Adam Lueken
We’ve reached the last entry of our Mohs surgery blog series. If you’ve recently completed your Mohs certification, now it’s time to spread the word about it. When it comes to marketing Mohs surgery, what are the best ways to educate and generate interest with both current and potential patients?
You really don’t have to do anything radically different from your set marketing plan, just incorporate Mohs surgery into it. But here are a few ideas and some things to keep in mind.
Establish Your Key Messaging Points
Before you start throwing Mohs into your materials, think about what you really want the public to know about it. Most won’t recognize what Mohs surgery is just from the name, so it’s important to emphasize its standing as the most effective treatment/removal for skin cancer. You can also use this as an opportunity to highlight the importance of skin cancer screenings and early detection. Yes, Mohs surgery is the gold standard for removing skin cancer once it’s found, but the overall goal is getting patients to take skin cancer more seriously and keep up with regular screenings.
Build into Your Content
Once you have your key points set, now you can start incorporating them into your existing and upcoming content. Start with your website – add a webpage dedicated to Mohs surgery (can also be tied into skin cancer content) that educates visitors on the what, how and why. You can also add something that draws attention to (and links to) this on your homepage. Add to your direct mail as well. This can be a mention on your general mailer or design a mailer based solely on Mohs and skin cancer. If you have a blog set up, share a few blogs discussing how Mohs works and the importance of screenings. Local PR can be a good avenue too. Put together a press release discussing your Mohs addition. You’ll need to make this more informational and news-oriented rather than too promotional, otherwise you’ll be asked to just take out an ad. But if print or radio ads make sense for your local market, those could be good ideas too.
Include this in your social media activities (and/or email marketing) too. These channels are great for engaging with your audiences quickly and repetitively. This could include videos, whether you post quick promotional or educational clips on your website or YouTube page. You can then link back to these through social media.
Show Your Expert Status
When it comes to skin care, your patients (and potential patients) expect you to be an authority and someone they can trust with their health. Use this new service as an opportunity to highlight that. Becoming Mohs certified is challenging and takes a lot of commitment and skill, so make that known. Show your commitment to advancing your skills for the well-being of patients. That will only help increase their confidence in you even more.
Include in Your Referral Plan
Patient-to-patient referrals are a great way to promote your practice and services. When others hear about how great you and your team are from someone they know and trust, it means a lot. Ask your Mohs patients to share their experiences with their friends and family, as well as on review sites. Their first-hand experience with getting skin cancer and seeing excellent results through Mohs will be impactful. This can also come into play with other doctors referring patients. Sharing your Mohs addition as part of your focus on skin cancer to other local doctors can help generate more referrals from them.
Repurpose as Needed
You don’t have to build new Mohs content for every different channel either. Find ways to repurpose your key content across different channels. This will save you a lot of time and manpower. As we’ve mentioned before, here are some repurposing examples:
- Reformatting a piece to another, like from copy into video, podcasts or graphics.
- Breaking up long-form pieces of content into smaller pieces.
- Combining shorter pieces of content into larger pieces.
- Republishing a piece to other channels.
It’s important to note – these marketing tactics can be applied to any new service you’re adding to your practice and can apply for doctors who have been Mohs certified for a while.
Also as we’ve mentioned before, you’re a dermatologist, not a marketing professional. And unless you have experience as a marketer, you may feel like taking care of all of this alone, or even with your team, is daunting and just not feasible with your already busy schedule. That’s ok. Your goal is to take care of patients, so you shouldn’t have to be a marketing guru at the same time. There are many options out there that can help with marketing Mohs surgery.
We’re here to be your source of marketing support too. We’re always a phone call or click away to help. Schedule a consultation with one of our practice management experts today!