"Great Sales Funnel Course!" and HIPAA Protected Communications

Direct Primary Care Sales Funnel Course Receives Praise

One of Startup DPC docs recently completed the Sales Funnel Course and had this to say about the experience:

Hi Paul, great sales funnel course! I will start implementing what I learned immediately.  When you set up MailChimp for newsletters, how do you share your subscriber’s data and be HIPAA compliant with your patients? MailChimp doesn’t have a BAA for PHI. Any other recommendations?

Thanks for your insight.

First of all, I’m glad people are enjoying and getting a ton of value out of the Sales Funnel Course. I’ve had several docs talk about how helpful it has been in helping them attract new patients for their direct primary care practices.

Using Email Marketing Platforms to Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice

Second, I don't put my patients info into MailChimp unless they enroll themselves. If someone goes to my site, they can sign up for my email blasts by putting in their email address online, via a form submission on our website. I’ve synced my MailChimp account with my Plum Health SquareSpace account. Therefore, if anyone submits their email address on my website, they automatically are asked if they’d like to join the email list. If they agree to MailChimp’s terms and conditions, they are then made a part of my email list.

If set up correctly, this is more or less an automated process. I then send out monthly email blasts to those folks. Here’s the form as it appears on our Plum Health DPC website.

This is the site on my Plum Health DPC website where folks can submit their contact information. If they complete this form and agree to MailChimp’s terms of service, we can send them emails whenever we like. We usually send monthly updates.

For my patients, I send them notes via my EMR. There's a function in ATLAS that allows me to send a group email to all of my patients. 

As a side note, I have all of my patients waive my obligation to their HIPAA rights in the contract, which is roughly 7 pages long. That way, I have some protection for any emails, phone calls, or text messages. 

- Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

How This Direct Primary Care Doctor Built a Successful Sales Funnel

How to attract more patients to your direct primary care practice

Direct primary care doctors want to know how to attract more patients to their direct primary care practices. This can be accomplished by using a sales funnel, which may seem like a foreign concept, but let me explain. You see, doctors aren’t taught how to market themselves in medical school. There is no course on branding and marketing in medical school or residency. Further, doctors can feel icky about marketing themselves or selling their services.

However, you shouldn’t feel gross about marketing yourself, and here’s why. The best form of marketing is giving the right people in your community the right information about your service. If you can clearly explain what it is that you do and how you help people, that’s marketing. If you can share interesting stories about yourself and about your direct primary care practice, that’s marketing.

There’s a lot of nuance here and there are some tips and tricks to create the best marketing plan for yourself and for your direct primary care practice, which is why I created the Direct Primary Care Sales Funnel Course on Startup DPC.

How this Direct Primary Care Doctor Built a Successful Sales Funnel

For me, it’s been exciting to watch more and more doctors purchase this course, learn from this course, and start applying this new knowledge to grow their direct primary care practices! Further, I’ve been getting some great reviews for this course material. Here’s what one of our successful students had to say about the Sales Funnel Course:

Paul Thomas through his marketing course explains how a blog will get people to click on your actual website and while there take a look at your services. You can also title the blogs to items frequently searched such as #bestdoctorincharlotte or #howtofindagooddoctor Since I’ve taken what I would’ve normally put in a Facebook post (like info about COVID-19) or that I put in weekly emails, into a “blog article on my website”, I’ve cross posted it in blog format so when they click on it to read-they are at my website. I get quite a few views from Facebook and LinkedIn which I used to never interact with. Google searches have gone up too. In terms of SEO it definitely works to drive traffic to your site (now it’s fun to see how many people have been to my website after a posting). In terms of patients-definitely a couple since I started doing it this way, but like a lot of marketing-it seems to be a long game. Since I’m basically giving out good info for free, it doesn’t feel like “marketing” or trying to be a saleswoman which I like. I do spend about 3-4 hours researching and working on content, so was very hesitant to commit at first. Since I’m still building and have empty slots-I just use that time to work on content. As I get busier, I plan to blog less or as needed when a topic is relevant. Some docs pay a service to write blog articles for them as part of their SEO-you could do this, but it isn’t as personable to you. It does work though-just have to weigh the benefits/ROI of your time.

I responded to her by saying that this made my day, because it sincerely made my day! There are few things that make me happier than seeing doctors succeed in their direct primary care practices. Sincerely thank you Melissa Jones, DO for writing this.

This is the review from Facebook of our Startup DPC Sales Funnel Course.

More About Melissa Jones, DO

To learn more about Melissa Jones, DO, please check out her website, here. Her practice is in Charlotte, North Carolina and her goal is to provide all of her patients with quality care, greater access, and better solutions all of the time. Check her out on Facebook as well!

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING A DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?

If you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog and in our courses.

The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

- Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC