If you’re a healthcare professional in private practice – or one who has used your expertise to create a commercial product – you probably realise that you need to market your business.
But you may be reluctant to hire a marketing agency. Maybe you’re concerned about being promoted in a sales-y way that makes you cringe. Maybe you’re worried about the cost. Or perhaps you just can’t see the benefit – after all, it can’t be that hard, can it?
As a marketing agency with an exclusive focus on healthcare, it won’t surprise you to learn that we believe there are many benefits in hiring an agency to manage your marketing.
Let’s look at a few of them.
Expertise
You treat patients within your scope of professional expertise. When they need other skills to enhance their care, you refer them to the relevant professional.
You do that in your business too, especially as it grows. You’ll consult an accountant or a lawyer because you recognise their role in keeping your business protected and profitable.
You can think of a marketing agency in the same way. We have a breadth and depth of expertise that an interested amateur simply cannot match.
That includes understanding:
- Your target market – what are their fears, pain points or aspirations?
- Health literacy – knowing how to pitch information so your target market understands it
- Numerous, constantly changing technical details – everything from Facebook’s latest advertising update to web accessibility guidelines
- Marketing trends – how are people finding information, which content performs best and which platforms reach which people?
- Healthcare compliance regulations – many healthcare professionals are blissfully unaware of their obligations under AHPRA’s advertising regulations or the TGA’s Advertising Code.
Innovative strategies
If you have a patient with ongoing needs, you plan their care to maximise its effectiveness and ensure you’ve covered all the bases. You don’t take an ad hoc approach because you know it’ll be hit-and-miss.
The same is true with marketing. A good agency will listen to you carefully and then develop a strategic marketing plan that bolsters your business.
Just as you maintain your skills through CPD, we maintain ours. We stay up to date with the latest marketing trends and tools. And we’ve got a creative team who can bounce ideas around. That means we can create innovative messages and marketing strategies that you may struggle to achieve on your own.
Comprehensive approach
The Splice team includes people with expertise in:
- Strategic and compliant healthcare marketing
- Branding and messaging
- Content creation
- Healthcare copywriting
- Graphic design
- Website design – including accessibility considerations
- Google ads and Facebook ads
- Search engine optimisation
- Social media marketing.
We’ve also worked with numerous clients across the healthcare sector. That means we can draw on considerable experience when formulating our advice to you or executing agreed plans.
Saving time
The University of Melbourne reports that a third of Australians feel under chronic time stress. You’re a professional with a demanding job – and you need time to focus and perform at your best.
In primary care, greater time pressure has been shown to lead to reduced diagnoses and increased need for follow-up care. Similarly, dentists’ diagnostic performance has been found to decline when under time pressure.
When you take an honest look at your diary, you probably don’t have time to devote to marketing your business well. You’re better off focusing on your clinical practice and outsourcing your marketing.
Professional content
Agencies are able to recruit capable, trained graphic designers, videographers, photographers, copywriters and content creators. That team generates high-quality campaigns and visuals that bring your brand alive and help you stand out from the competition.
Compliance
In Australia, healthcare advertising is tightly regulated. Depending on who you are and what you offer, you may have to comply with AHPRA’s advertising rules or the TGA Advertising Code or both. You might have to abide by additional requirements if you’re providing cosmetic surgery or prescribing medicinal cannabis. And you’re also covered by Australian consumer law.
Those rules are complex, intricate and often subjective. In our experience, very few healthcare professionals understand their obligations here – despite potentially serious penalties for non-compliance.
As healthcare marketing experts, the Splice team receives regular training on compliance issues from regulation agencies or lawyers with relevant expertise.
Ready to outsource your marketing?
If you’re beginning to recognise that you don’t have the time or skills to market your practice well, then it’s time to hire an agency.
Splice Marketing is a boutique agency focused on the healthcare sector. We believe in what you do and delight in helping your business thrive. We work hard to develop a strong relationship with you, learn about your business and be a sounding board for you as you grow your practice.
We don’t talk in marketing jargon and we believe marketing is an investment that should generate a return in terms of increased patient numbers or product sales. We’re transparent about your marketing metrics and we’re agile enough to adjust our sails if the data shows we need to do so.
To help you get started, we offer a free 30-minute consultation. That’s a great way for you to outline your needs and explore how we could help you.
