Finding the proper cadence for marketing campaign management

Each piece in your marketing campaign management strategy can have a different cadence depending upon prospective and current patients and demographics

The cadence of your our marketing campaign management seemed to work reasonably for a long time, bringing new patients into your waiting room, many of whom became regulars.

As time went on, they began bringing in referrals. However, things now seem to have reached a plateau. Although you are not necessarily losing patients, you aren’t seeing the sort of growth from your practice that you would like. In such cases, increasing the frequency of your marketing communications might seem to make the most sense. However, after one or two months of sending out more emails, writing more blog posts and mailing additional newsletters, you haven’t noticed much change in your bottom line. It is quite clear that your current marketing campaign needs a major overhaul that goes beyond just increasing how frequently you reach out to your same base of patients.

One interesting marketing concept to consider is that of cadence, rather than just frequency. Although frequency is part of marketing cadence, the latter takes more into consideration.

What is cadence in your marketing campaign management?

When we think of cadence, it is usually in the context of sports, such as running or swimming. In either case, cadence refers to the rhythmic sequence of movement or pace. A change in cadence means that the rhythm will either speed up or slow down.

In the business world, cadence can refer to how often a regularly-scheduled thing occurs. Marketing cadence specifically refers to the set pattern of marketing pieces sent out as part of a campaign. This pattern can include the number of pieces and their frequency, content, and intended target.

Map out your cadence

Each piece in your marketing campaign management can have a different cadence, depending upon its medium and intended audience. This means that you need to consider not only your prospective and current patients, but also their demographics.

For example, your senior patients may not be as interested in following you on social media as will your younger patients. Using a cadence relying on postal mail is likely to be more successful for older patients. However, this cadence also means building in time for graphic design, copywriting, proofing, and mailing.

Likewise, if you are putting together a marketing campaign aimed at athletic patients, a quarterly cadence that incorporates seasonal sports could be very effective. However, such a campaign is likely to be graphic-intensive, so that must also be considered when mapping out the timeline for its cadence.

Changing your cadence

Just as you would while running, you may also find that you need to change your marketing campaign management cadence in order to get the best results.

For example, if you are noticing that many of your email newsletters are not prompting potential patients to contact your office, you might consider sending fewer newsletters. Alternatively, you might want to just include a teaser in the email, leading the potential patient to click through to your website to read the full newsletter. The same rule applies if you see that certain topics are generating more interest than others. Redirecting the focus of your campaign toward those topics that appear to be of more interest to potential patients could very well speed up the cadence of your campaign and boost your bottom line.

As competitive runners well know, changing their cadence can make all the difference between winning and losing a race. The same can be said for your marketing campaign management cadence. Changing it up can turn you and your practice into winners.