Some marketing firms are consultants pure and simple. They come in, look around, make recommendations, then leave.
You're the one expected to do the hard part -- the actual work of putting those recommendations into effect.
The Galen Group is different. We do the work. Not you. We're there with you throughout the entire marketing process. In person. Learning your needs. Addressing your concerns. Executing your individually designed marketing strategy.
We do the marketing. So you can run your practice or business.
And what exactly is it that we do?
We start by finding out precisely what goals you have for your business or practice.
We don't try to impose our own plans or ideas on you. We work with you to develop a customized strategic marketing plan suited to and approved by you.
We then put together a detailed, step-by-step action plan for your approval.
We work out the costs, the schedule, and the projected results. And when you're completely satisfied, we provide, completely or in part, the following services:
SERVICE EVALUATION
We study and analyze the daily workings of your practice. Which services are rewarding and which not? Which services give you the best return on your time and effort? Which offer the least?
Which services attract the most client interest? Which don't? Which might, if they were presented to your clients in a better manner? If better implemented by your staff?
We get the answers.
GOAL PLANNING
What are your financial and personal goals? Do you want five new clients or patients a month, or ten? Do you want to maintain your income, or triple it? Do you want to expand your office, or work with what you have?
We help you assess and define your goals and hopes -- and so help you take the first step towards achieving them.
CLIENT STUDY
We use a variety of effective information gathering techniques -- extensive mail surveys, statistical analysis, studies of patient files, short in-office questionnaires, focus groups, database sorting, studies of clients who've gone elsewhere, personal observation, and more -- to find out exactly what your clients really think of your office, your staff, your practices, and you.
We not only get their opinions -- we get their suggestions. We find out which aspect of your services they like. And which they'd like to see modified -- or dropped.
Often we find that just asking their opinion and letting them know that you're actively working to provide even better services can end up improving your relations with your current clients. And bring in new referrals as well.
POTENTIAL CLIENT STUDY
We study and profile not only your current clients or patients, but also the demographics and trends in society.
We not only show you what sort of person you're reaching now, but what segments you could easily be reaching, and how.
PLANNING A WINNING STRATEGY
Using our precise analyses of your goals, your clients and potential clients, your operations, and the overall objective you have, The Galen Group works with you to formulate a specific set of tactics to make your practice or business into what you envision.
INTERNAL MARKETING
Referrals and repeat business stem from the quality of the service you give -- if your clients perceive that quality. The Galen Group's internal marketing audit looks at maximizing the experience of the "customer" -- from available parking to office layout.
STAFF TRAINING
Poor staff work can keep growth down even when every other aspect of an operation is state-of-the-art. Sometimes after an employee leaves, you hear about the poor way they treated your patients or clients. We aim to find that out soon after an employee starts working. We survey new clients and patients to find out how they perceive staff.
Is your staff helping to get and keep clients, or are they driving them away?
Don't wonder. Find out.
WEBSITES, BROCHURES, NEWSLETTERS, DIRECT MAIL
Clients should be informed. What's more, they like to be informed. And the best and easiest way of doing that is simply getting directly in touch with them.
Of course, writing, designing, printing, and producing print materials can be time-consuming. But we can save you the time and trouble by producing the all the written materials you'll need to keep your name, your business, and your services, in the mind of the clients you have now.
And if the written word is helpful in talking to your current clients, it's all-important in talking to your potential clients among the general public.
Direct mail has provided a revolution in effective and cost-effective marketing. We know its effectiveness. We use it. We can produce welcoming letters and to introduce your firm or practice to new residents each year -- residents looking for services like yours.
MEDIA. PUBLIC RELATIONS, COMMUNITY RELATIONS
All too often, professionals who realize they need marketing services go to advertising agencies or marketing groups who don't specialize, as we do, in the professional and small business firm. And the result can be a financially wasteful 'campaign' that causes the practitioner to lose not just his money, but the respect both of his clients and his peers.
We've learned better. Any plan to market a professional practice must stress the honesty and substance of that profession, and of the person practicing it.
Public speaking engagements, appearances at professional associations and gatherings, interviews with journalists, articles in professional publications, the giving of seminars, statements on public matters relating to your business or profession to radio, television, and newspapers -- in short, public relations -- can all be tactfully presented and profitably pursued.
We can see to it that they are.
We can get you online. We can get your name and your message onto the Web and out to the world. And we can do it in ways that can literally cost you less than a dollar a day.
MONITORING AND FOLLOW-UP
We've defined your goals, evaluated your practice, evolved a strategy approved by you, and implemented it to the best of our abilities.
What's left? One important item. We make sure everything is working the way it's supposed to.
Some marketing organizations don't check the results of their plans and make sure marketing continues after the marketing program is built.
The Galen Group does. We're there throughout the process and after, fine-tuning our contributions, shaping and re-shaping our interventions, checking and re-checking until the result you see is the one you wanted to see.
Jonathan T. Rich, M.A., M.B.A.
