Why got involved into the clinic /hospital marketing? Because marketing creates impact. It helps you to be different. It helps you to create your identity in clutter. It supports you in giving your patients a better understanding of your practice and to introduce them to your focus- dentistry. Practice marketing helps you to be economically more successful than others. Practice marketing is a profession in the United States and has come to India too. It is the responsibility of a hospital Care Service provider to provide information with regard to services to people in order to enable them to decide to use these services. Patient need information and each person is a patient and the potential of hospital Care services is immense and the demand far outstrips the supply. Even today we limit our marketing exercise to just image building and not to the holistic marketing approach. This is the right time that we change our basic attitude towards marketing hospital care services. In India preventive medical Care marketing is largely untapped as a patient visits to a doctor only after developing a complication which is beyond control we have a huge rural and semi urban population with a good purchasing power which has enormous untapped potential. Even the health care corporate giants like Apollo have set up clinics in rural and semi urban areas catering to this segment.
Marketing & promotions matters the most
I come across many doctors and they just say why to waste money on promotions. I just ask them a simple question. There are thousands of mountains in Himalaya, two of them are Mt. Everest and Kanchanjaunga, can you name the third. There are hundreds of clinics around a patient, how will a patient decide where to go. If you have an attitude that promotion and marketing of your services is sheer waste of money and time then first change this attitude.
CEO
You are CEO of an organization and not only a clinician. As a CEO, you have to look after many functions of your clinic or hospital like clinical practice, marketing, finances, human resource management, operations. It is better to equip with other basic management skills also to run a better and profitable clinic. Think not just like a doctor but as a CEO so that you can manage operations better with better marketing and public relations and good financial management. Invest in training of employees as they are your internal customers and they should be happy and satisfied first.