When doctors hear the phrase, “marketing your medical practice,” they often think first of advertising. As we have discussed in many articles in the past, marketing can be so much more than traditional advertising. In fact, for many years, it was not considered proper for a 
doctor to advertise. However with more and more doctors advertising, it might be tempting for you to consider it as part of your marketing strategy. Before you do it is important to consider whether traditional advertising should have a place your marketing repertoire?
What are the advantages to traditional marketing and advertising for your medical practice?
First traditional advertising is easy. It is relatively easy to put together a short radio advertisement or small print advertisement that promotes the major benefits of your practice. The second major advantage to traditional advertising is that it offers you considerable reach. With one advertisement you can get your message out to many, many people.
Given these advantages to traditional advertising what are the disadvantages the doctors must consider before embarking on a traditional advertising campaign?
The first major disadvantage to traditional advertising is the cost. Getting your message on radio or TV can be prohibitively expensive for most doctors. The reason that big businesses rely so heavily on traditional advertising is that they know that this is the best way to get their message out to their target market over and over again. They realize that by repeating their message, it will reach their target market’s subconscious mind, where many consumer decisions are made. However since this repetition requires continuous advertising, the cost can be out of reach for smaller businesses like doctors.
The second major disadvantage to traditional advertising is the lack of focus on your target market. Although it is possible to time your advertising so that it airs at a time when your target market is most likely to be listening, you cannot guarantee that they will. Often your message will be sent to people who have no need for your services and therefore it will be wasted.
The third major disadvantage to traditional advertising is the lack of the believability. With all of the thousands and thousands of advertisements that bombard people every day, they tend to turn off their ears to advertising. Since they have no relationship with you, they do not trust or know you and therefore they have no interest in listening to your message.
The final disadvantage to a traditional marketing campaign is that it can be difficult to determine whether all that money spent is really producing a return on investment. Given that most doctors do not have marketing departments that can do analyses on their marketing campaign, it is very easy to spend thousands of thousands of dollars on traditional advertising without realizing any return on investment.
With all of these considerations, we, at www.RealWealthForDoctors.com, feel that less traditional marketing techniques, such as the methods that we advocate, are far more effective for most doctors. What do you think? Has traditional marketing worked for you and your practice? Let us know by commenting and sharing below.
