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Ask Our Experts: How Do I Introduce New Services?

Question: What is the best way to introduce new products or treatments into my practice? – P.M., MD, medical aesthetics

Use your own reception room to display unique branded material about your practice – showing what sets you apart from your competitors – and the services and benefits you offer. Too often, your patients simply don't know you offer a certain service, even services you have offered for a long time, so they go somewhere else. Put your brochure in front of them and you will help avoid such needless losses.

One caution: Avoid laying out generic manufacturer's material. These promote the manufacturer's products, not you, and make you look the same as every other plastic surgeon. If patients don't know what sets you apart, they tend to choose based on who has the most impressive-sounding training, and that's a tough contest to win.

Send an e-blast to your patient base announcing your new service, and include a special offer (typically a discount) available only to your patients. Include a link in the email to a new page on your website that promotes the service.

And of course, tell every patient who comes into your office about your new service. Remember, your existing patients are the best area to mine for new business.

Another simple technique is to offer free trials of these services to the owners or managers of synergistic businesses like Curves, beauty salons, etc.

Tell them if they like what they experience in your practice, you would like them to display materials on your practice or referral coupons, and then reward these businesses
with additional no-cost services when they refer their clients.

Put these techniques into action a your new service is likely to get off to a great start and add nicely to your patient base and practice revenue.

Marketing expert Jonathan Vidal, Senior Director, Consulting Services, for Practice Builders, answered this question. Mr. Vidal is a former senior director of marketing for Endocare, Inc., a medical device company, and a former director of marketing for Circon-ACMI, the largest producer of medical endoscopes.