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Marketing

One month after opening

Plan an open house
After your "soft opening", now is the time to plan an "Open House" where you can thank all the people who helped you get started, and also get some great PR for your clinic. Don't forget special invitations to everyone who helped, including your lawyer, the framing carpenter and the electrician. Dan and Tara have some great hints on planning and running a successful open house.

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Three months after opening

Reassess advertising and marketing plan
This is the "downer" time for many people in business. They have done everything right, the clinic looks great but there are still very few patients. Don't despair, it's just that you haven't acquired a critical number of patients to get that all important "word of mouth" working for you. You are going to have to advertise and market yourself. But what is the difference and where do I start? As Laura Lake explains in About.com, “The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement. Advertising only equals one piece of the pie in the strategy."

Eli Camp has provided some excellent pointers for a naturopathic practice in Tricks of the Trade: Successful Marketing Strategies for Your Clinical Practice.

Establish and follow a marketing schedule
This will eventually become second nature to you (e.g., spring - detox newsletter; summer - weight loss support group; fall – boosting your immune system; winter – healthy holidays). Send out appropriate promotional material, such as mailings to current patients, monthly or quarterly e-newsletters, etc.

Develop a patient newsletter (and ensure you seek your patients' permission to send it to them). This is something that could be done in conjunction with classmates in other locations. A newsletter that briefly highlighted research findings related to naturopathic approaches on a monthly basis might be highly appreciated.