HERE’S HOW WE DOUBLED MID FLORIDA DERMATOLOGY IN TWO AND A HALF YEARS AND INCREASED NEW PATIENTS BY 51%.
Disclaimer: This was while I was working for Mid Florida Dermatology. The “we” I refer to is the team I had while working there. Even though I worked there, this is what I did to make the practice successful and increased revenue, new patients, and offices in such a short amount of time.
When I first graduated from UCF, I looked for a job everywhere except for Orlando. My parents even called me a professional interviewer. But, I knew what I was looking for. I interviewed with Mid Florida Dermatology and it was the easiest interview ever. The doctor came in, asked me some questions, the office manager followed when he walked out and then another manager did the same. Two days later I had the job and was ecstatic.
Fast-forward to two years later and looking back this is what we had accomplished:
- Redoing their website
- Rebranding the entire company
- Implementing social media, blogging and email marketing
- Taking the practice from 10 offices to 20
- Keeping top-of-mind throughout the community
Keep in mind that this client had already had 10 offices to back them. They also have their reputation, which is always important. Either way, to double in size in two years is no easy feat. Here’s what we did and how we did it.
CLIENT BACKGROUND
Mid Florida Dermatology had a great reputation and also had a made a great name for themselves. Dr. Gutierrez is the main doctor and owner of the practice. He now has 20 offices in Central Florida and 5 offices out of state.
When I started with him in 2012, he had 10 offices in Central Florida and none out of state. He had a great team of staff with him and a group of physicians and medical staff.
He did have a website and logo but the colors nor the verbiage was memorable for someone of that capacity.
THE CHALLENGE
When I first started, Dr. Gutierrez didn’t say he wanted to redo the website or rebrand the company, but once we started talking about his goals, it became clear that in order to accomplish something that monumental, he needed to create a brand that was memorable.
He challenged me to do the outside marketing, going door to door to speak to doctor’s offices who could refer or who did refer. He wanted a more known presence around his offices and that’s what I did.
Not only that but we implemented email marketing, social media, and blogging. The blogging was specifically to help people find us on the search engines, the social media was to be more “out there” in the digital world and the email marketing was to stay top of mind for all of the patients who hadn’t seen us in a while.
SOLUTION
There are a couple of solutions to his growth that we implemented.
- Create spreadsheets of all the doctors who did refer or who could refer. This was a MONSTER of a task because we had to go through old record to start creating a list. We had each doctor send us a list of their top 10 or 20 referring practices and we added them. At first, we had one spreadsheet but as the offices grew, we had multiple spreadsheets; one for each office.
- Create an online presence. Don’t get me wrong here, we had a lot of people asking us to advertise with them and guess what… very little results. We finally created what Dr. G called “swim lanes” for us to stay within. We focused on social media, blogging and email marketing as mentioned above. If we had a very targeted niche, like The Villages where we KNEW people read the newspaper or articles in magazines, we would consider it for that area.
- Lunches. We implemented lunches at least twice per week at offices who referred a lot of patients or who could potentially refer a lot of patients. We scheduled them in advance and I would bring the provider at that location with me to meet their providers. Usually, by doing this, the doctors and providers at that location would make an effort to show up knowing another provider was there to meet them.
RESULTS
This was all trial and error to make a marketing strategy that worked for Mid Florida Dermatology. What happened was an increase from 225 new patients per month to over 440 new patients per month in two and a half years’ time. We saw a significant amount of people call, especially on Mondays, to schedule appointments. Not only that, but we reached a wide variety of people through online and boots on the ground marketing.
Starting in 2012 with 10 offices all in Central Florida, through this plan and a lot of implementation, they grew to 17 offices in Central Florida and three offices out of state.
DATA ANALYSIS
Just in the new patient numbers, we saw a 51% increase; from around 225 per month to over 440 per month. Not only that, but people could now request appointments via online, on our website, through social media, and from our email blasts. This ultimately made it much more convenient and helped grow the practice.
CLIENT SUMMARY AND FORECAST
Based on the growth of this client, the future is a forecast of bright and thriving skies. If Mid Florida Dermatology continues to market to other referring physicians and utilizes online marketing, their growth has no end potential.
For me, this was an amazing opportunity and helped me learn what to do and what not to do. We learned what worked and stuck with it, leading to such growth.