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I have a web-based tool that I'd like to market to small private practice doctors. I'm looking for traditional journals and other forms of advertising that would target these medical professionals.

There's always the route of cold calling and doing business the traditional way but as my background is in social advertising, am looking for more "efficient" methods of reaching out to doctors.

The product is a SaaS planning tool for doctors. Thanks in advance!

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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Great question. I'm actually in the same position and looking the same answer (except my SaaS application is not ready yet).

When it comes to traditional marketing I'm thinking:

  1. Currently I'm thinking to advertise in a couple of business specific magazines for the first 4 to 8 weeks. In your case it would be journals/magazines aimed to practice doctors. It's very difficult, and expensive, to get a real correlation between the advertisement in the journals/magazines and sales or traffic to your site, so I'll just use it to say "Hello World, come to see what I have".

  2. I'm also thinking on a direct approach. This means piking up the phone/email and have a personalized message/talk (not "one size fits all" spam kind of message) to present the product. This is risky because it will look like an outbound phone sales campaign and we know that everyone hates it. So it will have to be well though.

For online marketing, I recommend you to read Inbound Marketing by Dharmesh Shah, one of our hosts here.

I also recommend you to read Getting feedback from lost sales, a question posted here.

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up vote 1 down vote

Very hard demographic to crack..

Direct sales - Your competing with the drug and ancillary reps so the standard before you even get in the door is a "lunch" meeting - and this usually means for the staff as well.. Very expensive.

Direct mail - same as above, but your also now are in with all the medical consult reports, billing, etc.. Marketing mail most often ends up in the garbage..

I run a web service start-up for providers in Tampa, FL (www.referralclick.com) I am hyper-local and use the view that the PCP is the "center of the universe" I presented my site to 6 large PCP groups in the area - got them on board and created systems for them to "spread the word" - working slowly..

Oh, did I forget to mention that docs are squeezed right now - reimbursement going down the drain - Is your product free for them??

Good luck and I would be happy to "brain dump" my experiences for ya..

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Very helpful information - I can see how the lunch meetings can get expensive. For family practice doctors, what is the average staff size? Also - what are your thoughts on periodicals that doctors read and advertising within? – niyogi Jan 11 '10 at 6:50
2-3 per FTE doc up to about 3 then the economies of scale come into play. You demo for a 5 PCP group and you may have 12-15 easy! Once a group gets to a certain size they sometimes bring IN functions such as billing - more FTEs. Again, you're in competition with the drug companies, hospitals, xray locations, etc - all have $$$$.. – PeterRC Jan 11 '10 at 17:48
up vote 0 down vote

I represent a web marketing company which focuses on reselling niche, web based services and products. Would you consider an affiliate relationship, and if so, let's speak further about what your service/product, delivers to the practice.

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would love to talk and see how we can work together. email me at roj[at]jutera[dot]com – niyogi Apr 25 '10 at 7:01

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