When we engage in the marketing audit process with practices, we often find that they once had a satellite office in an outlying area that failed.  Doctors become frustrated with driving to the satellite office to consult with just 2 or 3 patients and usually abandon the satellite office within the first year.

The reason why satellite offices fail is due to the fact that most of the potential referring doctors in the market do not even know that the office exists or they may find the limited schedule results in waiting too long to get their patients seen.  Some offices try the direct mail approach, but consider: 1) direct mail has has just a 2% response rate, 2) merely announcing the opening of the facility is not enough, and 3) it often takes several attempts for the message to sink in with a potential referral source.  Think about the most successful marketing campaigns — you remember them for a few reasons:

- The message was effective

- The message was frequent

Before abandoning your satellite office, try “practice rep” approach first. For a small investment, a part-time sales and marketing professional can visit your potential referral sources in person and promote your satellite office.

The best method for success in this situation is to meet with your practice rep prior to field marketing. Develop the message that you want to be delivered, identify marketing collateral material that needs to be created as a “leave behind” for the referring offices, and discuss the best potential targets.  Once a marketing plan has been developed, your practice rep can target the entire staff of referring offices. Often it’s the check-out staff that can offer some information as to whether an opportunity exists.

The rep can follow up and remind referral sources that have promised referrals but haven’t delivered, since it can, in some cases, take up to 6 interactions to make a physician change their referral pattern.

Look for another post next week about other easy ways to promote your satellite office!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 4:10 pm and is filed under All Posts, Referral Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.