The steps achieving sustained success from your marketing and advertising starts by having something valuable to offer. The professional service practice that delivers average services, or worse, cannot create a campaign that will result in an abundance of new patients or clients over the long haul without misleading their public. This provider will not be able to make specific, strong claims that a superior provider can. Should such a provider's marketing communications initially drive in business through gimmicks or generalized claims that are untrue, unhappy patients or clients will prevent that practice from enjoying retention and word-of-mouth referrals that are essential for continuous practice growth.

By innovating your practice, you can make your office stand out from your competitors in terms of quality of services, customer service, convenience, consistency, and/or value. This allows a marketing strategist who knows how to separate a practice from its competitors to create marketing communications that will capture your target markets. The result is a greater opportunity to thrive despite stubborn competition, a sluggish economy, and aggressive large group practices that seize marketshare from small providers. This is our forte.

 

The Blueprint for
Competitive Advantage Innovations

By implementing the following steps thoroughly, we can uncover and help your practice implement competition-shattering innovations. We can repeat this process with you for each of your target markets:

    1.    Listing your target market’s emotional hot buttons in order of importance. (Emotional hot buttons include the desires, importances, fears, frustrations, difficulties, pain, and/or annoyances people possess regarding selecting the type of services you provide). If you are uncertain what your target market’s emotional hot buttons are, we will conduct a conduct a survey to determine them.

    2.    Listing what you currently do in your practice to respond to each emotional hot button.

    3.    Brainstorming innovative ideas to overcome each emotional hot button you are not effectively addressing. Consider what are the specific things the ideal practice in your type of service would do to alleviate or solve these problems or frustrations. Together we will try to uncover as many as 25 ideas. At this stage, we will not consider whether your concepts are feasible to implement.

    4.    Reviewing the list of possible innovations. Choose the ones that are the most feasible to implement based on budget, effort, and the potential return on investment.

  5.    Asking your current and potential clients and referral sources what they think of your innovative ideas.    

6.    Determining whether your competitors already offer the ideas we and you would like to implement.

7.    Examine each innovation and decide which to implement based on:

        •   the cost to implement

        •   expected revenue (Make high and low projections. Get             help from your accountant, if needed)

        •   the degree of difficulty for your competitors to duplicate and implement your ideas(s)

        •   how easy it will be generate and implement a marketing campaign

    8.    Preparing and launching a marketing campaign to promote the innovations we together have chosen.

Examples of Simple Innovations

    •    Providing extended hours, especially if your competitors do not and have no desire to do so

   •    Offering to meet your clients or patients at their home or office, if those you service would prefer you to come to them.

   •    When a medical practice cannot prevent patients waiting to be seen, providing them with estimates as to how long they will need to wait and keeping them informed

   •    Offering patients who are waiting to be seen healthy soft drinks and snacks and having your staff bring them to your patients much like flight attendants do

    •    Providing tax clients unlimited free tax planning advice that could reduce their future tax liability, and offering consultation appointments anytime from May 1 thru December 31

    •    Offering a cap on the cost of your legal or accounting services    

    •    Providing full-body ultrasound scans as part of your patients’ physical exams during their exam appointment at a minimal or no extra cost.

    •    Offering a free financial planning consultation to family law clients after their divorces have been finalized

Your Next Step

By correctly implementing the remaining steps of The Formula for Market Dominance, you will be able to create promotion that:

    1.    Captures attention

    2.    Generates interest

    3.    Educates prospects on how to choose the right provider

    4.    Builds your case for your services over your competitors

    5.    Convinces prospects that you are the right choice for the type of services you provide, and

    6.    Gets your prospects to take action and choose your practice when they need your services.