How do you Grow your Direct Primary Care Practice in the First Year?
This week I got a nice email from someone who purchased our Startup DPC book. Here’s what they had to say:
When you first started out, aside from social media, what do you think is the best way to market to people to gain patients? Which population of patients were you most successful with?
There are so many things that you can do to grow your direct primary care practice in the first year. When it comes to marketing, it’s all about delivering a consistent message through the most powerful channels at your disposal.
For me, I started by leveraging my social media channels, engaging in activities that strengthened my personal and business brand, and leveraged that success and momentum to reach out to journalists and media outlets in my community.
Once the word got out about our affordable and accessible healthcare service in Detroit, the patients followed. Social media channels typically reach a smaller audience, but they can reach a larger audience with a viral post or a post that gets shared several times in the community.
Traditional media outlets can amplify your voice and allow you to reach more people in your community. My strategy is to leverage the small wins, which can build toward bigger wins and bigger media coverage opportunities.
Steps We Took to Grow Our Direct Primary Care Practice in the First Year
Here’s what we did when we first started out to grow our direct primary care practice:
- social media posts, at least every week
- blogging; writing thoughtful content on our blog each week, which helped us build our SEO or Search Engine Optimization
- networking events
- email list serve with monthly emails, which typically echo our social media posts or blog posts
- writing a book on DPC https://www.instagram.com/p/BqkM1etA2Q5/
- speaking at town hall events https://www.instagram.com/p/BqI5T3XA5Hs/
- partnering with small businesses to take care of their employees
- reaching out to local media/reporters via email and twitter https://www.instagram.com/p/BoH31kdgrKx/
- hitting baseballs https://www.instagram.com/p/BnttFXoFjK0/
- kicking field goals https://www.instagram.com/p/B2u0RgJlZwH/ YES! Kicking field goals helped me build my direct primary care practice - we had patients sign up after I made this post!
- giving a speech at my local medical college and alma mater https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt2BbdVgjd9/
- mentoring students https://www.instagram.com/p/BqPt0POAU6t/
- volunteering as the race doctor for a 5K/10K/Half Marathon https://www.instagram.com/p/Bv9FihBAPg_/
- sponsoring my soccer team and volunteering with them https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz3qw1Zl_fX/
- and more!
Frankly, you need to hustle. One of the things I write in my book is “If you’re bored, you’re doing it wrong.”
You need to take advantage of the time that you have to get the word out about your practice. You need to fill your calendar with meetings - meet with business owners, political leaders, teachers, librarians, human resource directors, and others - to teach people about your new and different business.
I teach people how to do this in my book and in my courses, so if you want to take a deeper dive and start using these powerful tools, I show you exactly how to do it in my courses.
Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day,
-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC and Plum Health DPC
HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING AN DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?
If you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our book and our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog, in our book, and in our courses.
The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.
Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!
-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC