Marketing: Do You Have Enough Patients?

Are you maximizing sales to and keeping your existing patients? If you can answer yes to these questions, then do not read this article.

Marketing is intended to bring in new patients. How would 1 new patient a week impact your bottom line? Marketing can also be used to increase your sales to your existing patients. How would one more sale per month per existing patient affect your bottom line? Marketing can also help you keep your existing patients. The best way to increase your sales to existing patients and keep them coming back, is also a great way to attract new patients to your dispensary and build your companies brand name and reputation.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) should be a big part of your marketing plan. A great feature of social media marketing is the fact that while it can be a big part of your marketing plan, it should only take a small part of your marketing budget. Once set up, this type of marketing costs very little to maintain and expand.

The statistics on social marketing are staggering. Are your patients and prospective patients using social media? As of May of 2011 one out of every nine people on the planet are on Facebook (750 million). People spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. YouTube.com has 490 unique visitors per month. Twitter is adding 500,000 users a day. Google+ was the fastest social network to reach 10 million users taking only 16 days. Newspaper advertising is down about 8% this year while Digital advertising is up almost 20%

Social Media marketing also lets you target your market very closely. You do not need to advertise to people in other states, or other cities. You are looking to reach your local market. Social media marketing lets you target any specific geographic and demographic group. Optimizing your social media efforts allows open communication with your existing patients and mobile communication, giving them the attention they desire and the outlet to have a dialog with you, their provider. This will increase patient satisfaction as well as build your brand and reputation. One out of every ten consumers in this country make their purchase decisions based upon comments and recommendations from social media sites (33 million this year)

Social Media Optimization can bring together your website, email campaigns, all social media sites, blogs and mobile apps. Spend your marketing budget wisely. Reach the specific people you want to reach. Help your existing patients take full advantage of your products, services and special promotions. Have your existing patients help spread the word and promote your business to potential patients.

Click here for more information about or help in designing your marketing plan.