Sales and Marketing
Whoever thought that an orthopedic surgeon would be involved in so much sales and marketing? Well, one of the things that outpatient joint replacement surgery gave me was an opportunity to develop an outpatient joint brand. So I had to go out to the community and tell them about this new concept.
It took me about three years to be okay with driving down the highway and seeing my picture on a billboard. It took us even longer to see our pictures up on magazines and on kiosks. My kids used to laugh when they would drive down the road and see their dad’s picture up on the billboard, but what we were trying to do that whole time was not share our phone number and drive patients to the telephone, we were trying to develop a brand. I wanted to be the champion for outpatient joint replacement in our community.
Patients in their 40s, 50s, 60s, are already having these joint replacements in local hospitals. I wanted them to have them with me.
Well, for years they didn’t even know our office was there until we developed a sales and marketing campaign that introduced the concept of outpatient joint replacement to our community.
Have you ever heard of geotargeting? Well, me neither. I learned a lot from our google, digital analyist marketing experts. There’s a concept called geotargeting. Did you know on social media you can send a message to the right age group that you are looking for? Maybe the right insurance company? Maybe it’s the right income, maybe it’s the right neighborhood, but you can actually target social media with a geotargeting program.
The one thing I really like about digital marketing, as opposed to magazines or billboards or commercials is how you can measure the results. This is money well spent. There is nothing better than seeing the results. You can see how many patients look at your website, come from the social media platforms and then you can measure how many have called your office.
We had the opportunity to develop a campaign called the ‘I can again’ campaign. This campaign can be used all over the country. These are all of the patients in your practice that can do things again. ‘I can ski again’, ‘I can bike again’, ‘I can walk, travel, dance’, ‘I can bowl’, ‘I can play softball’ all of the things that I can do again. This is a campaign we would like to bring to your community because we know you have patients that ‘I can again’ as well. So let us help you develop a sales and marketing program in your community that makes you the champion of outpatient and joint replacement.