Summer and early fall are prime time for outdoor events including community fairs, 5K fundraisers, food & drink festivals, and health fairs. Many of these events welcome exhibitors, and offer a great opportunity for you to meet current and potential patients in a relaxed, non-clinical environment.
If you’d like to become more visible in your community, sign up to exhibit at several key events during the year. But just showing up won’t guarantee your effort is worth the time and energy you invest. Here’s some tips to make sure you get the most out of your participation:
- branding; make sure everything about your exhibit matches your look & feel. If you don’t have a look & feel, coordinate all aspects of your exhibit. This makes you more visually appealing, and more memorable.
- greeters; don’t send dour, grumpy people (even if they are respected doctors). Have at least 1 (ideally 2) people who really like talking with other people, and who have a good general knowledge of what your practice offers. Making eye contact and smiling are tremendously important.
- target audience; know what audience the event is targeted for, and offer something at your exhibit that they find appealing. You can have 1 or more giveaways (don’t bet on 50 cent pens drawing a crowd), offer health screenings, raffle off something cool, have a game to play, or better yet do several of these to appeal to the most people. Don’t be afraid to be different than everyone else. In a crowd, different usually wins.
- follow up; do your best to get names and either email addresses or mailing addresses for folks that visit your exhibit. Email or snail mail visitors a “thanks for stopping by” note within a week of the event, and let them know you’re accepting new patients, and you’d love to see them again.
