What’s your spring cleaning marketing plan?

Hello Spring! It’s time to develop a marketing plan that benefits your practice, patients and community.

“Spring is the time of plans and projects,” said author Leo Tolstoy. We are all ready to welcome spring and get back to enjoying the outdoors.

Spring is a time for new beginnings, and historically, a time when we see lots of patients ready to take the next step in their hearing journey. How can you as hearing care providers (HCP) capitalize on this? By building a marketing plan today.

A marketing plan helps you be proactive (instead of reactive), organizes your time and priorities, saves and makes money for your practice, and creates measurable goals for your practice to work towards.

Marketing planning can seem overwhelming, trust me, I get it. But, you can start small by starting with one quarter at a time.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

  • Plan and budget for a direct mail, a database mailing and a digital campaign.
  • Assign someone to work with your web design company to talk through website content updates.
  • Assign someone to handle your social media posts for the quarter (one post per week minimum).
  • Assign someone to refresh your office materials and décor.

Update office materials

Refresh patient brochures and update waiting room videos and posters. These materials are not only educational, but can be a reminder to the patient to ask about a specific product benefit, like rechargeability or streaming.

Refresh your website

With so many people searching online, your website is the first impression a potential patient interacts with. Based on the design and content, visitors are deciding if you are the right HCP to provide them with a solution. Make sure your website is up-to-date with the services you offer and promotes the features that patients are looking for, such as telehealth services, warranty, ongoing service and support, feature videos and content that highlights these services.

You should be adding or changing content at least once a month—a blog is a great way to do this!

Digital marketing

This winter many of us have spent a lot of time indoors and researching online. Digital marketing is more important than ever. As the senior population becomes more internet savvy, be sure you’re using this platform to connect with new patients in your community.

Check out these specific marketing topics to promote:

    • March 3 is World Hearing Day. Capture audiences in your community promoting better hearing health.
    • April is full of spring holidays — Several religious holidays, April Fool’s Day, Tax Day, Earth Day and more. This is a great time for promotions and a super time to leverage social media.
    • May is Better Speech and Hearing Month. Invite the community to have a hearing test and offer a risk-free trial.

When marketing, remember to communicate the services that make you stand out in your community and that patients find meaningful, like warranty expiration, hearing aid maintenance or telehealth.

Digital marketing campaigns should run for a minimum of 8 weeks. For the best results, I recommend 12-16 weeks. This timeframe will give an agency enough time to really optimize the campaign to work for you.

Virtual seminars

And while our audience continues to stay safely at home, that doesn’t mean you can’t start building a relationship. Consider hosting a virtual seminar – use Zoom to teach about hearing health care and how hearing aids work in general. This type of information helps the patient make an informed decision and is an important step in their buying journey. It’s an amazing opportunity to educate the community about hearing health and establishes you as the hearing aid expert.

Looking for more information about the marketing programs shared? Reach out to your Phonak Representative to see how easy they are to implement.