Affinity Marketing — No One Cares How Much You Know Until They Know How Much You Care
It's still the rage these days among big corporations. It's called Affinity Marketing, a fancy term for the old concept of simply being friendly and, therefore, likable.
But M.P. never heard of big corporations' Affinity Marketing programs. He just wrote letters to his patients in every spare minute he had — after hours and weekends included. The reason? Because he cared about them. Plain and simple.
He's lucky he did. In a hotly competitive market and from a cold start with hardly any external marketing (marketing outside a practice), he rose to over $650,000 in collections. Without his compulsive note-writing campaign, his good looks and gentle touch would perhaps have taken him to only $425K.
His 10 to 20 notes a day is truly the mark of someone who cares. And even though all practitioners say they care, they rarely display it overtly. Therefore, patients don't perceive the caring. And if they don't perceive it, it doesn't exist, no matter what the practitioner feels.
You can follow this same strategy. Format letters on computer, then you can edit each slightly on the screen rather than write a new one each time.
Then you can tell your staff that such-and-such patient should get Standard Note #14 and to add his best regards to her Aunt Emily. This way you can personalize each note, get it in the mail and take only fifteen seconds of your time for each.
If you received two or three personal notes a year from your practitioner, what would you think of him or her? Wouldn't you like to be thought of like that, and get those mega-referrals that follow? Show your patients you care with personal notes and you will.