Ultimate Lead Guide - Finding Medical Offices

Medical Office are our 4th installment in our Ultimate Lead Guide series. Aside from our Winning With Marketing series, be sure to also check out:

The Introduction
Schools
Places of Worship
Government
Office Buildings
Car Dealerships
Banks
Gyms (coming 8/14/24)

Let's define medical offices. We have hospitals, urgent care, long term care centers, and more. Then there's general practice, and then there are specialized medical offices like oncology, pediatrics, dentistry, optometrists, orthopedics, sports medicine, outpatient surgery, and so many more. Plus you have non-traditional offices like chiropractic, acupuncture, homeopathy, and more. 

For the sake of a good definition, I'm limiting this to traditional medicine and the facilities that support that. Certainly consider non-traditional as a niche option like massage, chiropractic, reiki, acupressure, therapy, and more as a niche in an of itself. 

A common question I see all the time is, "Do I need to have any certifications to clean medical centers?" The answer is...well, a little complex. For the sake of brevity I'll answer this in another future blog post. Depends on the level of clean needed and whether or not there are any biohazards present, or could be present. 90% of the time, you don't need anything but you'd want some biohazard training. And while this post is about finding medical offices and not cleaning them, I will add that you generally will never need to clean any medical waste. In fact, cleaning medical waste is regulated by your state. In ours, there are only a few places statewide we can dispose of biowaste, and you have to have a special license to transport it. In other words, you might get the rare medical office worker asking you to clean these things, but never accept that and tell them that they're in charge of that removal.

Back to the leads, we found medical leads in the following ways: 1) Google, 2) Lead Magnets, 3) Referrals, 4) Affiliations/Associations, 5) Aggregated lists, 6) State lists, 7) COVID mentions on our website, 8) Networking.

Google:

Like with the others, Google Maps gives you so much. At a minimum I can find the practice name, their address, and phone. If they have a listed website, it'll be there too. And once you have the website, you can often find more contact info including names, titles, and email addresses. 

Lead Magnets:

We never created lead magnets for medical but we certainly could have. If you recall from the other posts, a lead magnet is something you can post on your website that captures the attention of the viewer, to which they want that item so much they are willing to give up their name and email to get it. In the context of medical, here are some examples of what you could create and post:

- A comprehensive disinfectant list that targets the top pathogens in your area, namely influenza, RSV, and coronaviruses. You can easily source these from the EPA and other sources. Or google "products that disinfect for RSV" and see what comes up.

- A disinfecting guide. Even without mentioning the disinfectants, you can create a guide to help teach how to disinfect. You'd be surprised how uninformed many of my medical prospects were towards disinfecting. It should be first year med school. But they truly were uninformed. 

- Non-disease related, created a supplier guide on finding basic supplies they use there like Toilet Paper, Paper Towels, liners, etc. They're ordering from places that are really expensive. You can be their hero to help them save money. 

In the above examples, type it up on your word processor and convert it to a PDF. You can use 3rd party tools (and maybe your web host offers this) like HubSpot to add a pop up to your website. If they fill out their info, that lead is yours forever. 

Referrals:

You can always ask for referrals. As your current clients if they know of any doctor's offices that need cleaning. How many times have you walked into a doctor's office only to find it messy. I was in the hospital for my son not long ago for a sports injury and I think that triage room hadn't been cleaned in years, or it seemed that way. This is probably the easiest referral to get. Everybody know a messy doctor's office. 

You can also offer $$$ for paid referrals. The medical offices we cleaned always had deliveries going to them. What if you offered your local delivery guy $$$ for a lead that ends up converting? We do this all the time. They do look at you like a cow looking at a new crossing gate but once you introduce the concept of paying for leads that convert, they perk up. Free money.

Affiliations:

Doctors love affiliations. And there's a lot out there. There's American Academy of Dermatology, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Board of Allergy and Immunology, American Board of Pediatrics, The Endocrine Society (our past client, true story), National Council on the Aging, and 100 others. Google around for medical affiliations or medical associations and you'll get an eyeful for sure. If a doctor is wanting to improve their craft, they'll be a part of these associations to keep tabs on the latest trends and to keep up with CEUs. Scroll through these associations' membership lists and look for doctors near you that might have an office. You never know until you try.


Aggregated Lists:

In the previous examples, I think I pulled from Yelp as a sample of an aggregated list. Doctors have it easy. There are Best Of lists everywhere for the medical profession. Healthgrades, Yelp, and even your insurance medical directory are good examples of this. My insurer is Cigna and they list out doctors by ranking based on my age, gender, etc. And yes, you can find full contact info on these lists.

State Lists:

Practicing Medicine is regulated by the states. Good thing too. My wife told me my epidermis is showing and I panicked thinking I need a new doc. In all seriousness, you can find a lot of information. Below is a screenshot for Virginia Board of Medicine's home page and what's offered:

Naturally I'm in VA. I haven't even looked up the other 49 states, and DC, and don't plan to. But you can do your own research. Some of my results, when I search for a doctor, do include contact info. Some do not. But this points you in the right direction.

Website Visits due to COVID listed on our website:

Earlier I mentioned that doctors and some medical professionals don't know how to disinfect. As of today, this isn't that common, but when COVID first hit we received a surprisingly high number of calls from medical centers. These included small practices up to a university medical center to even a VA hospital. We had disinfected for years prior to COVID but we rode the wave and spread best practices as much as we could. One of the first calls we got was for logistical support in a campus medical center at George Mason University. We did a consult with them in hopes of winning a contract, but that never happened. They found us just by googling around for cleaning companies and COVID. We popped up. In another example, we were contracted through a care center for those with dementia, Parkinson's, and other neurological degenerative conditions. This client has a mission to help those in that phase in their life. They needed to keep their patients/clients safe while keeping the place clean and disinfected during COVID. They found us through a simple google search and happened to see some of our material on maybe our website or on our blog within the website.

If you're targeting medical as a niche you need to blog about it non-stop. Make yourself an expert in your niche. Give information freely. And they'll contact you for cleaning.

Networking:

Your network is your net worth. It's not what you know, but it's who you know. Go out and join your local Chamber of Commerce or even BNI groups. You're not likely to find any medical decision-makers because they're busy treating patients or running an office but chances are that someone in attendance at that networking event met or knows of a doctor somewhere.

Bonus: Community Support:

As I was typing this post out I do recall we picked up 2 practices of a orthodontist who was a supporter of the local Little League. One of my sons played Little League baseball and our cleaning company sponsored his team. Well, that orthodontist supported a couple of teams and happened to see our name. They reached out and we ended up cleaning 2 of their 3 practice locations. Not bad for paying for some team shirts and a team banner. 

In conclusion, medical seems to be an easier one. But it's so overwhelming too because there are so many locations to clean. Whether you're in small-town American or some metropolis somewhere, you'll never run short of finding medical offices.