Your medical practice brand is your identity. It defines your business, your patient loyalty, and ultimately, your success.

So as you strive to build a sustainable and profitable medical practice, it’s critical to ask yourself one single question: is your brand helping you or hurting you?

Why It’s So Important to Take Your Practice’s Brand Seriously

Your brand is the experience that patients have with your practice before they actually engage with you. It serves as the first impression of your business, and we all know the power of a first impression.

Imagine walking into a dealership to purchase a new car. Two sales representatives are sitting at their desks. One is wearing a freshly pressed suit with a friendly smile and professional tone. The other looks disheveled in wrinkled khakis, rolling his eyes at the computer and muttering complaints under his breath.

As a customer, you don’t have to think twice about which sales representative you’d rather use to handle your purchase. 

Just like those two sales representatives created their own “brand” to incoming customers, your medical practice brand sends its own specific message. If it’s unfocused or sloppy, like the second sales representative, you risk losing prospective buyers as well.

However, if you begin branding your medical practice with strategy and purpose, your business can become the equivalent of that polished sales rep that lands every deal.  

It’s what psychotherapist Malcolm Gladwell calls the “Blink Experience.” According to Gladwell, we make important decisions and conclusions in just an instant- the blink of an eye- based on how we perceive the world around us. Properly branding your medical practice has the power to optimize the split-second perceptions and choices that patients make when faced with your brand. 

Think of your medical practice brand as the DNA of your core values and message. When strategically represented, that brand can say more than all the sales pitches in the world.  

Quick Story About My First Brand…

We don’t always find brand success immediately — and I include myself in that statement!

I performed my very first brand project with a designer health center. It focused on helping anybody with anything. Though that sounds good in theory, it was a disaster for our brand. In fact, trying to help all potential patients with every single malady created a non-brand.

Our designer health center lacked all focus. Such messy messaging prevented the health center from growing and becoming what it should have been. 

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I see in many other doctor’s offices and websites. They lack definitive branding, visual experiences, color, and emotion. A scattered brand can’t gain momentum; I learned that the hard way at the beginning of my career.

10 Signs Your Brand is Hurting You

You don’t want to admit your medical practice brand is hurting you; nobody does! But it’s the first and most critical step in the right direction of branding your medical practice with the strategy and vision necessary for lasting success. 

Do the following problems sound familiar? 

Your Target Customer is “Everyone”

This is a widespread branding problem, not just in the medical practice community but across industries. By targeting everyone, you end up targeting nobody at all.

If you’re making this branding mistake, you’re probably afraid to exclude potential customers or appear unqualified in certain categories. But the truth is that by targeting every customer, you’re only hurting your business in the end. 

Website and In-Office Conversions are Low

Does your practice have an “attraction” factor? An attractive, persuasive, industry-leading brand secures steady website and in-office conversions. Patients have a firm understanding of what the brand offers and trust the brand to deliver on its promises. If your practice struggles to accumulate conversions, your brand may not be sending the right messages. 

Your Referrals From Patients are Low

Referrals from your existing patients can catapult your brand to the next level. So if your patients aren’t eager to recommend your practice to friends and family members, there’s a disconnect between your brand message and your intended message. 

A strong, well-crafted brand consistently occupies a little bit of space in the minds of its customers. When customers come across another person who could benefit from that brand’s products or services, they recommend it. If you lack that strong brand identity, you’ll struggle to establish yourself as “the best arthritis doctor” or “the Lyme disease guy”. 

Your Patient Relationships are Transactional in Nature

Your brand identity is definitely weighing you down if your patient interactions are strictly transactional. The best brands are rooted in emotion. Without that emotion, your patients will lack the engagement and satisfaction necessary to cultivate lasting, trusting relationships. 

You’re Trying to Be Great at Everything

When you’re great at everything, you become a master of nothing. This strips your practice of the ability to “hang your hat” on unique specialties and hard-to-find expertise. In the end, you become known for nothing at all, and the ripple effects flow through your reputation, profit margins, and patient impact. 

You’re Always Running Ragged

Nobody denies that building a successful business is exhausting, but you shouldn’t always feel like you’re running ragged. 

Strategic branding creates freedom. Without the right medical practice branding, you’re forced to work twice as hard to achieve a fraction of the results. When you start to taste the first hints of freedom, you’ll know you’re on the right track for branding your medical practice. 

You See Everyone As a Competitor

You have plenty of competition to consider, but your brand suffers if you view everyone as a competitor. Consider fostering relationships with other local brands and businesses to develop a supportive community. Opportunities for collaboration, partnerships, and referrals are out there!

SOT Analysis

In order to differentiate yourself, you need to understand your customers’ strengths, opportunities, and threats (SOT). This insight helps you build a brand identity that relates and connects to your customers in an authentic manner. Without a firm grasp of SOT, you run the risk of merely competing with other medical practices instead of actively aligning your practice with your patients’ needs and goals. 

As Seth Godin says, if you can describe a customer’s problem better than they can, they will automatically go to you as the authority.

You Can’t Articulate Your Brand Value Proposition

If I asked five of your employees or customers to describe who you are as a company, what will they tell me? It all depends on the strength of your brand. Medical practices with well-defined brand identities can easily articulate their brand value and how they stand out from the competition. If your employees can’t consistently describe your company’s mission or purpose, it’s a major indication that your brand needs some TLC. 

You Haven’t Build a Base of Raving Fans Around Your Brand

You don’t need to recreate Beatle Mania, but you do need a strong base of fans online or offline (or both!). These raving fans are the ones who support you on social media, spread the word about events and initiatives, refer others to your office, and so much more. 

Don’t Worry – A Stronger Brand Is Within Reach

Have you come to the realization that your brand identity needs CPR? 

Even if your brand is hurting—or at the very least, not helping—your medical practice, it’s okay! This is the 21st century; you can redesign your website, redefine your space, and revitalize your brand virtually overnight. It’s never too late.