Building a coherent medical marketing agency that supports your long-term business goals takes time and experience, not to mention constant monitoring and optimization.
Partnering with a medical marketing agency is a great option, especially if you need specialized knowledge or lack the resources to acquire it.
Unfortunately, not every relationship between the agency and the clinic is fruitful, and some can even lead to big problems.
Whether you currently work with a marketing agency or are in the process of finding one, this article is for you. It’s important to build a healthy relationship that benefits both parties.
Types of cooperation between a marketing agency and a clinic
Is there a type of collaboration where a medical marketing agency only performs on-demand or as-needed tasks? Yes.
Is this the best way to construct an efficient medical marketing strategy? Not.
Not all relationships with an on-demand agency are bad. However, if all marketing activities of your clinic are carried out exclusively for each request and deal, this is a less effective approach. Why? This type of cooperation not only leads to inconsistency, loss of the main line of promotion of your brand, and reduction in the effectiveness of marketing activities but also harms your long-term business goals. The occurrence of inconsistencies is inevitable, especially if the contractors are different.
Benefits of partnerships
Partnerships and long-term relationships are vital to building mutual trust, respect, transparency, and creativity on both sides.
The agency, in turn:
Save time and money for your clinic
If you have chosen a reliable medical marketing agency that specializes specifically in the field of medicine, you will save money because. Most projects and marketing campaigns will be successful the first time. Here are a few ways to make sure you’re making the right choice of agency:
- Interview with your team
- Analyze the proposed tools for promoting and developing your clinic
- Assess the agency’s breadth of expertise
Ensure consistency between branding and marketing
You will ensure consistent, understandable, and clear communication across all your marketing channels by commissioning your marketing agency to develop an integrated marketing strategy. This will work regardless of the media through which patients interact with your medical brand:
- Digital marketing
- Traditional Advertising
- Social networks
- Promotion
Creates the potential for long-term partnerships
Long-term partnerships enable marketing agencies to comprehend their clients’ brand issues better. Delve deeper and understand brand characteristics, gather valuable insights, and optimize their operations over time.
When an agency knows more, it can act more effectively.
Improve the quality of your business
Collaboration with an experienced medical marketing agency provides a professional perspective on many important things to the clinic and brings valuable insights that will help attract new patients. In addition, marketing agencies often have robust IT departments that understand new and emerging technologies. Accordingly, they know which technology or platform will help you achieve maximum results.
Offer the services of the right professionals
When you hire a medical marketing agency, you will have access to a team of specialists, such as content makers, search engine optimization specialists, graphic designers, and web designers, with the skills to create and implement complex marketing strategies.
In addition, selecting an agency that specializes in a specific industry will provide you with a partner who has a comprehensive understanding of your medical enterprise and target market.
How to Develop and Maintain a Long-Term Relationship with a Medical Marketing Agency
Avoid common stumbling blocks that can jeopardize your agency relationship and lay the foundation for long-term success with a few guidelines:
Determine the type of partnership you need
If you’re looking for a reliable partner to drive your clinic’s marketing efforts and bottom line, we can help. It’s essential to lay a solid foundation right from the start. A detailed, thorough conversation about your clinic’s needs, desires, and expectations is key to getting quality marketing support.
A marketing agency builds its services based on your needs.
Your communications must be as clear and concise as possible (e.g., phone calls, project briefs, feedback, etc.).
Marketing agency services typically include:
- One-time services
This is hiring a marketing agency to carry out one-time projects, such as a medical website design or creating a logo, and the contract ends after the work is completed.
- Strategic
Building and developing strategic relationships with a marketing agency provides more opportunities for optimization and more effective solutions to current problems.
Define roles and responsibilities
It is essential to comprehend who is responsible for what to know, where and who to contact should problems arise. This will also allow your marketing agency to work confidently towards the agreed goals.
Identifying contact persons and their preferred means of communication (e.g., email, text messages, phone calls) helps streamline and facilitate feedback so that each party can complete tasks on time.
Discuss your expectations for cooperation
To create a strong partnership, clinics and agencies must agree on six key areas. Both parties must articulate their needs, desires, and expectations for cooperation. This ensures that both the agency and the clinic clearly understand each other:
- Marketing goals
- Roles and responsibilities of each team and each member of those teams
- Buyer portrait or target audience
- Ways of communication
- Project strategy
- Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Reporting Plan
Be honest about what you don’t need
As with most relationships, honesty and transparency are essential to their success. It’s important to be open about any marketing challenges you face and what you need to succeed. It’s okay if you don’t have all the answers.
Be honest about your budget and deadlines
There are many stages of marketing production: concept development, design, website development and promotion, print and online advertising, promotional items, signs, events, and more. Therefore, it is important to consider each project stage and determine a fair budget and timeline based on your needs. At the same time, you must be practical and understand what is and is not feasible, given your budget and deadlines.
Share your vision
The more information you provide to your agency, the better. Take the time to talk to him about your vision, mission, and brand values.
Once your marketing agency understands what makes your products, services, and brand unique, they can use that knowledge to create and implement successful projects that resonate with your target audience and bring the expected result.
Create a concise project brief
A brief is a brief description of key information about a project. This is a good starting point for project planning and success.
Since all projects are unique and have specific requirements, there is no universal template for a project brief. Instead, each depends on the project’s scale and complexity and should be a condensed version of your vision for the project.
The brief description of the project should include these five elements:
- Goals
- Timing
- Necessary work
- The target audience
- Project Scope
At the end of the brief, you should always provide any supporting documentation that the marketing agency will need to operate effectively.
Work as a team
Work together until you are 100 percent satisfied with the results. When clinic management and key personnel are willing to discuss complex issues directly with the agency, the quality of work is markedly improved.
Marketing agencies are positive about feedback, especially if it is concise and reflects the opinions of all stakeholders.
A couple of tips for giving actionable feedback:
- Consolidate all comments from all your employees in one email
- Clearly explain what is missing or what changes or additions you would like to see
Strengthen Relationships
Try to be sensitive to your agency’s needs and requests, speak directly about your expectations or concerns, and always be honest. Also, don’t mind when the agency gives you constructive feedback about your healthcare business.
Use the opportunity to celebrate victories, whether they happen internally or through joint marketing efforts with your agency. Rewarding each other’s success is key to creating a motivating work environment. This boosts not only morale but also productivity and resilience to any problems that arise.
If you take care of a long-term relationship with your medical marketing agency, everyone will be able to create and implement projects that will help promote your business.
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