Perhaps the most difficult concept for a physician to grasp is the role of Public Relations in building a successful practice/business. The common perception has been that P.R. was anathema. And that belief was not unique to the health profession. Not long ago, bankers, attorneys and others were taught that all forms of advertising, marketing and promotion were wrong. It was a moral issue. Being good at what one does was enough. Calling attention to it was unseemly.

In the health care world, apart from being perceived as vulgar, marketing was considered unnecessary. It was assumed that patients would automatically and miraculously come forever. As a result, physicians erroneously believed they were sheltered from the demands placed on other businesses.

The biggest problem with PR is that few give it a real shot. I’m not saying that public relations companies don’t sometimes drop the ball, certainly some campaigns fail because of poor story ideas and improper execution; but often media campaigns don’t succeed because they’re never given a chance. If you’re looking to launch a successful PR campaign in a month, you might as well throw your money out the window. Whether you launch a campaign yourself or hire a firm to launch one for you, you need to give it time to grow; you need to contact the right people, be consistent, tenacious, develop new story ideas and allow the process to take its course. Once you start landing articles or TV coverage, you then need to maximize your media. It’s important to use that media to garner more media, but you also have to learn how to utilize your media coverage on the Internet, in your advertising, marketing and promotion and marketing your business to business dealings.