Marketing Your Direct Primary Care Practice

how to market your direct primary care practice

Today I got a wonderful email from a 3rd year resident who wants to start a DPC practice right out of residency. This is commendable! and echoes what I did as a doctor starting a DPC right after residency completion.

He took our Startup DPC course on Writing a Business Plan and his big ask was as follows: “I wrote this long piece of content, what do you think?”

Overall, the content he wrote was good! It explained his ethos and the ethos of his clinic. But, I told him that one piece of content doesn’t move the needle. I asked him:

“can you consistently make a new piece of content each week, every week, for 5 years? That's the real question. I usually spend about 1 hour each week creating a piece of content to support my DPC practice. This consistency is what draws new members to our practice. It's nice to have a short video or blog post that explains your ethos, but can you create a new piece of content each week?”

How to consistently create content

The best way to consistently create content is to take photos of the work you do in your clinic and to take photos of the work you do in the community. Family photos and hyperlocal content does well also.

You should always be thinking about content creation and trying to capture the moments that visually explain what you do in your DPC practice and how you do it and what it means for the community. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words!

Now, take those pictures, add a caption and post them to your favorite social media channels. I use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok most often, in that order. If you can create an engaging piece of content every month, you will have great success with your marketing efforts for your Direct Primary Care practice.

Examples from Plum HEalth DPC

Here are some examples from my business, Plum Health DPC, from the last 4 months of 2022: 

6 years in business: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cmt81PZL3JB/

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Paul Thomas MD (@plumhealthdpc)

Influenza A updates: https://www.instagram.com/p/CmXKf6OvMsu/

House call medicine: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClWl_TrvCC3/ 

Passing of a community physician, friend, and mentor: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClHXhYXvSBa/

Volunteering at a health fair: https://www.instagram.com/p/CjdM4ytL-g3/ 

Teaching other physicians about DPC: https://www.instagram.com/p/CjYJKr_L3Ka/ 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Paul Thomas MD (@plumhealthdpc)

Talking about healthy foods in Detroit: https://www.instagram.com/p/CjBfbA0P7qz/ 

Laceration repair: https://www.instagram.com/p/CiA-KN6O7Or/

Here are a few more blog post ideas for your direct primary care practice:

1. The benefits of direct primary care for patients

2. Why you decided to start your direct primary care practice

3. The differences between direct primary care and traditional primary care

4. The role of technology in direct primary care (texting patients, emailing patients, video chats with patients)

5. The importance of preventive care in direct primary care (how you have more time to address preventive medicine issues)

6. Direct primary care and the opioid crisis (how you can help your patients manage pain more effectively with multiple modalities, rather than with a pill)

7. Direct primary care and mental health

8. The impact of direct primary care on healthcare costs

9. The future of direct primary care

10. Success stories from patients in a direct primary care practice

Good luck! and keep writing! It helps to keep your audience engaged and it helps to grow your practice when your community knows about you and your ethos.

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

15 Great Ways to Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice

Here are 15 amazing ways to market your practice!

- join a small biz association in your community and make genuine connections

- dine at a restaurant and ask to meet the owner/manager (leave a nice review, too)

- ask your current patients "who do you know that could benefit from our services?"

- ask your current patients for reviews on Google and Yelp

- get great headshots of yourself at your office and in your community

- write an opinion piece for your local newspaper

- send out a press release to your local journalists

- bring cookies to your local specialist's office

- send out mass emails via MailChimp or Emma or a similar email marketing platform

- create fun and engaging content on your social media accounts and ask your current patients to share that content

- host a meet-and-greet at your office and supply bagels and coffee or wine and cheese, depending on your community

- host a meet-and-greet at a nearby bar, restaurant, or park and give everyone $5 or $10 off of their order (this is a great way to have a memorable event and a great way to invite new people into your practice)

- host a ribbon cutting at your office

- have a community walk with the doc

- sponsor your local 5K

..and on and on and on - you can do this! think creatively :)

if you need more ideas, you can find them here on my sales funnel course: https://startup-dpc.teachable.com/p/building-a-sales-funnel-for-your-direct-primary-care-practice/

Best of luck!

- Paul Thomas MD with Startup DPC

Managing Your Google Search Console for Direct Primary Care Doctors

Over the last 3 months, we've gained 143 new patients in our Direct Primary Care practice - 42 in November, 57 in December, and 44 in January. One of the big things that helps us get there is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If you're not familiar with this skill, and how to use SEO to your advantage, you're missing out on patients who could use your service.

You see, everyday, people are trying to solve their health care challenges. They’re looking for kind, compassionate, caring physicians to help them with their medical problems. They’re looking for affordable care and convenient service.

To find this service, patients turn to Google and use search terms like “affordable doctor near me” or “family doctor accepting patients near me.”

So, one of the biggest and most important ways for patients to find you is through Google and Search Engine Optimization related to this platform. Every month, Google sends me a report for Plum Health DPC showing my performance over the last 1 month and last 3 months.

This last month, we had about 39,200 impressions on Google and 649 web clicks via the Google platform. That’s about 1,300 impressions each day and 21 clicks each day! If you know that it takes about 20 web visitors to create 1 new enrollment, all of this information is encouraging.

Over the last 3 months, we’ve had roughly 40 to 50 new enrollments each month, and a lot of our success comes from managing our Google Search Console effectively and doubling down on Search Engine Optimization.

Essentially, you want to find the Google Search terms that are meaningful for your business in your Google Search Console report and then create content around those search terms.

If you’re struggling with your growth and you haven’t gone “all in” on search engine optimization, let this be a wake-up call regarding the power of this Google search engine platform. I know that these may not be the most comfortable topics for a doctor, but these are the tools that you’ll need to master in order to create a thriving Direct Primary Care practice.

If you want to take a deeper dive on these concepts, check out our Take Action page or take our course on Attracting More Patients to Your Direct Primary Care practice. Thanks for reading and watching! - Dr. Paul Thomas

Over the last 3 months, we’ve had 118,000 impressions on Google and 1,760 clicks through to our Plum Health DPC website. All of this is a part of our strategy to grow our practice. You can learn more about these techniques with our course on Attracting New Patients to Your Direct Primary Care Practice.

Over the last 3 months, we’ve had 118,000 impressions on Google and 1,760 clicks through to our Plum Health DPC website. All of this is a part of our strategy to grow our practice. You can learn more about these techniques with our course on Attracting New Patients to Your Direct Primary Care Practice.

The StartUpDPC Show Episode 1: How this Direct Primary Care Doctor Successfully Leveraged His Personal Brand

Building a Personal Brand can help you build your Direct Primary Care practice. By having a trusted personal brand, more people will be willing to sign up with your Direct Primary Care service.

Paul Thomas, MD and Kendrick Johnson, DO talk about personal branding for Direct Primary Care doctors on the first episode of the StartUpDPC Show.

But, many of you reading this are unfamiliar with how to build a personal brand. So, I wanted to show an excellent example of how to get this done.

Dr. Kendrick Johnson is a Direct Primary Care doctor with Ark Family Health and he recently made an excellent post on LinkedIn, which helps build his personal brand. The post is titled “Why this Doctor Had to Escape the Healthcare System.” During the video, he tells a personal story, shows real emotion, and even vulnerability. He becomes a relatable person and builds trust with his audience.

Because of this, we thought he'd be a perfect first guest on our StartUpDPC Show, where we will be interviewing thought leaders in the Direct Primary Care field and asking them some tough questions.

In our conversation, we talk about building a Direct Primary Care Practice, leveraging Social Media to get this done, the importance of Google Reviews, sustainable growth rates for Direct Primary Care practices and more.

One of the things that really struck me is that Dr. Johnson used a relatively inexpensive technology, an older-generation iPhone, to shoot his LinkedIn video. Take this as a lesson: you don’t need to hire a camera crew or an agency to produce high-quality content. Instead, you need to look into the camera (on the back of your iPhone or other smartphone) and tell your story with authenticity.

Thanks for watching and have a great day,

- Dr. Paul Thomas with StartUpDPC