Marketing 101

Where's Your Fireplace Butler?
By Elizabeth Mansfield

Luxury hotels are crowded these days. And we aren't referring to sky-high occupancy rates or lobbies full of guests. We're talking about the explosion of hotel service people, each one more specialized than the next.

Where once travelers were looked after by a simple roster of bellhops, concierges and chambermaids, now there are pool attendants and ski concierges, personal shoppers and fitness coaches, not to mention butlers galore. Personal butlers, bath butlers, technology butlers, romance butlers, fireplace butlers and tanning butlers. Louis XIV never had it so good.
     —"Luxury Travel Tipping Guide," Forbes.com, Aug. 10, 2006

In a country that spends $6.5 billion on bottled water each year, it was only a matter of time before a profession was born to help us choose between Perrier and S. Pellegrino, Evian and Ty Nant. Water sommeliers have popped up in elegant eateries and resorts around the country, including the Ritz-Carlton in Manhattan.
     —"Navigating Fine Waters: Clear Advice from a Different Sort of Sommelier," The Arizona Republic, July 19, 2002

Have you been to a Ritz-Carlton lately? They have fireplace butlers, IT butlers and water sommeliers. Water sommelier? That falls, without question, under the heading of "outside-the-box" marketing.

These unusual, distinctive ideas for service differentiate the Ritz-Carlton from other hotels and make customers want to come back. The hotel thinks outside the box about what its guests may want—and it pays off in their sales every year.

The hotel and fine dining industries have recognized the value of providing tanning butlers and water sommeliers as outside-the-box marketing techniques. How can we, as O&P professionals, use outside-the-box marketing to differentiate us from our competitors?
   
Getting out of the box
The first step in finding outside-the-box marketing opportunities would be to sit back and do a careful practice/business assessment. You’re going to need to think about everything and everyone involved with your business.

Some questions to ask:

What type of patients or customers do we serve? You can group them by age or race or gender or diagnosis or type of device they wear. You can even group them by activity level (K1 – K4) or by their type of payer (private pay, Medicare, worker’s compensation).

How do they find us? By whom are they referred? Do they find us on their own? If they do, do they find us through signs, ads, the yellow pages or Web sites?

How do they get to our location? Do they arrive by public transportation, Dial-A-Ride, friends or family?

Do they have needs that are not being met? Do they need information, transportation, house calls or anything else their other health care providers do not offer?

What comments or complaints do they make at the front desk? Do they complain about finding a parking space or the directions?

From facts to ideas

The more information you gather about your patients, the better chance you will have of turning one of these facts into an outside-the-box marketing idea.

Take complaints, for example.

Your office is located in a busy medical office building where you’re a tenant, so you have no control over the parking lot. You’ve surveyed your front office staff and they tell you that the number-one complaint they hear is the lack of convenient parking near the door and the lack of adequate handicapped parking.

Well, you could tell your staff to empathize with the patients when they come in and complain. They could nod and cluck their tongues and say, "I know, it’s so hard to find a spot by the door."

Or you could use the complaint as an opportunity for an outside-the-box marketing coup. Take that complaint and use it to your advantage!

Turn complaints into compliments
Why not offer valet parking? These are the days when even five-year-olds have cell phones. Have patients call you when they arrive at the front door, and you or one of your staff (with a good driving record and a valid driver’s license) can zip outside and park the car in a not-so-convenient part of the lot.

Write a press release emphasizing your solution to an extremely common problem patients encounter at busy medical buildings, and I guarantee you will get some good publicity. You can also use the release as an announcement and send it out to your referrers and payers. It’s unique, it is newsworthy and it clearly offers a solution to a problem we can all identify with.

You might think that with valet parking you will be spending your days parking cars. But most people won’t take advantage of it unless they really need to. Our local mall has complimentary valet parking during the holiday season. I always say the same thing—"Oh, isn’t that nice!"—and proceed to find my own space.     Offering valet parking when you know parking is an issue that you can’t resolve in traditional ways is an unusual, distinctive way to serve your patients and differentiate yourself from the competition. It’s outside-the-box marketing.

Meet unmet needs
Some companies have chosen educators as their outside-the-box marketing tool. They have hired nurses or patient advocates as their marketing staff. These employees educate health care providers and patients prior to their surgery, or provide information and support after surgery or delivery.

Outside-the-box marketing means remembering that your customers are not just the end users of your product or service. Your customers can be internal or external. They can include the purchaser/ payer, the influencer or the referrer. For example, while the end user may not immediately see the value of an educator, the worker’s compensation case manager may feel it’s a distinctive service that makes their clients’ lives easier—and refer more patients. By thinking outside the box, you have achieved marketing success.

So, are you going to add an educator to your marketing staff? Or have you determined that a suspension sleeve butler or a foot concierge would be a more effective outside-the-box marketing tool?

Elizabeth Mansfield is a marketing consultant with Outsource Marketing Solutions LLC in Hartford, Conn. Contact her at outsourcemarketing@sbcglobal.net.