Practice Tip 5 – New Clients

NEW CLIENTS...
THE LIFE BLOOD OF YOUR PRACTICE

I spoke with a DVM practice owner that was following the “build it and they will come” external marketing program, and painfully waiting for new clients to arrive while his practice expense meter ticked away. A nail-biter? You bet. A couple of things need correcting with this situation.

First is the viewpoint of the owner. It’s too passive. Fact: simply hanging out your shingle or just physically being there in most cases is not sufficient enough to attract the right amount of attention to your practice. New Clients are the life blood of your practice. Don’t ever forget this. (Note: If you have lots of new clients and are the only game in town, then just wait until you get some new hot shot moving in…). So don’t wait! You need to pro-actively market - I.e. do things to turn up the spotlight on your practice and drive new clients in. This is what your external marketing program should do.

Secondly, your marketing needs to be effective in bringing new people in. Effectiveness is the key word here. I am not against Yellow Pages or any other form of advertising or promotion if they are effective. So how do you know if your promotion is effective? Count the number of New Clients separately from your regular transactions. Track where they come from. Ask them “where did you find our phone number to call us today?” You may be very surprised. A healthy practice should be bringing in between 15—20 new clients a week.

And thirdly know this, an effective marketing program creates a strong emotional response in potential clients by “pushing their button”. A button is something you push that produces a response. The response you want is obviously for new clients to chose you as their veterinarian. What is not so obvious is that to the degree you fail to properly align even one aspect of your marketing and presentation – your pricing, positioning, quality, presentation, design, support and so on - you won’t hit your clients’ button. These buttons can vary with different communities.

Interested in knowing more? Tally your New Client numbers over the last year and give me a call. I’d be happy to have a look at them with you.