If your practice suffers from sluggish growth, you might believe that hiring a new staff member is the last thing you should do. But it’s actually the first step toward jump-starting production, if that new hire is a marketing coordinator.
In working with our consulting clients, Levin Group has developed a whole array of highly effective marketing strategies. For the most part, they’re inexpensive to implement. However, they can be labor intensive. Creating and managing multi-pronged patient referral, community outreach, and online presence programs involves a lot of details and legwork. If you attempt to do this work yourself or add it to another staff member’s list of responsibilities, it will cut deeply into time better spent in other ways, and it probably won’t be handled well either.
The advantages of hiring a part-time marketing coordinator
For the relatively modest cost of hiring a part-time marketing coordinator (MC)—10-hours-per-week is probably sufficient—your practice will benefit in many ways:
- Marketing will get the attention it deserves, without interfering with other clinical and administrative duties.
- By hiring an MC who will project energy, enthusiasm, and excitement in his or her many interactions, you’ll be adding an engaging new personality to the practice.
- Your MC will be able to implement and coordinate numerous simultaneous patient referral strategies—Levin Group recommends a minimum of 15—to reach the target of at least one referral annually from 40% to 60% of your current patients.
- You can put your MC in charge of the practice’s social media activities, posting regularly and responding quickly, to keep your practice’s online presence fresh and positive.
- Your MC can participate in community outreach activities at times when you and your staff must be serving patients.
- You’ll still be making the major decisions—reviewing proposed strategies, approving spending, setting and monitoring performance targets—while delegating the day-to-day efforts to your MC.
- Your practice will be able to compete much more effectively in today’s challenging and competitive dental market.
Conclusion
It may seem counterintuitive, but hiring a part-time MC could turn out to be one of the best investments you ever make in your practice. By generating more referrals and attracting more new patients, while allowing you to devote 98% of your time to providing direct patient care, an MC can dramatically drive practice growth.
Learn how Levin Group Consulting works, and why it works so well. If you’re in any way dissatisfied with your practice, Dr. Levin’s systems-based approach to improving performance may be exactly what you need. To find out, email Levin Group at [email protected]or call (888) 973-0000.
