Market Your Practice, Manage Your Brand Part 4

Part 4: Referral rewards program

Your existing clients are a great asset in generating word-of-mouth referrals. You can encourage this behavior further by creating a rewards program, giving your clients a special gift or discount when they refer others to your clinic.

You can communicate this easily be creating a small sign st your front desk and training your front line staff to mention it to each client at checkout. You can also add a small phrase like " Ask about our referral rewards program" to your reminder cards as well as your practice web site and/or newsletter, if you have one.

You also may want to consider giving Pet I.D. cards to your clients. (Check out the MSS Pet I.D. cards that work with your AVImark software.) In addition to containing improtant health information at a glance, Pet I.D. cards often spark interest and word-of-mouth referrals.

Once you start to see results from your marketing efforts, you may hooked. If you've mastered these basics, you might consider some additional strategies to take your marketing to the next level, such as local media relations (acting as an export source for stories on pet health), building a more strategic web site, and optimizing that site so that it displays prominently on search engines - and attracts new business. But that's another topic, for another day.

By Cathy Levendoski