Building Name Recognition

If they’ve heard of you, they think you’re good

by Susan Keane Baker

"If they've heard of you, they think you're good" an old adage says.

Indeed, name recognition is a low-cost, high-impact marketing strategy that can help clinicians attract new opportunities. Name recognition creates awareness of you on an ongoing basis, much of it through word of mouth commentary. Three strategies can help you achieve name recognition:

enhancing your reputation among patients
cultivating community supporters
getting media exposure

Above all, word-of-mouth communication is the most powerful tool you have for creating name recogntion. Because people connect health care professionals with caring actions, many times a single act of kindness can result in tremendous name recognition. It may be consoling a patient whose spouse or parent has passed away. Or it can mean walking a distressed patient to his or her car after breaking bad news.

Some tips for obtaining media exposure are:

Writing letters to the editor - readers and editors love letter to the editor. A minimal investment of your time can yield a high rate of readership.

Penning articles - Articles need not be lengthy. A newspaper op-ed peice, for example, is only about 800 words. Articles increase your credibility and are easy to disseminate to colleagues and patients.

Becoming an industry expert - The media always need informed and articulate experts on a variety of topics. Stay abreast of the news and look for ways to use your area of expertise to bring perspective to hot topics.

Writing a book - Although time consuming, a book is a wonderful long term investment. Books have a long shelf life and are seen as signs of professional competence and achievement.

Finally, be careful about what you say in public. Frivolous or irreverant remarks can live on for years in people's minds - and not necessarily in a way that will benefit you or your organization.

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