When launching a new medical clinic, the marketing strategy must be set up on the basis of best possible return on investment. We have found that this means you have to start with a well prepared Google Ad campaign. These campaigns have been found after many years of comparison to be the most number of new patients for the least investment of money (though they are very time consuming to set up properly) The Google ads themselves are set up for the best possible return on investment- the lowest possible bidding for the best possible return. We call this the Maximum ROI Strategy. This prioritizes the cost per acquisition as being more important than the total volume of acquisitions and to achieve this we bid low, we bid smart and we avoid competitive situations.
Maximum ROI Marketing results in great value for money but you don’t tap anything like the true potential of the market and you keep yourself pegged at a lower level of new patients. Its a great strategy for small medical clinics that have limited expansion potential.
Once the clinic is established and has good cash flow, we recommend changing the marketing posture and competing for a larger market share and thus a higher volume of new patients. We call this next step an aggressive marketing posture.
Aggressive Marketing gets a worse ROI, (you pay more per new patient) but with higher volume because you are getting out into the full potential of the market. Here we are aggressively competing for the full market, and the clinic will start running at a high level of new patients, and also paying a higher cost per new patient. This works if you have a good profit margin per patient or even if things are tight it can still work because your core overhead is now covered and you seek to maximize the available staff and rooms. The rental and staff costs stay the same as you push to ensure that every minute and every space is fully booked.
When you achieve this you can step up to more staff and a larger space, and continue to expand. Eventually you will have enough cash flow to consider taking the final step, which is to attempt a domination of your marketing space.
Dominant Marketing is the most expensive of all, and allows a very successful clinic to dominate their market and start squeezing out competition. Suppression of competition is part of this marketing strategy in that you are marketing so well that competitors struggle to get new patients. This marketing strategy suppresses existing competition and also makes it very unappealing for people to open a new clinic to compete with you. New competition can’t get off the ground, they just get choked.
So the strategies offer first value for money, then strong volume, then finally competition suppression.
We don’t recommend short cutting and moving straight to a very high budget. The steps can be moved through fairly swiftly but there is a