Making the decision to work with a healthcare marketing company is one of the best things you can do for your practice, but the tricky part is determining what happens after that. So many people sign a contract with a marketing company that’s promising big results but doesn’t necessarily have a strategic plan in place to help them accomplish those goals.
The most important part of selecting the right healthcare marketing agency for your practice is finding one who knocks the most essential part of onboarding out of the park: strategic planning. The strategic plan is the foundation of your marketing efforts, and it sets the groundwork for how your marketing team will prioritize projects, roll out campaigns, and effectively work towards accomplishing your needs. It’s arguably the most important step of the onboarding process, which is why we’ve saved it for last.
Step 5 Of Atlantic’s Onboarding Process: The Strategic Plan
As the final step in our onboarding process, the strategic plan is really where we get down into the nitty-gritty of what the client’s overall goals are, and what strategies and action items we can implement to help accomplish those goals. This is where we’ll discuss, based on your specific marketing needs, what your content strategy, social media strategy, brand strategy, and strategies for the other services we’re providing will look like.
Each of these strategies is driven by what you’re hoping to focus on the most with your marketing, and even though each service line may seem like a separate entity (paid search vs. content marketing vs. graphic design), the strategy for all of them will lead back to accomplishing your specific goals. For example, most marketing companies devise a content strategy that’s based around B2C (business to consumer) content. While that’s great for some organizations, that content strategy approach oftentimes doesn’t speak to the goals of healthcare clients.
We know that direct-to-patient campaigns are just one portion of your referral mix. Even patient-driven specialties like plastic surgery and dentistry rely somewhat on the referring physician community to drive patient volume, which is where our healthcare expertise comes in. Part of our content strategy is also aimed at reaching that referral community, not necessarily to drive conversions but to increase brand awareness and engagement over time.
Due to the nature of our healthcare focused company, we already know which types of physicians are your top referrers — because physician liaison marketing is part of our suite of services. Identifying those opportunities for your practice is no longer something your team has to be solely responsible for. This is just one more way we make our new client’s goals possible through our strategic planning.
More Information
To learn more about our team at Atlantic Health Solutions, feel free to give us a call to see how we can help your healthcare marketing needs! If you’d like to receive our free Onboarding Process Evaluation/Proposal, you can fill out our Client Onboarding Details form, commitment free!