How We Got Here: Doctors, Commodity and Colloquial Bargaining

Doctor, this is either a huge opportunity, a threat, or indifferent.

The healthcare professional society (medical school, specialty societies, practice manager) has engaged in a colloquial bargain, in which we trade our uniqueness for apparent belonging. 

The typical brand + marketing health of a community healthcare professional is a sick status. Every day we meet practice owners that are investing thousands of dollars every month with poor outcomes. They know they need to market themselves, but they don't know who to trust or what works and what to avoid. Marketing individuals and companies keep coming with the latest new marketing tool. In some cases, the healthcare professional have become victims. 

By economic definition, healthcare professionals are in a commodity market, but you don't have to act like a commodity. You now have a choice. You have three paths available to develop a brand that positions you as unique in the mindset of your ideal patients:

1. Be you. Tell the story of who you are, why you do what you do, whom (ideal) do you serve. 

2. Be different. "Better is not better. Different is better." Tim Williams. 

3. Be first (or the only). Who is the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean? Nobody remembers. 

Before the internet, doctors were clear about their value and the difference they made. Today, physicians and dentists, are so focused on the competition and marketing mediums, they've forgotten how to clarify what makes them unique and valuable. 

It's hard to be unique and a "specialist" in a specialty - in the way you care for patients, when you're focused on what everyone else is doing. 

This is either a huge opportunity, a threat, or indifference.