Letting your fingers do the walking pays off
Don't discount Yellow Pages ads as dinosaurs
As managed care makes its mark on more communities, there seems to be less need for physician practices to advertise, particularly in local Yellow Pages. Advertisements for practices need to be more focused and targeted than phone books offer.
But spending the money on a Yellow Pages ad is something that most practices should continue to do, says Karen Wilkins, MBE, practice administrator for Allergy Centers in Milwaukee. And even better, because the market is changing rapidly, you can get a bigger ad for less money these days.
Wilkins says that Yellow Pages ads served her five-doctor, two-office practice well in the past. "When we opened the second office, the ad was instrumental in getting it off the ground," Wilkins recalls. "But that was before managed care came in and started to eat away at fee-for-service care."
With more patients gleaned from physician referrals, Wilkins opted to save money and reduce the size of her Yellow Pages ad. But the physicians felt that there should still be a presence. "We are one of the few practices in our area that is independent, and we wanted to tout that. We felt it was important that people still see us."
Despite changes in who pays for medical care, there are still people who consult the phone book to choose a physician, says Keith Borglum, vice president of the Santa Rosa, CA, medical consulting company Professional Management & Marketing.
People who are new to a community, who are looking for a specialist to whom they can self-refer, and who are just trying to find their existing physician's phone number all use the Yellow Pages, Borglum says.
Wilkins' practice recognized those facts and this year went to a business card-sized ad, with a color photograph of the five physicians. "Before, it was smaller and just black and red," she says.
The cost of the ad was $8,000 - about half of what the practice was spending in its heyday of Yellow Pages advertising. But it is also the same price the group paid last year for a smaller ad. And it runs not just in the main Milwaukee phone book, but also in surrounding community directories.
"I think that the phone book sales people understand that for the medical community, this just isn't the way the game is played anymore," Wilkins says. "I think that's why we are getting such a good deal."
She isn't sure how many people come into the practice because of the ads, but she is going to track it this year by asking all new patients how they came to know of the practice.
"We'll monitor it and see if we are getting an adequate return on our investment," she says. "I'd like to spend less because I don't think we get that many patients this way. But I understand that we can't not be there. So many people refer to the phone book. And these days, you get so much more bang for your buck."
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