A good bedside manner. Hard to define exactly, but it can impact patient satisfaction and improve medical outcomes.

A good bedside manner is based on mutual respect, knowledge, trust, shared values and perspectives about disease and life. It’s also a useful guide for physicians looking to successfully market themselves.

Now it may seem odd to equate marketing to a skill so valued by both patients and physicians — especially given the negative connotations that marketing can engender within the medical profession.

But a good bedside manner is a familiar concept to physicians, and therefore it’s a helpful tool  in making marketing more comprehensible for doctors and more effective with patients.

That is not an easy task. It’s safe to say that more physicians are better acquainted with biology and organic chemistry than marketing terms like branding and “organic search.”

SOMETHING IN COMMON

Yet at their core, healthcare marketing and a good bedside manner have much in common.

A good bedside manner is about communication.  And so is healthcare marketing.  One is central to an existing doctor patient relationship. The other attempts to build a relationship between doctor and a prospective patient.

But most fundamentally, a good bedside manner never involves selling or lecturing;  And neither should healthcare marketing. Instead both work best when they inform, educate and engage.

A GUIDE TO SUCCESSFUL HEALTHCARE MARKETING

All of which leads me to offer a bedside manner guide to successful healthcare marketing.  What is said to patients in the privacy of an exam room and what is written in marketing materials and our website are of course very different. The goal  here is to help physicians look at communications holistically and part of a continuum that can lead to better marketing and better patient engagement.

Good Beside Manner #1: Focus

Today’s bedside manner principle is focus. (I’ll address other principles in future posts.)  Focus is fundamental to a good bedside manner and healthcare marketing.

Understandably, physicians are pulled in many directions in the course of day.  But multi-tasking and appearing distracted or scattered when with a patient can undermine her or his confidence, raise anxiety, and even breed resentment.

Patients are expecting their doctors’ full attention when receiving treatment or getting a diagnosis. It’s critical to stay focused – even for a few a minutes.  Filling out forms or answering the phone while talking to a patient doesn’t convey interest or caring.

Failure to engage with patients leads to poorer interactions; it can result in lower patient satisfaction scores and negative reviews on online sites – the very places where you are looking build awareness and attract patients.

Healthcare Marketing Lesson

When marketing you often a have a small window of opportunity to get a target audience’s full attention.  You have to earn it.

First and foremost focus on the patient needs, their concerns and questions.  Of course marketing is about getting more patients and revenue for you. The goal should be how your expertise can help them.

As for your marketing strategy, a scattered approach and  moving in too many directions at one time limits the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Shifting your target patient audience or changing your offering or messaging before efforts can be tested and validated for example can lead to wasted time and money and disappointing results. In other words, you need to give a strategy some time to work.

And speaking of results, it’s best to focus on one or two metrics at a time to measure success. Multiple metrics, especially when first implementing a marketing strategy can cause you to move in too many directions at one time.  The metric may change over time, but focusing on at a time gives you a defined goal to gauge success on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.