Build Referral-Generating Relationships With Content

Regardless of the nature of your health care practice, you may have heard the terms "relationship-based marketing" or "content marketing" recently. In marketing circles, they have become today's buzzwords. Because I have helped businesses market themselves with editorial content for almost three decades, I know content marketing to be tried and true-not a fad. When I first entered this business as a young attorney-turned-entrepreneur, we called it newsletter marketing; today, we might also refer to it as Internet, e-mail or social media marketing. Regardless of what you call it, today's marketing comes down to the idea that content is king.

Marketing has always been about relationships, but traditional advertising has changed. For today's marketers, the single best way to maintain relationships with patients and referring health care providers is through content marketing. The people you work with-and want to work with-are skeptical of marketing, especially from a health care provider. They're not looking to be sold. They're looking for a professional with a solid reputation.

By providing valuable content, you can meet the needs of patients and referring health care providers and build relationships with them. Whether it's a blog, eNewsletter, printed newsletter or social media, a content marketing strategy can build powerful relationships and generate results.

Here are four tips to make your content marketing work for your health care practice:

1. It's about them, NOT you.

The focus of traditional advertising was always "me, me, me." But the truth is, your patients and referral sources care much less about you than they do about what you can do for them. That's what makes content marketing so powerful. A dentist, for example, can develop content related to the latest breakthroughs in treatment options and provide links to these with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media.

By informing your audience, you'll demonstrate that you are the expert they should trust with their health, not the one simply trying to sell them a service.

2. Provide value.

Remember that it's about them, and your content marketing will best meet the needs of your readers. Ask yourself, will my patients or referring health care providers care about this? Why should this matter to them? These questions will help you keep the focus on information they will value. And they'll remember you for it.

3. Persist.

Sometimes, if they don't see instant results, health care practices can become discouraged with their content marketing strategy. You often won't know the full long-range impact of your blogs, newsletters or social media posts. But remember that quality content is doing something very powerful: It consistently reinforces the idea that you're the expert in your field, whether it be pediatric dentistry, orthodontics or physical therapy. It also keeps you top-of-mind with your audience.

Be consistent and you will see results.

4. Measure results.

Although you won't know the full impact of your content marketing strategy, you must continue to monitor and measure results.

If you're blogging, your blog will need to be monitored to ensure that comments and questions are addressed. Analytics into the types of articles people are reading on your health care blog will be especially helpful for you when determining future content. (Remember, it's about them!)

Newsletters, especially eNewsletters, are very easy to monitor and often come with comprehensive reports that should tell you which articles were clicked on or forwarded, the names of subscribers who open newsletters and other useful data. You'll know the topics of greatest interest to your readers, and you'll know how many readers are clicking back to your Web site.

Social media, of course, is quite measurable, because you can see the shares, comments and new followers immediately. Comments and feedback received through these tools can be very telling.

Beyond these, measure the impact of your content marketing strategy for other positive "bumps." If a newsletter includes a special offer for a treatment, note the number of people who opt in. If the blog announces a new treatment your practice offers, track the inbound inquiries you receive. By measuring these activities, you'll have an even better understanding of your content marketing success.

Your patients and referring providers represent a relationship gold mine. The best way to extract those treasures is to provide patients and colleagues with meaningful content that demonstrates that you're the health care expert they should trust.

Steve Klinghoffer

Create Your Own Business Referral Network

Customers who come as referrals to your business are coming to you with a pre-set level of trust. They have been told by another individual whose opinion they trust that your business offers exactly what they are looking for. The only step required after receiving a referral customer is to make sure their trust in you is never misplaced. When creating your business referral network you should keep a few helpful tips and industry tricks in mind. 

Try it 

This might sound overly simplified but it is not. If you see an opportunity to expand your business network, give it a shot. Join committees, your local chamber of commerce, check out some seminars, and continually network yourself at every possible opportunity. You should soon find yourself with no shortage of business referral network possibilities. 

Associate with Beneficial Mentors 

If you know those who have experience with business referral networks it may be a valuable idea to seek out some mentoring from those individuals or businesses. Utilize your time with any mentors wisely by making notes each time you see a hiccup in your own business referral network programs or strategies and taking them to your next meeting with a mentor. 

Do it For Your Team 

Instill in your employees that the primary reason they should help with referrals is that when the team wins, they win. With struggling economies, increasing daily living costs and other elements that are killing businesses all over the globe, employees who seek out referrals are indeed, doing it for themselves, their team and overall, the business. 

Offer Charity Donation Options Among Your Employees 

Some of your team members may hesitate and feel concerned over the appearance of making referrals for reasons that may appear self-enriching. Offer your employees the option of choosing to donate their referral rewards to a local charity. Not only is this a community-based benefitting option, it also encourages those who may not have had interest in being an employee referrer previously. 

In Name Only 

Some of your employees may not have the time to do the research required to capture perfect referrals or to gather their contact information, addresses or other personal information. For those employees, be sure to offer an option where they can be considered for a smaller reward by simply providing the names of any they think may be qualified candidates for referrals. In many cases you will find that the top employees in your business are willing to work in this manner without any promise of reward for supplying those names. Hand these names over to your expert recruiters to follow-up and begin the process of selling. 

Be Patient 

Even if you are not new to a business, you are still a small fish in a big pond. Keeping that in mind will help you and your business move forward even when there are obvious setbacks in your network. Don't get discouraged and keep hammering away at your business referral network until you have perfected it to suit your needs and that of your company's.

 Christian Fea

Starting A Judgment Referral Company

There are two popular ways to start or run a judgment-related business. You can do everything yourself, or you can outsource some or all of a judgment business. There are many ways to learn how to recover judgments and run a conventional judgment recovery business. This article highlights an alternative idea for a judgment business, where you refer most or all incoming judgment leads to either a judgment broker or a nationwide collection agency.

An important part of any judgment business is finding potentially good judgment leads. There are not as many good judgments out there as there used to be. Usually, the easy ones are recovered by the creditors or their lawyers. This article is my opinion, and not legal advice. I am a judgment referral expert, and am not a lawyer. If you ever need any legal advice or a strategy to use, please contact a lawyer.

Judgment brokers, and possibly some collection agencies and others, pay referral fees for judgment leads you send to them. The choices are usually pennies per raw lead, or about 5% of what is eventually recovered in the future. Most people do better with 5% of what may be recovered in the future.

To increase the chances of a judgment lead paying off, you might try to get a copy of the judgment, and what is known about the debtor along with the judgment. That way, you will know the creditor is serious, and the creditor's judgment will be ready to be enforced.

You could create a nationwide judgment recovery referral business, using only marketing. If you only refer judgment leads, then no judgment recovery knowledge or skills are needed, you only need to use marketing. To do this, you start by finding a judgment broker or a good collection agency.

In this business model, you tell judgment owners you know the best company to recover their judgment. When the judgment debtors have assets, judgment owners do not have to assign their judgment, and can get their judgments recovered at the best rates. If the debtors are rich, judgment owners get the best possible rates. That should help sell many creditors.

Because you will know the best place to refer creditors to, you simply screen the creditor a bit, and gather information and refer their judgment lead. You should learn enough so that you will know what you are talking about, however when you do not enforce judgments, life is much cheaper and easier.

If you simply refer all incoming judgment leads, and owned no judgments, you could work in every State. You could help judgment owners worldwide, without learning much about judgment enforcement laws. For this to work, the following conditions must be true, to avoid complications, legal involvement, or appearing in court, at least not for any matters related to the judgment leads you refer:

1) You do not have ownership of any judgments.

2) You do not represent anyone else.

3) You do not try to enforce any judgments.

4) You do not contact any debtors.

5) You do not charge any money, or have any contracts with any creditors or debtors.

If you only refer judgments and follow the five conditions above, you could have a home-based judgment referral business. All you would need is a computer, a simple database or spreadsheet to keep records on, a backup solution, a phone with voicemail to catch missed calls, a fax (or a web-based fax solution, for example UnityFax.com), and a post office box (or the UPS store).

If you refer all incoming judgment leads, your job is marketing. The new way is the web, unfortunately everyone has discovered this, so it takes a lot of work or money to get noticed. I recommend making or getting a simple web site, if only to save you time explaining things. You could hire, or do your own web and SEO marketing, or just put up your web site. You could market by getting 1,000 business cards printed and dressing well, and handing them to people coming out of court, or to attorneys. Or, you could have no business cards at all, and use only the internet.

Even if you decide to start or run a judgment referral business, nothing stops you from learning how to recover judgments, and taking and enforcing certain judgments where the debtors are local to you.

Mark D Shapiro