1) OUTREACH —

2) TRAFFIC —

3) FOLLOW-UP —

SOME COMMON TRAFFIC SOURCES …

1. People in the Houston area who are on Facebook. (LinkedIn not so much, because your market is general population nearby and far fewer of those are on LinkedIn and much harder to find and target.)
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2. People searching for a physician in Houston. You throw your offer in front of these people using either SEO or google ads, but in this case because of 2.3 million population in Houston and 350+ other physicians (plus all the doctors listed by their specialties instead of just as physicians), competition and costs will be sky high. It may pay off, but not the smartest place to start. In a smaller city, say up to 150,000 population, then this traffic source would be much easier and cheaper to use
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3. People already visiting the physician’s Facebook business page
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4. People who are already coming into the physician’s office as patients
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5. The *friends* of the people already visiting the Facebook page, and the *friends* of the patients already coming into the office
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6. People on Groupon. There can be some problems with this method having to do with positioning and turning them into long-term patients. I’ve seen solutions for that, but I’m setting aside that approach at present for many physicians, because often it’s not appropriate
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7. People searching YouTube for things like “Hormone Therapy.” However, such searchers are all over the USA, and so most of the people searching like this are not potential patients. It can be a good secondary method, if used properly, but probably not the most focused for a beginning marketing method
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8. Auto-accident and Personal-Injury patients who are visiting attorneys, if you make arrangements for those attorneys to send those patients to you. But this would only be useful if this kind of medicine is the type of  medicine and the kind of patients the physician most wishes to attract
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9. People in the community for whom you can provide talks, or otherwise reach

HOW YOU BUILD A PATIENT BASE, IN GENERAL …

• You need to have a base from which to operate, a place from which to stand. These days, the most important for starting is Facebook business page, and then a website. If you could only have one, do the business page first, because Facebook already has some traffic you can tap, but a website has no traffic already connected. A new website is a grain of sand in the desert, and won’t be seen by anyone until you have created some other outreach system using some other traffic source. But either way these online properties become your “offices online,” which are used when you do your marketing outreach.
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• We choose one traffic source, and put your attractive offer in front of people in that traffic stream. Then capture their contact information in return for whatever attractive thing we offered them, and then use that contact information to follow-up, and follow-up, and follow-up, and follow up, and thus persuade them to come in.
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• Next, we look for places that patients can be lost, and fix those —
  • For example, some patients won’t think to recommend you, but there’s an easy way we can get them to do so.
  • For example, some people will visit once, but not become long-term patients, and there’s an easy way we can get more of them to return.
  • For example, some people will simply forget, and so we continue to stay in their thoughts so they remember.
  • Some people will book, and then no-show their appointment, but we can recover 60%-90% of those no-shows rather easily. All of these are marketing and income “systems.”
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• Now we choose another traffic source, and make another attractive offer there. We test as we go, and refine our methods that work the best.
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• When you have several methods, and when you’re getting more patients than you can handle, we raise your rates. Then when you again have slightly more patients attracted than you need, you’re set, quite possibly for the rest of your professional life. You can turn up or turn down the number of patients that show up, month after month.
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• Then, along the way, you systematize your operation, and then whenever you wish you can sell your working practice (or bring in one of your kids if that’s the plan), and then you can do whatever you want to do next.
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THE ESSENCE IS SIMPLE