Sending The Right Message With Your Office

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Your office is sending messages to your patients (especially first timers), but is it a good one?

I am always giving tips and strategies for marketing and getting more patients but this week’s I’m talking about something a little less conventional. It’s something occurring every day and its right under your nose, but it’s not really being addressed.  And it is costing you patients!!!!

It’s your office.

This ties into marketing in a really big way, because your office is sending out a lot of messages to your patients under the radar, but that doesn’t always mean it’s a good message.

Think about your house for a second, you walk through your house countless times each day and you think it’s clean.  Until you have a visitor coming.  You get a call from an old friend or your mother-in-law saying they are coming to stay a few days and you look around your house and realize it maybe isn’t as clean as you thought.  That never-ending stack of mail by the front door, or everyone’s shoes piled by the garage.  These are all things you walk past every day but they aren’t a big deal to you.  But if you’re having company over, you probably want these things tidied up.

The same applies to your office.  You probably walk through your office 100 times a day, but when you’re walking through you have your business goggles on.  You’re in work-mode, and not paying attention to everything lying around like the magazine in the reception area.

But you need to start paying attention, every day.  Designate a specific person to do a walk-through every morning and survey your entire building with ‘patient goggles’ on.  Treat it with the same thinking as you do when you’re having company over to your house.  Going all along the patient path, even starting with the parking lot and working your way all the back to the procedure rooms. If your parking lot has a lot of trash laying around, that sends a certain signal to your patients, especially your first-time ones.

I recently encountered a dental office, of a dentist I respect and know does phenomenal work.  But as I was waiting to be seen in the reception area, I noticed books neatly stacked on the table with a decorative orb sitting on top. Now, from the first appearance, you would think on that sounds nice as a top decorating tip, but at a closer look, I realized they were dental school textbooks.  These books were not patient-friendly, with very graphic pictures and details that the patient doesn’t need to be privy to.  Now I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘Oh I would never do something like that.’

Now, maybe you don’t have surgery books laying around, but we all something that could be tidied up.  Make sure to change out your magazines often, make sure they are ripped or dog-eared. Are there any little scuffs on the walls or flooring that need fixed?  These are all simple quick changes that can go a long way for your patient message.