conjures the same emotions that I used to stir up when talking about “P.”

Marketing is one of these, and while I haven’t come to the conclusion that it’s yet worthy of the single acronym, “M,” it certainly is a contender - especially when it comes to specialty care.  It is felt by many specialists that marketing doesn’t have a place in private practice - the provision of high quality care should be enough. 

If only that were the case.

Marketing is important, but not in the same was that it is for auto sales and credit cards.  Marketing is simply the process of letting those in your community know what you have to offer.  I will counsel practice owners that if they truly believe in the service they are offering their community, than it is part of their professional responsibility to educate others so that the community can receive the benefits of their care.  A great clinician who is disenchanted with marketing to the extent that they don’t build up a following does little good to anyone.

Here is a great reference from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons that speaks to this very point in the context of marketing counsel for neurosurgeons - a specialty that historically does little marketing, and instead relies mostly upon the laurels of their specialized service offering to do the work of building up a patient base. 

Negative connotations blemish marketing. The “M” word conjures up images of a plaid-coated, hand-waving carnival barker hawking discounted cars or televisions. The assumption is that it’s perfectly OK to pitch cars and washing machines but inappropriate to promote a health service.

Well, it is indecorous to aggressively advertise a health practice. But that’s not what marketing is. Marketing is a more sophisticated and more subtle strategy than blatant advertising. Even the most conservative neurosurgeon, one emotionally tied to the healthcare climate of prior generations, would feel comfortable with a genuine marketing plan.

Developing a strong brand has a definite place within private practice healthcare.  A lot of practice owners don’t (or don’t want to) acknowledge this, thinking [erroneously] that simply hanging out their shingle and providing good care will keep the practice full. 

Guess what?  Everyone provides good care…at least we all say we do.

To develop a following requires a brand, and it doesn’t matter if you are a doctor, dentist, physical therapist, or an auto mechanic.  Like it or not, your “brand” is what comes to mind when your patients are deciding whether or not to come see you for the first, second, and 100th time. 

One thing about a brand is that one will find you whether or not you put in the time, money, and effort to craft it yourself.  And depending on who you are and what you create, this can be a good or bad thing.  You might be the doctor with bad breath, the dentist with the rude front office staff, or the physical therapist who is always late for appointments - believe it or not, these brands exist even though we would never choose them.

The process of branding can be likened to the development of our own personal attributes.  Our looks, clothes, personality, achievements, networks, experiences, and anything else that adds to (or detracts from) our appeal to others is basically what constitutes our own “personal brand.”  Now, branding as related to our personal development is only partially in our own control - we can’t control what we look like (well, thanks to the medical field I guess we can), our personalities are inherently difficult to change, and our achievements, networks, and experiences are in part built from the innate attributes that we are born with. 

When branding our private practices we have much more freedom to carefully craft a brand position that will appeal to our market, helping to make our practices more successful through broader (or in some cases, very specific) appeal.  It takes time, energy, and often entails a reasonable budget, but is there any doubt that development of the right brand is worth it?

This post from the Branding Strategy Insider talks about the seven concepts critical to positioning your brand in your market.

What seven concepts are critical to positioning?

   1. Perception (their’s, not your’s)
   2. Differentiation
   3. Competition
   4. Specialization
   5. Simplicity
   6. Leadership
   7. Reality

We all know Google, many of us using their search algorithms daily when we “Google” products, services or people online.  For business owners, Google has become a research tool, allowing for “quick and dirty” searches of information about themselves and competitors.

As more people are moving to the web to find information about healthcare providers (read my posts about online physician ratings here and here), it pays for private practice owners to know what is being said about their practice in online news publications and throughout the blogosphere.  With more and more print publications simultaneously funneling their news stories online, web searches now provide a means by which to search local print media who may be publishing information about a practice from recent press releases, sponsorships or other local news stories.

Practice owners and managers don’t have the time to search the Internet daily for news stories or commentary about their practice, but they do have the time to take advantage of Google Alerts in order to have Google scour the web for them.  With Google Alerts, you simply enter the keywords you’d like searched, enter in a frequency of which you’d like the results sent to you by email, and you’re done.  You’ll soon be getting email in your inbox telling you exactly what is being said about your practice online - a great way to keep tabs on your practice’s brand in a way that is efficient, easy and effective.

This article from BizGrowthNews provides some more information about the benefits of this great tool.

I recommend putting in place a once-a-day Google Alert which you can then review at the start of each day.

Items that feature in the news, in blogs or on the web can be included in the alert.

Building a brand in healthcare is a bit of a funny concept.  Not “ha-ha” funny, but funny that some practice owners simply don’t understand how important it is.  And whether you practice medicine, physical therapy, dentistry, optometry, or something altogether different, the importance of building a brand is all the same.

A brand is a promise.  When you deliver a product or service, consumers want to know 2 things: (1) what they can expect, and (2) how much it is going to cost.  Using those two pieces of information, the consumer can determine if there is enough value present to warrant the purchase (i.e. does what I can expect outweigh the price I feel is reasonable).  And while some will debate that the pricing/cost issue is less relevant in healthcare transactions that involve 3rd party payment, there is no doubt that in order for consumers to know what to expect when making decisions about where they receive healthcare, they have to believe in a practice’s brand - the promise.

Building a strong brand in your community can take a lot of shapes and forms.  From logo design/redesign to advertising campaigns to promotions, building brand recognition can be an expensive proposition.  The good news is that it doesn’t necessarily have to.

Remembering that a brand is a promise, a medical practice, dental facility or physical therapy clinic can build a successful brand simply by articulating a promise, and then delivering on it…over and over and over again.  Here are a few tips for building a brand without a corporate-sized marketing budget.

1. Craft a mission statement and communicate it to your consumers.  A mission statement often forms the essence of your brand as it speaks to your practice’s core identity, and what it is trying to do in your community.  Letting your consumers know of your mission is a good first step towards letting them know what they should expect from your practice.

2. Use scripts.  Ever notice that when you call your cell phone company you never talk to the same person twice but you always hear the same thing?  Without daring to suggest that your medical practice should be run like a cell phone company, there is definitely something to learn here.  The reason you always hear the same thing is because large companies have a lot to lose if their brand gets diluted by consumers not knowing exactly what to expect - so, they use scripts.  Believe it or not, the same is true of your small practice.  If your patients become disenchanted with just one of your staff, your brand can become tarnished because expectations are now in question.  Using scripts to better control (and refine) what is said by your front office staff as well as your providers can go a long way in protecting your brand by ensuring that your patients will experience consistent care no matter who they come in contact with.

3. Tell your patients what to expect.  Again, a brand is a promise, and what better way to communicate that promise than to get literal.  If I walk into a physical therapy practice and I see on the wall that I can expect to (1) wait no longer than 5 minutes past my scheduled appointment time, (2) always be able to get a call back from my provider in the same business day, and (3) always be included in the development of my own plan of care, I will know exactly what to expect and I will feel comfortable holding this practice to those standards.

4. Be nice.  Having a customer-service focus is one of the easiest and most effective ways to build a healthcare brand.  Healthcare is a service industry and the customer should be king (or queen).  If there is any part of your practice that thinks that it is acceptable to ever disrespect, insult, or ignore a consumer, you might as well throw in the towel now.  Just one staff member that doesn’t understand that it is their job to always be nice to your customers can quickly unravel any brand building you’ve done, no matter how much time or money you’ve put into developing and communicating your promise.

5. Be different.  Doing something different for your patients is a very effective way to build your brand in a short amount of time.  I’ve had a lot of cars and have bought a lot of tires throughout my life, but never have I had the experience with buying tires that I’ve had at Les Schwab Tires.  Every time I pull into Les Scwab I am greeted at my car door by a salesperson running out to greet me (that’s right, running - not walking).  This has made an immediate, lasting impression on me because I quickly realized that this company was different.  I’ve yet to receive services anywhere else where I’m greeted by someone running up to help me as I arrive.  My first experience with Les Schwab was 6 years ago and I’ve never bought tires anywhere else, and I don’t expect to.  Les Schwab is different in a way that focuses on me, and it makes me want to see them for my tire needs.  Implementing this same type of difference into a healthcare practice is just a matter of determining how you’re going to treat your customers differently, and then executing on it time and time again.

The importance of brand building in private practice healthcare is tremendous, and it doesn’t have to be expensive.  I’ve outline 5 simple methods for building your brand, and not one of them required a marketing dollar be spent.  In a nutshell: Figure out your promise, communicate it to your customers, and deliver on it - yes, it’s as simple as that.

You’ve probably heard the adage, “there’s no such thing as bad press.”  I actually disagree with this statement (contact me offline for some really good examples of bad press being bad press), and think the adage should say, “free press is the best press.”

Free press enters the consumer’s mind as information, education and value - contrasted with advertising which enters the consumer brain with an asterisk that states something like, “great ad, but I wonder what the real story is…”

A client of ours, Pelvic Wellness Center, opened in Eugene, OR last week…and talk about free press.  The practice owners, Judy Hoar, PT, and Shannon Forrestall, PT have done an absolutely fantastic job of getting their name out there, and as you can see from this news clip from KVAL, even the newscaster is surprised at how quickly they are getting in front of a camera.

Kudos to Judy, Shannon, and Pelvic Wellness Center - readers take note…it’s just that easy (at least it can be).

The Pelvic Wellness Center is located at 295 W. Broadway, Eugene, OR 97401, and can be reached at (541) 515-6215.

With the level of competition for patients and referrals constantly growing it is key for a successful practice to have a marketing strategy. In order to develop a strategy that fits the provider’s personality and desired practice demographics one must establish the “identity” of the practice.

An article in Advance My Practice describes five steps to building the practice you want.

Build your reputation with an identity that is your very own, unique to you. Don’t waste time and money on advertising and marketing without having an identity that is interesting and engaging, so that it will attract people to you.

I believe it all starts with establishing your identity.

It’s an interesting dilemma that we often see new practice owners face.  That is, they want to keep their expenses low and end up tackling every business-related task that there is, and at the same time want to see as many patients as possible to get cash flowing as rapidly as possible.  What usually happens is that the business-related tasks begin to eat away at time that the provider should be in front of patients.  Patient time = cash flow.  Less patient time = less cash flow.  One hour with patient = more money made than it costs to have someone else perform business-related tasks.

A key challenge to handling business growth is whether you are able, and willing, to give up control and delegate certain business tasks to others who are:

• More skilled at the task
• Able to complete the task at a lower hourly rate than you
• Easily trainable to do the jobs that you dislike or are no good at

Here is a quick down-and-dirty to figure out your own “hourly rate”.

Let’s imagine you want your business to gross $300,000 in 2008. And you plan to work a 40-hour week (good luck if you can get away with this!) for 48 weeks in the year.

Your hourly rate is $300,000 ÷ 48 = $6250, and $6250 ÷ 40 = $156.25. In order to make $300,000 in a year, you need to be bringing about $156 an hour in revenue. That means that when you are answering your own emails, you are costing your business roughly $156 an hour to do so.

In her recent post, Kennealy tells us the four tasks that MUST be delegated to someone else, either in-house or to an outsourced company: 1) Housekeeping, 2) Bookkeeping, 3) Administrative support, and 4) Managing technology.  These are tasks that you can find someone that will cost less than your time to do the same job and perhaps a better, more effecient job.

Kennealy goes on to discuss three things that the owning provider MUST hold on to: 1) Strategy development and business planning, 2) Marketing, and 3) Content creation or program development.  These things are critically linked to the owner’s vision, goals and selling efforts.  This doesn’t mean that outside help can not be employed to assist with these things (i.e. consultants, branding companies), but the provider definitely needs to sacrifice some patient time to focus on these elements…these are the elements that get more patients in the door.