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In previous articles, Silkin Management Group has provided information on the use of surveys in marketing including the basics of how to put a survey together.

As previously discussed, surveys are the key to marketing success. It is not uncommon to see money wasted on marketing when surveys are not done prior to any marketing activity. This would include, but not be limited to designing office brochures, sending out a neighborhood mailing, putting together an effective yellow page ad or something as simple as asking for a referral.  You certainly don’t want to waste money on ineffective marketing and, as a result, feel that marketing “just doesn’t work”.  Unfortunately many doctors end up feeling that way because they don’t know some simple basics of marketing technology.  In fact most of the new clients of Silkin Management Group come to us with that attitude.  But once they learn a few of the essential points that make marketing successful (surveying is at the top of the list), that attitude normally changes because they can now get predictable results with their marketing activities.

Assuming you have gotten a survey written and completed by a good number of your patients/clients (we suggest getting at least 50 done in order to get a good trend on the answers), what do you now do with the surveys to hand?  The first step is to tabulate them.

TABULATING THE SURVEYS

1. As mentioned above, you need to get an adequate number of responses to see some sort of trend in a majority of the answers.  It usually takes about 50 surveys or so to start seeing a clear majority trend.  If you do not have enough surveys back to get such a trend, the first step is to get more surveys done either by increasing your sampling or extending any deadline you put on the time for completion.

1. Collect all survey results and tabulate each question by tallying responses.  People’s answers can vary on open-ended questions, in which case you should group similar responses together.  For example, let’s say your survey question was “Describe the perfect ________ (put your doctor type here i.e. “dentist, veterinarian, optometrist)”.  If in response to this question 5 of the people surveyed said “a happy person”, 7 said “a cheerful, engaging doctor” and 10 said “he/she is nice and helpful”, these answers could all be grouped together in one category as they are all a similar response. This category answer might be “22 – cheerful, helpful and engaging”.

1. Once you have the raw number tallies of people’s responses, change these raw numbers into percentages based upon the total number of surveys done. You should now have percentages that show you a clear majority, percentage-wise, of the key answers.

1. Note down any individual who wanted feedback on the survey and make sure you send them any data requested.

1. Use the high percentage answers to create your marketing activity in whatever area you are working on. For example, let’s say the answer given in point #2 above is the majority answer to a survey question,  the Silkin Management Group consultant would help the doctor work out ways to insure he/she was always cheerful, helpful and engaging with patients/clients, no matter what else was going on or how he/she felt during the day.  As a result, the doctor would undoubtedly get more referrals.

There are a variety of ways to do surveys.  You can have them filled out at the office while a patient/client is waiting, you can send them through the mail or email and you can even look through patient/client files for valuable information.

In fact you might not know it, but you have immediate access to survey information from data that you have been collecting for quite some time – right in your patient files. You will find data in there that will tell you who your current patient/client types are (i.e. age, location and other demographic information).  Gathering this type of information is often one of the first activities that Silkin Management Group clients do when embarking on a marketing program.

If you have a computer data base of patient/client information, gathering this type of demographic data is fairly easy.  If you have only physical files it might take longer, but is still worth it.

To save time you should start with pulling information from your new patient files for the past few months as this should give you a good idea of your overall patient and client base.  Though many doctors are aware to some degree what kind of patients and clients they deliver to, getting the exact data can be eye opening and extremely valuable.

Silkin Management Group suggests to its clients to have their office manager use these files to collect age, occupation and location of their patients/clients. (In the case of a Veterinary office, also collect the species, sex and age of the animals who are patients.)  Then tabulate the information into their appropriate categories and percentages as covered above. From this you will have extremely useful demographic information.

For example you might see that your majority patient/client age is 35-45 years old, that the majority of people live in a certain area of town and work in a certain industry.  This data would then be used in your marketing efforts relative to who you would concentrate on promoting to.

Below is an example survey Silkin Management Group designed and used with many of our clients as a simple, in office survey.

ACME MEDICAL CLINIC

Only through listening to you can we determine what you like and what you don’t like about our practice.  We would therefore appreciate it if you would take a couple of minutes to fill out this survey and return it to the receptionist.

1. How did you first hear about our practice?

1. What prompted you to come see us rather than another practice?

1. Why have you continued to use our services?

1. What do you look for in a good (put doctor type here such as Dentist, Veterinarian, etc.)

1. What do you look for in a good (doctor type) office?

Thank-you very much for your input.

Name (optional): ____________________________________  Date: _____________

Would you like any feedback or personal reply to this survey? _____ Yes _____ No

Silkin Management Group has been delivering management consulting and training to its clients for nearly three decades. During this time Silkin Management Group has educated its clients in marketing basics -  techniques that are easy to use and get results. The above information about surveying is only one of the many tools Silkin clients learn to use.

For additional information about Silkin Management Group, please contact us at:  info@SilkinManagementGroup.com