Situations
Where your practice is matters more than what it practices.
A surgeon defending ground against a new competitor and one filling a half-empty schedule need opposite sequencing. Almost all marketing is sold for the second.
Three situations
Pick the one that sounds like this year.
Practice lifecycle predicts what marketing should be trying to do better than clinical specialty does. It is also the thing almost nobody segments on, which is why so much advice arrives aimed at somebody else's year.
You have capacity, and the market does not know you well enough.
Growth is a different job from defense. It is also the situation most marketing is sold for, which is why so much of it is wrong for everyone else.
Growing your market →Someone new opened nearby, and they are outspending you.
Defending a position you spent fifteen years building is a different job from growing one. Almost all marketing is sold for the second.
Defending your position →A buyer will diligence your patient acquisition. Most owners find out late.
New-patient trend, channel concentration and asset ownership all show up in a data room. All three are fixable, but only with two or three years of runway.
Preparing to exit →If something has gone badly wrong — a reputation event, a review crisis, a sudden drop you cannot explain — that is urgent and different. Call us rather than reading further.
Not sure which one you are in?
A measured baseline usually settles it faster than a conversation does.