How To Create A Marketing Plan For Your Cardiology Practice

While marketing, itself, has existed for centuries, recent advances in technology have spurred the development of more advanced forms of marketing strategies. Unfortunately, the medical industry, as innovative as it is, is one of the industries that has been slow to adopt these new strategies. Specialties like cardiology are no exception. In this article, we’ll share some tips on how you, as a cardiologist, can start modernizing your business approach and develop your digital marketing plan.

Start Your Cardiology Marketing Plan

Conduct a Business Review

Start by looking at your practice’s business history. Conduct a comprehensive review to start to understand how your business has performed the past few years or so. Your office staff can help you gather data including sales, reviews, and website ad performance (if that information is available).

This will not only give you a grasp of how your cardiology practice has been performing but can provide a performance benchmark when making marketing decisions moving forward.

Look at the Industry Landscape

Medical advancements move quickly. As a cardiologist, you keep abreast of the latest updates in the medical community by reading articles from the latest medical journals, scholarly publications, and global organizations like the World Health Organization so you can give your patients the best advice and treatment. 

For healthcare industry updates you should keep up with news from The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and updates from your local medical associations.

Make sure to pay attention to marketing trends and forecasts. It’s important to look at your practice holistically — as both a service provider and a business — for your marketing plans to succeed.

What are Your Competitors Doing?

Take a look at how your peers conduct cardiology practice marketing. Does it seem like their business is doing as well as yours? Better? What are they doing with their website? Are they present on social media? Do they implement SEO (search engine optimization) or run paid online ads?

Gathering info on competitors’ online and offline marketing activities can help you get more ideas that you can implement to make a better plan for your practice.

Set Your Goals

After reviewing your business performance, the industry landscape, and your competitors’ activities, it’s time to set your goals and articulate where you want to take your practice. Below are some goals that you may want to consider:

• Increase brand awareness — Do you feel like not enough people know about your cardiology practice?
• Manage reputation — Do you have a good reputation within the community? How do you want potential clients to perceive your practice?
• Increase lead generation
• Grow social media clout
• Increase website traffic

Do not limit yourself to just these recommendations. And when forming your business objectives, make sure to follow the SMART principle (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) to help you focus your plan and get you set up for success.

Know Your Audience

Roy H. Williams, the best-selling author and marketing consultant known for his Wizard of Ads trilogy, said that “The first step in exceeding what your customer expects is to know their expectations.” 

As a cardiologist, you might think that all patients have the same expectations from your specialty. But many factors can affect how your patients look at your practice, including:

• Socioeconomic class. Depending on the community or hospital where your practice is located, you might be catering to a specific segment that can (or cannot) afford the cost of your services.
• Age group. Marketing for pediatric cardiologists is targeted toward a different audience than marketing for other cardiologists. Also, if your practice focuses on treating certain heart conditions, your marketing should be targeted at the populations where those conditions appear most.
• Diseases and Conditions. As mentioned above, some practices have built their reputation for successfully handling unique medical cases. If you have made something similar for your practice, talk about that expertise to attract a niche audience.
• Behaviors. You might need the help of marketing experts or a marketing agency to get reliable consumer behavior data to help shape your strategies. The kinds of behaviors that need to be looked at include:
  • Social media habits and behavior
  • Perceptions of cardiologists
  • Where they obtain their medical information
  • Habits when it comes to doctor consultation

Identify Strategies Appropriate for Your Business Goals

Once you have compiled the information above, you are ready to work on the marketing strategy. 

Your marketing strategy is the umbrella under which everything digital-related falls and will help determine the actionable steps you will be performing and implementing to achieve your goal.

If you are looking at driving brand awareness to attract new patients and customers, start with website development and search engine optimization.

Maybe you discovered that online listings for your cardiology practice are less than flattering. This is where you can apply reputation management techniques.

There are many ways to experiment with your strategies if you are bold and are willing to think outside the box.

Craft The Perfect Cardiology Practice Marketing Plan

Healthcare marketing is projected to shift due to the pandemic drastically. As stated by Kurt Lee Hurley, CMO of American Family Care, in a recent interview with Cardinal Digital Marketing CEO Alex Membrillo:

“There’s always going to be something that either disrupts the market or intervenes into the best-laid plans. With that being said, all good marketers have to be prepared to pivot. We’re not just creative people, but we’re analytical people. I think using those faculties to be able to not just pivot but even, perhaps, in this state of things, as they’re today, we’re ready to disrupt going forward.”

Think long-term if you want to survive and thrive. To kickstart your marketing plan, reach out to our team of marketing experts. We can assist you in growing your business.