helping healthcare organizations grow

Welcome to The Healthcare Marketing Connection! Are the products and services you offer what YOU want to offer your patients, or what your patients want? Have you ever asked? By asking you may learn of one or two more things you can add to your practice that you don't currently offer.

This week there's a lot going on at A Marketing Connection. We're partnering with a few new copywriters, coaches and practitioners in the alternative healthcare industry and having a blast. Look for tons of new information and resources coming in the next few months! Check out our newest podcast - an interview with "The Text Doctor" Elizabeth Frick. She teaches us some powerful tips for managing writers and offers some insights into providing feedback on their writing - without killing their egos! You can listen for free here: http://kellyrobbinsllc.com/blog

Finally, you can now sign up to receive automatic updates to my blog using using feedblitz. To subscribe to these updates, visit www.kellyrobbinsllc.com/blog. In the top right you will see a place to "Enter your Email". Once you are subscribed, you will receive an email via FeedBlitz when the blog and/or podcast has been updated.

To your success!

Kelly

Give your patients what they want, not what you want to give them

Providing services your patients want seems to be common sense at first glance. The reason I even bother bringing it up is that is not always what practitioners do.

I see practitioners and clinics offering what they want to sell, not what the patient wants. They provide services and offer coaching and products on what, in their opinion, the patient needs.

Treating patients and providing the health care that patients need is exactly what you were trained for and what you are hired to do. That's not a bad thing. As a healthcare practitioner you do know what will best optimize your patient's health.  

You coach patients on their health. Teach patients how to take care of their bodies through exercise, eating right, taking vitamins or other supplements - it's all important and an integral part of running your practice.

Do you take the health care that you provide to the next step? Are you offering patients what they want, rather than what you want to offer? How can you be sure?

One simple way to find this out is by asking them. The easiest way to do this is with a survey or questionnaire. There are several simple and free survey companies online you can use to do this, or you can write up something simple on your computer and have patients complete it before their treatment. I recommend you ask patients a few probing questions such as:

• Are there any other services you'd like us to offer that we are not currently?
  
• What other health related issues do you have that are not addressed in our practice? For example, allergies or fatigue. Trouble sleeping?
  
• Is there any particular topic you would like to learn more about?

By asking these questions you may see a common trend among participants and you may find that you already offer ways to help people with issues they did not know about. Through the information you learn you may be able to offer a new seminar on how ____ can help people that have trouble sleeping.

Finally, you may learn something about your patients you didn't know, and may be able to add a new dimension to your practice that you hadn't considered in order to meet the full needs of your patients. And let them learn about what they WANT to learn about - not just what they need to know.

(c) 2007, A Marketing Connection

Want to use this article in your e-zine or web site? No problem! Just let me know at info@KellyRobbinsLLC.com. I'll send you a short bio to include at the end of the article.

For my corporate friends, or those that can get together a group of five or ten marketers: If your copywriting is not quite up to par - or your staff could use a refresher, I have a course that might be right for you - Copywriting 101. This is a full-day on-site course customized to your company's needs.   If you'd like to learn more, drop me a note at kelly@kellyrobbinsllc.com. I'm happy to tell you all about it.

This week Kelly recommends The Text Doctor®. Elizabeth (Bette) Frick, Ph.D. the Text Doctor®, teaches technical and business writing for international, national, and Denver-Metro companies. Her interactive classes and practical workshops help learners of all ages and academic and cultural backgrounds acquire effective communication skills. Listen to her interview with Kelly on the latest edition of The Sounds of Marketing.

If you have any other great resources you'd like me to share with everyone, let me know and I'll check it out. kelly@KellyRobbinsLLC.com

To learn more about healthcare copywriting and marketing, visit my Web site at www.KellyRobbinsLLC.com/article_archives.shtml. There are tons of fr ee articles on a variety of helpful topics.