Word of Mouth Marketing: The Basics

It's nearly undisputed: the best form of marketing is word of mouth. But the best marketers know that word of mouth marketing doesn't happen without some intentionality. And the best part? It doesn't take a large budget to execute.

Why Word of Mouth Marketing is Still the Most Effective

In a word: trust. We trust the recommendations of our friends, family, and co-workers. And when someone we care about is excited about something, we tend to listen.

Don't hear me say that word of mouth is the only kind of marketing that works. It's the most effective at introducing new people to your product, but other marketing methods have their purpose, too. We won't dive into those here, though.

How to Ensure Word of Mouth Marketing for Your DPC Practice

So, how do you get natural, unscripted, word of mouth pitches to people that you don't even know to consider becoming a member of your DPC clinic?

Here are 4 tips...

1. Be Worth Talking About

People generally only talk to others about their experience with products or services if they either love it or hate it. If they're just "meh" about it... it's not worth their time.

If you've opened up a DPC clinic, you're halfway there. You already have a unique product (membership medicine that doesn't bill insurance) that is different. Different is good. But it only gets you halfway there.

Since you're in health care, you're in the service-based business. People need to experience great service from you in order to be motivated to talk to others about you.

An example experience...

One of your members is a busy small business owner. She doesn't see you often, so you know that when she calls your front desk at 8:30am, it means she really needs something.

You've reserved openings in your day for urgent care, so she gets the choice of coming in at either 10:30am or 2:00pm. She has a meeting at 10, so 2pm it is.

She walks into your clinic at 1:55pm, greeted by name by your front desk receptionist, who has already notified you that she's on her way in, and offers her a water or coffee while she waits. She asks for coffee and they point her toward the Keurig machine in the waiting area.

After small chit-chat at reception she goes to start a coffee and sit down in the waiting room. Before she even starts the coffee or can sit down, you come out and are ready to take her back to the exam room. It's now 1:58pm.

The receptionist says there will be a coffee waiting for her when she gets out.

The patient sits down in an exam room chair (no reason to sit on the exam table yet — she's actually being seen for ear pain), and gets to the point of why she's in right away. Notice that she's only having to tell her story once — not multiple times.

By 2:04pm, you're able to do a focused exam and diagnose an ear infection. You discuss next best steps and together come to a decision on a plan to address the infection.

At 2:09pm, the patient is walking on her way out to the front desk. Reception has her coffee waiting.

You've decided to dispense a medication (you do so right there at the office), so she sits down in the waiting area to sip her coffee.

At 2:13pm, reception says that her medications are ready. She's able to pay for them at the front desk with her card on file, says she'll call if there are any further issues, and is walking toward her car at 2:14pm.

Now... that experience might seem like it was simple, but there was a lot of planning that went into that experience:

• How many urgent care spots are reserved each day?
• Who did you hire as a receptionist, and were they coached in your own customer service standards?
• How did reception let you know that your patient had arrived?
• Why did you decide to not involve a nurse or medical assistant in rooming the patient (hint: you don't need to do this! It's better if you don't!)
• How were you able to efficiently dispense and document the medication given to the patient?
• What system do you have set up for billing and scheduling?

You get the point. This experience didn't just happen — there was immense planning and training that went into providing that experience.

But the best part: that member is going to talk about that experience. The next time one of her colleagues or friends talks about wasting time at the doctor's office, going to urgent care, or complaining about health care in general, they're going to hear about your membership!

2. Use mistakes as the ultimate customer service experience

Get ready - mistakes will happen. You'll forget to call a patient back about important results. A staff member will call a patient by the wrong name. You'll have to redo a lab because you put the sample in the wrong color tube. Mistakes will happen.

Here's your chance to really step up your customer service game.

Accept responsibility for what went wrong, and go over-the-top to make it right for the patient. As fast as possible.

And be creative in how you make it right.

This is the beauty of owning your own business - you can literally solve any problem however you choose (within the law, of course).

Here's one example:

While it shouldn't happen, let's say that somehow two patients got booked at the same time and nobody caught that mistake until just minutes before. Patient A showed up 10 minutes early for their appointment, and patient B showed up with just one minute to spare.

Both traveled about 30 minutes to the clinic, so heading home and coming back isn't a possibility. There's room in the schedule to see them both, but one is going to be inconvenienced.

There are several ways to handle this, but here's one creative option...

First, be honest about the mistake. Explain in generalities how it happened (if you know), and how you'll be preventing this from happening in the future.

Then, you ask who wouldn't mind being seen a little later than their scheduled time (just in case someone has other plans). In this case, patient A didn't mind waiting, but patient B has a scheduled appointment right after their promised time.

While you could have explained the scenario and issue to both of them, since patient A showed up early and was fine being seen a little later, you thank them profusely, give them a gift card to a local coffee shop around the corner (you have a stack of them on hand, just in case of random issues like this), and everything works out great.

3. Save your patients money when possible - and tell them about it

This one is easy. DPC opens up so many opportunities to save patients money through labs, medications, avoiding expensive referrals, and much more.

You likely know what the typical process would have been outside of DPC - so while you're getting them taken care of quickly and cheaply, let them know what the 'normal' cost would have been. Checking their vitamin D? Let them know that insurances often don't pay for that test, and therefore the lab will charge full price - often $80-150, whereas they'll pay around $10 (or whatever your price is) for that test right now.

You'll have stories, and patients will have stories as well ("this used to cost me $XXX!"). Remember those stories and share them often.

4. Make each experience as easy as possible - including cancelling

Always ask... "is this really necessary?"

There are so many things we do in medicine simply because "that's what we used to do" or "that's what other people do" or even "patients are used to this."

This goes with how patients register, how they cancel, and everything in between.

Yes, even how they cancel.

Anytime you can make your experience feel extremely different (in a positive way) compared to the 'traditional' system - you'll have the possibility of people talking about you.

Bonus tip: Ask them to talk about you!

I don't mean ask them to talk about you around the dinner table or when they visit family.

But you can ask, "do you know anyone we should be talking to that's also frustrated with their care?" The worst they can say is no, but often they'll think of someone and even offer to reach out to them!

If you've done the work to implement a system that gives your patients a wonderful experience, you'll hear about it. And it's not a bad thing to ask them to leave you a review on Google, or on any social media accounts you manage.

You can even create a way for them to write down a specific testimonial that you can then use on your website, brochure, or other marketing materials.

Be extraordinary

People will only talk to others about extraordinary experiences. You have the chance to give each one of your patients / members an extraordinary experience.

How you run your clinic will dictate your word of mouth marketing. How will you be extraordinary?