Adding new treatments and service offerings can help expand your practice and client base. It may seem like an easy enough task, but there is much more that goes into it. The biggest aspects to think about are choosing the right device or treatment, marketing the new service, and educating your patients and staff.
Choosing a Device or Treatment
Before anything, you want to make sure you pick the right device or treatment for your practice. There are so many emerging technologies and new treatments that it can be daunting trying to decide what to offer. The best advice we can offer is to look at your current client base and think about what they would want. Think about what would fit best in your practice and your current offerings. Other aspects to think about are cost, the training needed, and if it’s a device, what is the size and will it fit in your office. It is imperative to do the necessary research on the treatment to ensure it is a good “fit,” literally and figuratively, for your practice.
Marketing
In our last post, we discussed marketing extensively, which plays a big role in this topic as well. Once you add a new treatment, you want to let your clients and patients know all about it. Start by putting up signs or brochures around our practice so patients are exposed to the new offering. You can add it as a service on your website and add an announcement bar or something similar that gets the user’s attention. You can also post on social media or send out an email announcement. To get a few patients to try it out, it may be worth offering a deal or discount on the treatment. Once you have a few clients try out the new service, you can (with permission) use before and after photos to help showcase and advertise the treatment. You can also use some of your first clients as brand ambassadors for the device or treatment.
Education
A big part of adding a new service into your practice is education. That includes educating your staff and educating your patients, and even educating yourself. Of course you will need to be extensively trained on the device or treatment, as well as any of your staff that will also be administering it. You will also want to educate any other staff so that they can talk about or upsell the device or treatment with patients. You’ll also have to educate your patients, especially those who may just want to try a new treatment. It may not be the best course of action for certain clients, so you must be ready to educate them and manage their expectations.
If you do your research, market your new device or treatment, and educate your staff and patients, you should be able to easily integrate a new service offering into your practice.