Strategic Plan
If you get in a car in New York City and generally head west, you’ll eventually be able to find your way to San Francisco without any planning at all. Yet if you planned your route, you’d be able to get to your destination in the least amount of time and with the least hassle and driving into dead ends. Marketing strategic planning is like that for a business – developing a roadmap that most effectively and efficiently lets you reach your objective.
What Is A DWP Marketing StratPlanSM?
Let’s start with what it’s not – it’s not a calendar of promotional events the practice has planned out, although that may be one of the eventual results. Instead, it is a series of strategies or plans that provide guidance for how you’ll achieve practice revenue objectives over time. It includes defining how the practice wants to be perceived by potential patients, how it’s different from other practices, and how the practice is going to be operated to fulfill the desired perception.
Elements of a strategic marketing plan include:
- Practice Positioning/Branding – the methodology to identify and create a market niche, and how to optimize patient perception of the desired result, and characteristics of desired patients.
- Pricing strategy – the methodology for how you initially price each service, how often you change prices, determining which prices you should change and by how much, as well as how to set regular fees if the practice accepts managed care or discount plans to maximize practice profitability and insurance reimbursement.
- Service strategy – the methodology to determine which services you offer or refer out, which services you plan to add and when, which services you should promote either internally or externally, and what investments in equipment, education, and staff are needed to succeed.
- Patient acquisition strategy – the methodology to acquire new patients in adequate numbers to achieve practice financial objectives at each stage of practice life.
- Patient retention strategy – the methodology to reduce patient attrition from the practice.
- Sales strategy – the methodology to maximize lifetime revenue per patient and treatment plan acceptance.
- Premises strategy – how to determine the best location to practice, how the layout and décor are impacting practice branding, and a plan to improve going forward.
Bottom line, the Strategic Marketing Plan is your blueprint for maximizing your revenues over the life of the practice, providing the roadmap to achieve your financial goals. It’s an investment that pays dividends year after year!
Of course, if you’ve signed up for the DWP PracticePartnerSM program, the DWP Marketing StratPlanSM would be included in the ongoing retainer. To learn more about these programs, contact Dental Wealth Partners today!
