Over the last few years – as we hurtle toward the implementation of ACA – we have witnessed medical websites and marketing become Practice Manager domain at a lot of practices. Marketing, websites and branding are areas where there has been a tradition of DIY. Unfortunately, whether for cost cutting, creative or simply control reasons, it is a domain where oftentimes the practice manager has been the DIYer and they should not “do it themselves”.

A key problem with physician and practice websites is that they have been treated like “wind-up toys”: set up and then left alone to run without any thought of how to integrate with the brand and the practice. Going forward, marketing, web and social media for medical practices need to be a balance of patient and practice. Without a significant level of understanding, knowledge and experience in marketing, many of these practice managers are getting it wrong. It’s like us at Crane Creek, even with our knowledge of medical marketing, trying to run a medical practice. It simply does not work and is not an appropriate DIY experience!

Why do practice managers think they can do all the marketing and website promotions for their practices as well as run the practice itself? Your guess is as good as ours, and the DIYers will be left behind in the coming months as choice of practice becomes more commonplace under the ACA.

We work closely with both physicians and group practices to help build their referral networks and patient pipelines via both on and offline marketing and PR opportunities.

Through a practical and strategic approach to marketing and community building, we position our clients as experts in their field and also within their own hyper-local markets.

This means communicating proactively not only with existing patients to maintain good practice-patient relationships, but also for generating word-of-mouth referrals. We also produce strategic and tactical marketing programs for other local and regional physicians, hospitals and practices to generate specialist referrals. We manage our client’s personal and professional reputations (normally online); which, despite the notion that “web ratings are *not* the key in choosing a doctor”, matter when it comes to choosing a physician.

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Categories: Healthcare, Marketing, Physicians, PR