As 2022 draws to a close, it’s time to look back over the past year and ask yourself if you are happy with how your healthcare business has grown.
Have you reached new patients and provided the best service possible for the treatments you offer while managing to increase profits?
Has this allowed you the chance to live your life more comfortably?
Maybe you’ve even managed to dedicate more time to your family now that your clinic is doing well.
If you have achieved all of the above, congratulations! We know it takes a lot of time, planning and dedication.
If you feel you haven’t achieved everything you hoped you would, it’s time to grab a pen and paper and get thinking about the new year, which is approaching fast.
You probably know what you want for your business, but now it’s time to set the goals and define those objectives that will make them more obtainable.
Don’t let another year slip where you haven’t reached your goals for your healthcare business.
In this blog, we detail how you can set goals and definite objectives to grow your clinic, as well as the effectiveness of doing this.
Why should you set goals?
Without goals, you can end up drifting aimlessly from task to task without measuring your success. If you don’t measure your success, it isn’t easy to know where improvements can be made.
According to Coschedule, ‘’Marketers who set goals are 377% more likely to report success than those who don’t. And 70% of those successful, goal-setting marketers achieve them.’’
Our advice is to keep it to 1 or 2 goals max. There will be a number of objectives you will need to set to make sure you are on the right track to achieving the goals.
Before we move into how to set goals, let’s have a look at what a SWAT analysis is and how that can help you.
SWOT analysis
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Carrying out a SWOT analysis of your business will help you identify these key elements. This will allow you to define the objectives that will help you achieve your goals and make improvements in your clinic.
New businesses can do this analysis to help them plan for the future, while established clinics can use it to assess how they are doing, year after year.
While you may be aware of your strengths, you must record them alongside threats and weaknesses to realise how unreliable those strengths might be.
It also may help you uncover blind spots and threats you hadn’t noticed or thought about before.
So, who should do a SWOT analysis?
To get different perspectives, it’s best to have several people conduct the SWOT analysis, whether consultants, the practice owner, receptionists or any other staff.
These team members will have different stakes in the clinic, which will be reflected in their answers. It’s also a fantastic way to encourage group participation and create a safe space where different elements of the business can be discussed openly.
You can hold a brainstorming session or, alternatively, have everyone write down their SWOT analysis which you can review.
What should you ask?
Under each heading, use the questions from the tables below to help you write your lists. You’ll start to see links and connections between them!
| Strengths |
|---|
| What does your clinic do well in? |
| What makes patients return? |
| What resources do you have? (latest technology, speciality training, reputations, skills, network, solid base of existing patients etc.) |
| What do your patients praise you on? |
| What advantages do you have over your competition? |
| Weaknesses |
|---|
| What could you improve? |
| Why do some patients not return? |
| What does your clinic lack? (skills, technology, staff, good location etc.) |
| What would others see as your weaknesses? |
| Why are your competitors growing faster than you? |
| Opportunities |
|---|
| What opportunities exist that you could take advantage of? |
| Has there been a recent growth in interest in any of the treatments you offer? |
| Could you offer new popular treatments you don’t yet? |
| Threats |
|---|
| Who are your existing competitors? |
| Are there any current economic/political situations affecting your growth? |
| What threats do your weaknesses expose you to? |
Below is an example of a SWOT analysis for a clinic that offers aesthetic treatments:
| Strengths |
|---|
| We provide several treatments at competitive prices. |
| We are in a great location near the high street with parking available. |
| Our clinic is small so we can offer personalised care to our patients – we know them all by name, which they appreciate. |
| Weaknesses |
|---|
| Our clinic is small, so we are limited in how many patients we can see. |
| With a small number of staff, when team members are on sick leave or holiday, it can leave us shorthanded. |
| We are limited in space and cannot add new consultation rooms or get new technology. |
| Opportunities |
|---|
| Facial aesthetics is expanding and becoming more popular. |
| Training is constantly improving so our staff can complete new courses and gain new skills. |
| Clinicians can be upskilled to increase the number of treatments offered. |
| Threats |
|---|
| Development in technology could leave us behind. |
| Larger competitors offer a more extensive range of treatments. |
| People are worried about increasing living costs and will spend less on these treatments. |
Using your SWOT analysis to choose your objectives
Once you have your analysis, you can choose several key areas to work on. For the above example, the clinic may want to work on offering more treatments or introducing the latest technology.
These objectives could include incorporating a new treatment by a specific date, ensuring your staff are trained in new treatments or getting new technology.
How to set goals
Once you have your SWOT analysis and know your goals, you can also look at setting objectives.
As a healthcare business, your overall goal could be to increase the turnover of your clinic by 10% over the next 12 months or to grow your private high-ticket treatment uptake by 15%.
In order to achieve the above, you would need to receive more leads or increase your conversion rate. Focusing on one of these two objectives will help you develop strategies to do this, such as investing more in marketing or hiring an advertising agency.
Other goals may include increasing your social media presence or renovating part of your clinic.
The more specific you get, the easier it is to measure your goals.
A dental practice offering Invisalign treatments may want to reach the Diamond Invisalign provider level by the new year or treat a certain number of new patients within a timeframe.
Follow the SMART goals framework to assess each goal you come up with.
SMART GOALS
S – Specific: what are you hoping to do?
M – Measurable: What will you use to measure the success of your goal?
A – Achievable: What strategy will you use to implement your goal?
R – Relevant: Does the goal help you achieve your overall objective?
T – Timely: what is the timeframe for your goals?
Review your goals
Once you have your goals and objectives laid out and you’ve worked on strategies to help you reach each one, you should review them with your team.
This will help ensure they are ambitious while remaining realistic and achievable. It will help you and your team manage expectations and what you expect of them.
You will want to motivate your team without putting too much pressure on them. Having them involved in the process will allow them to feel valued.
Tracking your goals
By now, you should know how to create a list of your goals following the SMART framework.
Set a timeline to track the goals with quarterly meetings for the team to discuss your goals and your strategies for reaching them and to track their success. This will keep the team motivated with the right objectives at the top of their mind.
Make sure you have reminders set up so you can continuously monitor the success of each goal throughout the year.
There are several tools to help with this.
Created with small and mid-sized businesses in mind, Weekdone allows you to set structured goals where you can track them and set up weekly updates.
Use Trello to set tasks and goals. You can personalise how you view them, change the templates and share them with other team members. You can also set deadlines with reminders.
Asana offers goal setting within the platform where you can set personal goals, goals for the team and company goals. It’s easy to follow, with each team member being able to track their own progress.
Key Takeaways
From this blog, you should feel confident and inspired to start setting goals and objectives for the new year.
It’s proven to make a huge difference in the overall success of a business, and it’s definitely worth your time.
Here are some key takeaways you can look back at when setting your goals!
- Use SWOT analysis
- Find key areas you want to work on before creating goals
- Use the SMART goal framework
- The more specific your goals, the easier they are to measure
- Track your goals with your team throughout the year
For more great content, head to our blog page.
If you need help achieving your advertising goals, you can always book a free call with one of our experts.
