If your physician liaison is the “marketing” person, doesn’t it make sense for them to handle all of the practice marketing as well? Or at least the social media posts?

It’s an honest mistake.

Here’s where that line of thinking works against a practice…

Every hour a liaison is out calling on doctors, our clients’ return on investment is anywhere from $500 to $10,000 an hour.

Every hour a liaison is not focused on the territory, the practice loses hundreds or thousands of dollars in potential revenue.

Our recent article, Mythbusters, has generated a lot of interesting discussion, so we’re digging a bit deeper into the most common myths practices believe about referral networks.

Myth: Our physician liaison is handling all of our social media, patient reviews, and digital marketing efforts.

What are you hoping to accomplish by adding multiple hats to your liaison’s role?

Most practices see their liaison as the “marketing” person, when in reality, your rep is (and should be) a salesperson sharing the benefits of the practice with referring doctors. 

Here are a few of the myths behind the myth:

This will save us money.

By limiting the time your liaison is able to call on referring doctors, you’re actually losing money in opportunity cost.

Things like social media or Facebook ads are pretty easily outsourced. Calling on referring doctors is not.

Leave the social media posts to your marketing agency or summer intern.

This will save us time.

If marketing is not your liaison’s primary function…

It will take them twice as long as an experienced agency for the same or perhaps even lower quality work.

All at a higher cost to the practice.

We’re being more efficient and killing two birds with one stone.

While this might sound good in theory, this actually prevents the rep from being able to focus on field efforts causing them to be less efficient.

You may have heard the saying, “Where focus goes, energy flows.” 

Having a scattered focus, scatters efforts and results.

We don’t have anyone else to do these marketing projects.

These projects are easily outsourced to an experienced agency or virtual assistant. 

In my experience, a physician liaison is the greatest patient generating investment a practice can make with the quickest return on investment.

Bogging them down with additional office duties keeps them out of the field and focused on lower yield activities. 

Don’t overload your liaison with responsibilities that are easily and inexpensively outsourced.

Let your liaison focus on field efforts and use the revenue they generate to finance additional marketing campaigns.

Have questions about how to do this? Contact us!