Sometimes more isn’t always merrier…

In my line of work, one of the most common questions I get asked is: How can I get more patients into the clinic?

How can I improve my advertising? Should I be using more social media? Is my budget for social media big enough? Should I be doing letterbox drops?

The reality is if you’re starting a business from scratch you will need to do some advertising. However, for established clinics and ones that have been around for a while, in my experience, you don’t need more and more new patients, you just need to look after the ones you’ve got better and let them be your advertisements within the greater community.

Essentially, let them be your raving fans.

Many of you would’ve seen the movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt where his sidekick does a statistical analysis of the performance of various members of the team and makes decisions based on that.

In almost every case when I do a statistical analysis of a business, I find that a large proportion of the patients are under-serviced, not over-serviced.

In my view, this leads to poor clinical outcomes, less than desirable impressions of our profession from the patient’s perspective and in most cases an all-around lose-lose situation.

So before you embark on some whizbang social marketing campaign at great expense just go and look at the figures and the raw data.

You might be surprised what you find.

It might influence your marketing, patient attraction and retention plans moving forward.

An old mentor of mine used to say:

“Treat your patients to the very best of your ability, treat them as if they were your family and best friends but never treat your family and friends.”

My old mentor was of the belief that if you looked after every patient as best as you could, the clinical outcomes would take care of themselves and the clinic, as a whole, would thrive.

He was right.

He was a bit old-fashioned, a bit like me, but his methods worked.

Make sure you listen to the mentors in your life because wisdom does come from experience.
As always, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or queries or you would like to discuss this further either via my mobile (0439347339) or email (antony@antonyhirstconsulting.com.au).