It Happened This Weekend

Well, it happened. Once again, our household received another hardcopy medical newsletter. Normally, these items would make it to the trashcan, but my wife saved it to show what a waste of money this newsletter represented. And I agree.

Paper newsletters are expensive to produce and mail. It is difficult to measure any return of investment as most medical practices have bought some mailing list from an expert marketing firm. Most of these efforts are termed "external marketing." While not a bad idea, it's not great either. Most marketing efforts are geared towards finding new users for products or services. It is far more practical to fully mine your patient database in search of patients that might benefit from other services you offer. It's also cheaper too.

There is a lot of data out there that suggests that most medical practices should budget 1-5% of their net collected revenue for advertising and marketing. As such, it makes sense to use those dollars as efficiently as possible. External marketing is expensive, newsletters are expensive, using the internet is NOT.

Social Networking Tools are a wonderful new addition to the marketing world. Here, you can choose your message and distribute to your patients in the format they choose. I am a big fan of blogging. It is quick, easy and provides for more frequent patient connection. If you are wondering what you might blog about, well, I suspect there is not a day where you don't see some condition, make some diagnoses, or recommend some treatment, more of your patients might have interest.