For many physicians and hospitals, medical marketing and advertising is something completely new and novel. Recent AHA data indicates hospitals spend less than 1% of their operating budgets on external advertising (although this is growing quickly). On the physician practice side, a variety of trends (including less invasive procedures moving point-of-care from hospital to surgical center to office) are causing an increasing proportion of physicians to rely more heavily on their private practice income. As a result, physicians are increasingly being put in the role of ‘business owner’, looking to maximize income of the practice by any means necessary. Cost and reimbursement management can only get you so far, so more and more, physicians are looking to top-line (revenue) growth and the prospect of ‘advertising’.
For many in this position, they are advertising for the first time and have no experience to rely on as to which of the various media opportunities are most cost effective. Options are quite numerous and it’s difficult to know which are better or most likely to provide a positive return on investment.
For ease of thought, one might aggregate the choices into two different major categories:
Traditional Marketing
– Print (newspapers, magazines, newsletters)
– Television
– Radio
– Billboard
– Direct Mail
Online (Internet) Marketing (search, display, social, e-mail, mobile)
Rather than rely on subjective word-of-mouth feedback, not too long ago we conducted an online survey of over 2000 physician practices and hospitals in one of our medical segments, with questions about their specific marketing investments and return (return being measured in terms of actual patient referrals). We managed to get over 10% response from the survey (>200 practices) and from it constructed a picture of which media were utilized most by physician practices, what relative return each exhibited (as measured by cost-per-referral) and how these investments correlated with practice revenue.
To see the results of this medical marketing research, please read the entire white paper write-up which can be downloaded from our website.
