So you’ve already worn it once.  Does that mean you can’t wear it again?  You spend a lot of your hard earned money on your marketing materials and marketing campaigns.  Heck, people like me tell you that you need to spend money to make money.  And, it’s true – you need brochures, bio cards, fliers, signs in your offices, a website, a content development plan, SEO, social media plan, etc.  However, once you’ve made the initial investment in time and money developing your core items, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to marketing your practice.

While I fully embrace most of the new marketing tools and techniques out there, I am still a fan of some of the traditional methods too.  For example, I like to create lobby signage to cross promote subspecialties to existing patients.  For example, I have a client who sees 500+ patients per day at one of their offices.  I’d be crazy not to do something to let the patient coming in to see a Podiatrist that we also have somebody who can treat his aching back pain.  Same thing applies to the patient stuck in the patient room alone waiting for you to spend two minutes with her.  I’d be a fool not to cross market our board certified cosmetic surgeon to the woman visiting the office for a sinus infection.

We write a lot of custom content for our clients.  Typically their informational pieces are about common practices, Q&A’s with a doctor about a particular topic or maybe the latest surgical procedure, a patient story, etc.  Most of our articles get picked up by the local monthly physician-to-physician print magazines/newspapers and get mailed to local referring offices.  However, once we’ve written them, our articles also get posted as web content and tools for building our client’s social media identity.  This is extremely helpful in driving website traffic and protecting our client’s hard-earned online reputation (see our series on managing your reputation online: Tip #1, Tip #2, Tip #3).  We don’t let it end there.  In fact, a couple times per year, we take all those articles and compile them into a printed newsletter. The printed newsletter then goes into the client’s area offices including patient rooms and lobbies.  It’s also a great tool for the support staff to hand out at health fairs and during visits to referring offices.

It all starts with having a good marketing plan.  A content driven strategy is one of many tools that you can use to build your practice.