There are only 3 ways to GROW a business...

There are only 3 ways to GROW a business...

In this weeks video series we will explore all three:
1. Increasing the Number of Customers/ Patients
2. Increasing The Customer Average Order Frequency (Patient Visit Average)
3. Increasing The Average Order Value (Average Appointment Fee)

Today we focus on Increasing the Number of Patients and the challenges it presents as increasing client base can lead to a high marketing spend and high client acquisition cost and this can create massive cash flow problems which can land business owners in a LOT of trouble.

The cost to acquire new customers is not only one of the biggest costs in business, it’s also one of the MAJOR reasons why businesses go bust.... and it is no different in healthcare.

To explore this and the health of your business in more detail join the FREE The 5 Day Diagnostic Challenge for Health Practices starting next week!

https://clinicownersbusinessclub.com/index.php/5daychallenge/

Join Lunchtime Live’s with Celia and Kate
Monday to Thursday at 1pm GMT, 2pm CET.
Come and join us:
Monday = #MarketingMondays
Tuesday = #TopicTuesdays
Wednesday = #WealthWednesdays
Thursday = #ThankfulThursdays #AMA #LiveQ+A

#Physio #physicaltherapist #physiotherapist #pt #Podiatry #Osteopath #chiropractic #chiropractor #businesscoach #healthcarebusiness #physiotherapymarketingstrategy #physiotherapyclinicmarketingstrategy #physicaltherapyclinicmarketingstrategy #physicaltherapybusinessmodel #cashpt #physicaltherapybusinessplan #physiotherapybusinessmodel #physiotherapybusinessplan #physiotherapyprivatepracticebusinessplan

 

Transcript: 

Kate Markland: I was in the garden this weekend, and the snowdrops really are peaking through. So, your co-host is Celia Champion and myself, Kate Markland. So welcome, an d I hope you're starting to see the first signs of spring in your garden too. Have you've got some bulbs popping through Celia?

 

Celia Champion: Tiny, yeah, no flowers yet, but the little green leaves are starting to come through, so I'm sure it's going to burst into bloom this month sometime.

 

Kate Markland: Hmm, it's encouraging, isn't it. It's nice when you can see them starting to peak their heads through.

 

Kate Markland: So today we're talking about growing a business and, very specifically, a health healthcare practice. So the first thing, when you've got a practice is you want to stabilize it, then optimize what you've got, and then start to grow it. And there are only three ways to grow a business, and in this week's lunchtime lives, we are going to explore those three ways. So, the first is increasing the number of customers or patients that you have coming through your door. The second is increasing your customer or average order frequency, which is patients visit average. And the third is increasing the average order value, which comes round to your fees. And obviously each of these three things create significant challenges for us as clinicians and clinic owners. 

 

Kate Markland: Today we're going to be focusing on the challenges that come up with increasing your number of patients and tomorrow we'll work through the others, and then on Thursday we'll take any questions that you've got about it.

 

Kate Markland: So, Celia, what do you perceive as the challenges that clinicians face of increasing the numbers of patients coming through the door and ringing their phone?

 

Celia Champion: I think probably the number one challenge that clinicians face is that they don't know what marketing to pursue. So, often they'll get, you know, they'll get people coming to them and saying, "Oh, you know, spend this amount of money and we'll do this for you. And we'll do that for you." And, and they sometimes, kind of, spend without planning ahead, and getting actually proper advice. So I think that one of the challenges can be " Where on earth do I start? What do I actually do to market?"

 

Celia Champion: And then the other challenges is making sure that you're looking at what your potential return is going to be on each of the marketing activities so that you can make a more informed choice about where you're going to invest your money.

 

Celia Champion: And I think a lot of the time, a lot of the stuff that you can do, while I say it could be 'free' stuff that doesn't cost you money, it will still cost you time.

 

Celia Champion: So it might be good to look at, you know, sending out newsletters to any of your existing database. Obviously, if you're starting a fresh and you don't have a database that in itself is a problem. So you're going to start looking at how you can reach that audience, but you definitely need to plan ahead and think about what are the different things that I can be doing with my marketing and understanding what the return needs to be. So if someone phones you up and says " Spend £500 a month on Google ads", well, then you need to know if I get a patient through the door, and generally a patient spends £250, you know, that by spending that £500, you need to at least get two patients just to break even. So if you're only going to get two patients from a particular spend, is it really worth doing it? Because you're literally getting someone in and you're breaking even. So, knowing all those numbers is really important before you make your decisions on how you market your practice.

 

Kate Markland: Yeah, this is the same - these principles apply to any business. These three principles apply to any business in whatever sector you're in, and obviously we know that the majority of businesses, should we just consider a shop, for example, will aim to attract more people more often and spend more on each visit. Attracting more customers and more footfall, if you think about being a supermarket, is typically going to lead to more marketing spend. But, what the supermarket will know in great, great detail is exactly who their ideal clients are. Those membership cards, those club cards inform the big supermarkets information about you. So, the supermarkets know who their ideal clients are and aren't gambling when they're spending their marketing budget in the same way that small clinic owners can be. What we need to be making sure, is we're managing the budget and we really understand our clients inside out.

 

Kate Markland: So, we're going to the places they hang out and giving the right message that resonates with them rather than just being ad hoc and making noise that could be expensive. So what you're thinking about with regards to increasing your number of patients and your number of clients is really going back to something we've talked about again and again - who is your ideal client? Where do they hang out? And then working out what is your budget and what return are you anticipating on your budget, so you can start monitoring your performance and make sure your business grows, rather than going bust.

 

Kate Markland: Tomorrow, Celia, we're talking about the ethical challenge of increasing footfall, which basically, if you think about being, if you were a supermarket, you would be aiming to get people coming into shop more and more frequently, but client or customer average order frequency or in clinical terms, a patient visit average is something that certainly causes an awful lot of ethical conflict for clinicians. So that's what we're going to be discussing tomorrow. And then on Wednesday, we're going to be coming back to pricing. Because again, if you're a supermarket, you think you want people to be spending more, every time you go, things are positioned in a place for strategic reasons. And you need to start thinking about your healthcare business as a business. So that's what we're helping you with this week.

 

Celia Champion: I 'm sitting here thinking, oh my gosh, you know, we're covering these three topics kind of in five, six minutes , and they're just really big, massive topics. So, I think that's where, just to kind of promote our Mastery Programme... in our Mastery Programme, we go into massive, more detail about these three topics, but we are hoping that with our lives, we at least get you to think about something and to take something away that you can actually go and implement in your practice, very quickly and very cost effectively.

 

Kate Markland: Lovely, so we'll see you tomorrow for a touch on the ethics relating to increasing patient visit average. Take care and we'll see you then. Bye bye for now.