Your Marketing Secret Weapon: Book Campaigns

Podiatric professionals often wonder what the best tools for growing their practices are. Is it their social media? Their website? Building relationships with referring doctors or other sources? All of those things are critical parts of a well-rounded marketing plan—in other words, the Four Pillars of Marketing—but there’s another tool that has a high perceived value and low perceived cost that inspires people to respond and convert to patients in increasingly higher numbers. That tool is a book campaign.

Remember, it’s Never about You

All podiatry professionals want a thriving, growing practice. For your practice to grow, of course, you need to attract more patients. As you know, patients are vital. Without them, your office couldn’t function. So attracting new patients and getting current ones to return to you isn’t just a good idea; it’s a necessity for your practice to stay afloat and to grow. You achieve this through your marketing.

The key thing that most doctors don’t realize, though, is that marketing should never be about you. This makes up the core of the Top Practice’s approach to marketing, and it makes a huge difference. Potential and even current patients don’t really care about where you got your degree or the amazing technology in your office. They care about whether or not you can fix their problems. Effective podiatry marketing revolves around addressing the concerns your current and potential patients already have and demonstrating, without being too sales-y, how you are able to fix those problems. This is informational marketing.

Why Books Work So Well

Informational marketing touches on the concerns people are already thinking about. They are worried about their problems and are starting to look for answers. When you provide people with those answers, demonstrating that you are able to make things better, people are far more likely to turn to you when they are finally ready to do something about those issues. This is why a book is one of the best possible tools you could have.

See, physical books are packed cover-to-cover with the useful information people want. They can conveniently answer people’s questions and concerns. They sit on counters and coffee tables until they are needed, so they’re less likely to be forgotten. What’s more, they have “high perceived value.” They take time and effort to make, and when they contain useful information, they’re not perceived as junk or clutter. Additionally, your little book was written by a medical expert, adding even more to the perceived value.

The best way to make the most of this incredible tool is to then turn it into a free offer.

Turning a Book into a Marketing Campaign

Offering something with a high perceived value and a low perceived cost (in this case, free) makes more people willing to provide you with their name and contact information. Giving you the information you need to mail them an actual, physical book is a fair trade. Simply providing the book and leaving it at that, however, does not make the most of this tool. People are rarely ready to make an appointment to come in to see you when they first request your book. It’s usually months before they make that decision.

Continuing to stay in touch with someone through informational, non-sales-y marketing techniques allows you to be at the forefront of that person’s mind when they finally are ready to take that step. This is why, at Top Practices, we use books as part of larger marketing campaigns. We use an 18-step process, since we’ve found it corresponds well with the timeline of potential patients’ willingness to convert. These book campaigns allow doctors to continue reaching out to prospective patients through e-mail, letters, postcards, and CDs, to engage them through multiple mediums and hopefully meet them where they are.

Using Your Marketing Database to Pull It All Together

This is where having a functioning, efficient marketing database program makes all the difference. A book campaign shouldn’t be an extra hassle for your busy staff. It should be a convenient tool that helps you grow your practice. A database program can help you automate these steps and organize your contacts, so you don’t have to remember or manually keep track of who is on what step and what they should be receiving either in the mail or through e-mail at any given time.