Maximize Your Healthcare Marketing Strategies With This Deep-Dive Self-Exam
Companies commonly use a twice-yearly SWOT analysis to help crystalize their current and future positions. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. SWOT analysis in healthcare is essential because it helps practice owners maintain their competitive edge, increase ROI, and boost patient acquisition.
Say you’re a practice owner doing a great job of retaining existing patients, but you’re in a slump with your marketing. Maybe you’re spending money on medical marketing strategies without seeing the results you’d like, or you’ve got a couple of online reviews damaging your reputation. A healthcare SWOT analysis can help you identify areas for improvement and implement the changes necessary to grow your practice.
What is a SWOT Analysis in Healthcare?
Every industry has its share of competition, and healthcare is no exception. A medical practice SWOT analysis gives you the chance to perform a deep dive into things you may have yet to consider recently, like your customer persona, mission, and local competition. It’s an opportunity to formally document where you’re at, where you hope to be in the future, and how to get there – specifically. This is where a strategic healthcare marketing plan aligned with your practice growth goals begins to take shape.
How Does a SWOT Analysis Benefit Your Practice?
We recommend performing a SWOT analysis twice yearly because up-to-date information is critical. Patient retention, acquisition, and engagement have changed so dramatically over the past decade that curiosity and flexibility are necessary if you hope to stay competitive. By taking the time to thoughtfully explore your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you position yourself to develop a medical marketing strategy empowered by the latest data.
With SWOT analysis in hand, you’ll be ready to enlist the experts at Practis. Using the detailed information produced by your self-examination, our medical marketing experts can develop a unique medical marketing strategy that plays to your strengths, improves your online reputation, and helps get more new patients in the door in 2024.
Healthcare SWOT Analysis Elements
Performing a healthcare SWOT analysis can sound a little daunting: especially the parts where you discuss weaknesses and threats. But everything revealed by your analysis is positive because it empowers you to make informed decisions that benefit your practice. It can be helpful to step into a growth mindset, which sees challenges as opportunities and weaknesses as invitations to improve.
Internal: Strengths
When focusing on your practice’s strengths, remember to stick with factors you can control. This portion of the review can include feedback from patients or staff, as well as resources, capabilities, and accomplishments that make you stand out from your competitors.
Strengths can include things like:
- Strong brand name/recognition
- Niche patient base
- Great location
- High success rate
- Friendly staff
- Personalized care
Internal: Weaknesses
As with your strengths, you want to stick with things you can control when listing out weaknesses. Compiling weak spots in a succinct list is incredibly helpful in knowing which areas for improvement are most critical and time-sensitive.
Your weaknesses could include:
- Longer patient wait times
- Struggling to attract new patients
- High staff turnover rate
- Old equipment
- Outdated technology or website
- Challenging booking process
External: Opportunities
Now that you’ve got strengths and weaknesses laid out, you’re ready to explore opportunities for your practice to grow and improve. You may not have complete control over opportunities and threats, but you can typically leverage them to your advantage (opportunities) or steer clear of them (threats) with the right medical marketing plan.
Your list of opportunities might include:
- Increased patient referrals
- Positive online reviews for your practice
- Convenient parking
- New technological advancements
- Expansion to a good location
- Cost-effectiveness
External: Threats
The last section of your SWOT analysis is threats. Here, you will list items generally not under your control that are threatening the sustainability, success, and growth of your practice. This section is especially helpful for exploring ways to minimize or completely avoid imminent threats through savvy medical marketing strategies.
Threats can look like:
- New competitor in the area
- Economic downturn
- Dissatisfied patients
- Recent loss of key staff
- Decline in patient demand
- Negative online reviews for your practice
Evaluating Your Results
During the evaluation stage, you will set specific goals for moving forward. It’s best to set SMART goals, keeping your aims as specific as possible based on your findings. To effectively track your progress, create milestones that are reasonable and attainable. Once you have completed your SWOT analysis, you will start to see how your weaknesses and threats can be converted into strengths and opportunities in the months ahead.
Healthcare SWOT Analysis Implementation
Once you have a set of growth goals, you’ll want to list them in order of priority based on where your practice currently is and where you want to be in six months. The medical marketing experts at Practis can help you set strategic growth goals, map a marketing plan, and budget for the year ahead. Then, you can delegate tasks, set milestones, and track progress toward your goals. All in all, your SWOT analysis should take several hours and involve as many members of your team as possible. The more in-depth your examination, the more productive its results in the long run.
Get Started With a Practis Growth Assessment
From social medical management to medical SEO to online review management and beyond, Practis is your trusted partner in strategic healthcare marketing. After performing your SWOT analysis, give us a call. Together, we’ll develop a custom marketing plan informed by your unique needs and goals. We also provide FREE practice growth assessments to kick-start your 2024 marketing efforts!