5 Steps to Market Your Medical Billing Company for Growth
Kerry Hamilton, CMO, Nobility RCM

Plenty of economic optimism surrounds the medical billing industry. The medical billing outsourcing market is expected to grow 12.6% by 2028, according to a recent report by Grand View Research, Inc. An effective marketing strategy plays a key role in accelerating business growth. When executed correctly, that strategy makes a broader audience aware of your services, differentiates your billing company, and highlights data that proves your value. Here are five steps to successfully market your billing company for growth.

Step 1: Set growth goals. Before you experiment with any marketing initiative, you need to know where you want to go. Set growth goals around the marketing activities you want to achieve. Is your goal to bring on more clients? Raise awareness? Generate revenue? Having a clear vision from the start will help you generate a strategy that advances the specific objectives of your billing company.

Step 2: Identify your differentiators. Focus on the elements of your business that set your billing company apart from others. Look at the services you offer and use data to prove your value to prospective clients. For example, can you present case studies that demonstrate your performance based on certain metrics? Incorporate substantive data into cases that can be shared with prospects. When evaluating your differentiators, it is also important to take a step outside your company and look inward at what might resonate to a prospect, not simply what you think is beneficial. Your differentiators should be defined by metrics that showcase how your services relieve a pain point. Don’t try to be everything to everybody; focus on what you do well and be exceptional in that space. At the end of the day, fulfilling your promise to the client is what ultimately breeds loyalty and future referrals.

Step 3: Build messaging. Once you have established your differentiators, it is time to craft messaging for your marketing mix. Determine your value proposition in one to two sentences and flight the message across all channels, including your website, social media, and print materials. Hone your message by listening to feedback from current clients. Engage a third party who does not know who you are and what you do to get additional perspective. Hear what your current clients have to say about your role as a difference maker and test that same message to ensure it is clearly understood by the third party.

Step 4: Determine your marketing mix. Developing the right marketing mix is a process unique to your company; there is no one-size-fits-all model. Your mix may include B2B social media platforms; establishing a thought leadership position through engaging content; networking and referral incentives; digital advertising, such as sponsored newsletters, pay-per-click, and more. For example, if you have strong performance metrics, it’s easier to market via referral because you have delighted clients who are ready to endorse you. Also, billing companies often have limited marketing resources, so it’s critical to evaluate ways to leverage consistent content across multiple channels. A single blog post can be repurposed as multiple social media posts.

 Step 5: Pilot a portion of your marketing mix. Select one or two marketing initiatives and conduct a 90 to 120-day test. By focusing on one or two initiatives at a time, you will have better clarity when assessing the tactic against the goal because you have a clear start and end point. During the time you were running the campaign, did you onboard new clients? Why did they commit? After the test period, you may decide to invest more energy behind a specific campaign. Conversely, if the tactic did not move the needle, you should re-evaluate and see where you might adjust to ensure the next effort is more successful.

Takeaways
The key to successfully marketing for billing company growth is the willingness to adapt and pivot. Understand the objectives of your prospects and align your message accordingly. Try a campaign for a period of time long enough to measure results, but don’t be so committed that you are investing resources into a losing proposition. Be open to taking calculated risks and trying new tactics, but always make sure your approach is measured and thoughtful.