How do you distribute flyers for your Direct Primary Care practice?
Making a flyer is helpful for having all of your information for your Direct Primary Care practice in one place. It’s useful if you’re putting together a packet of information - the basic packet might have a flyer or brochure about your business and a business card with your contact information.
What’s the best way to get this out to people? You could take it to the following places:
small businesses in your community and ask to meet with the owner
small business incubators in your community or co-working spaces
churches or places of worship
community centers or parks
bulletin boards at the local coffee shop
You’re looking for inexpensive ways to get the word out about your practice, and the above routes are reasonable ways to get that information out there.
The most effective ways to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice
However, in my experience with Plum Health DPC, flyers aren’t super high yield in terms of attracting patients. I’ve never had someone sign up for my practice because they saw our flyer! More often than not, people sign up for our practice for the following reasons:
referred by a friend or family member
saw that we had 80+ five star reviews on Google
saw that we were the highest rated doctor in Detroit on Google or Yelp
saw a social media post about our practice
used Google search and found our practice/website
saw us on TV or in the newspaper
There are so many ways to get your name out there! What matters most is interacting with people in an authentic way and giving them information that they're searching for. I'm a huge advocate of leveraging SEO (search engine optimization) and we've been super successful in building our practice that way. We continuously create content that answers the most important questions for our community, and people enroll when they find the information they need on our site.
It comes down to this: we write blog posts for topics that people are already searching for. For example, our blog posts are entitled:
Family Medicine Doctor Accepting New Patients
How to Quit Smoking in Detroit
How to get the Coronavirus Vaccine in Detroit
How to Check your Vitamin D Level in Detroit
I focus on teaching doctors how to attract patients by using the above methods via my courses, here.
Other Marketing Tidbits for your direct primary care practice
Remember that marketing is an ongoing discussion between you and your audience. You need to be communicating on a regular and frequent basis to let your audience know that you still exist and that you’re still serving people with valuable medical care.
You definitely want to build up your email list and send regular email blasts.
You'll also want to create content on your blog regularly.
You should meet with business owners in your community - the decision makers who would possibly enroll their employees with your service.
There's so many little things like this that you can do to build your practice! So keep doing these things on a regular basis and your practice will start to grow organically after some time.
It may seem like a lot of work at the beginning, because it is. You’re like an airplane at takeoff, expending the vast majority of your energy during the takeoff process, and then gliding through the air once you’ve climbed to 30,000 feet.
Marketing your practice at the beginning is that energy-intensive take off process, so don’t get discouraged! Know that all of your hard work will pay off once you reach a certain level in terms of new enrollments, then word of mouth will boost your success and sustainability. But, you should always communicate with your broader community about your valuable service in order to keep your pipeline full.
STARTUP DPC - DIRECT PRIMARY CARE MASTER CLASS
Because there are no in-person conferences this year, we are hosting an intimate gathering of Direct Primary Care doctors who are looking to start and grow their DPC practices. We did this last year, and it was a rousing success! Join our Direct Primary Care Master Class on May 14th through May 15th, 2021 at our Plum Health DPC office in Detroit, Michigan and accelerate your growth as a DPC doctor.
Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!
-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC