With a strange and troublesome year now receding into the background, clinics around the country are readying for the holiday period.
Hopefully, the new year will bring a reduction in business restrictions and an uptick in sales and client acquisition.
So, what do you need to do to get your clinic or health business ready for the holidays and prepped for a productive new year?
Telegraph your opening hours
Many clinic owners make the simple mistake of forgetting to update their Google and website opening times. This is an easy way to burn clients and lose business through frustration.
Keep it professional and ensure your clients and potential clients know when you’ll be open during the holidays.
Holiday specials!
Everyone is looking for a good deal at Christmas time. What can you do to put together a promotion? How can you then capitalise on this to use in your marketing?
Health concerns don’t cease during the holidays, in fact, with many people taking time off, there’s plenty of opportunity to get to that session they were putting off. Double down on this idea and put together a deal of your choosing that will re-ignite old clients and pull in new ones.
Have an email campaign ready to go
Whether you’re taking time off for yourself, or working through the holiday period, it’s important to keep your clientele not only informed, but primed for next year.
By targeting your clientele with a snappy and evocative EDM – whether to wish them well, remind them about closures, promote a deal for next year, or urge a booking for the year ahead, it’s wise to get this ready early.
Make sure you have your list segmentation ready and have the email journey mapped out, so you can fire it off amid the chaos of the holiday season.
Crunch the numbers
Get a good handle on where you sit financially. It’s wise at this juncture to take some time to consult with an accountant or business advisor. It’s likely you’ve suffered a little pain over the last two years, if so, it’s vital you get a serious picture of your current and projected financials.
To start, consult your accounting software and start pulling reports on:
- cash flow
- profit and loss
- sales
- expenses
- forecasts
This is essential to moving confidently into the new year while learning lessons on your clinic’s recent financial past.
Plan for the new year
What’s in store for your clinic next year? Start laying tracks now. If you found during your number crunching that your sales were down and had high expenses, what will you do to mitigate this?
- Do you need to invest more in marketing?
- Is your customer workflow lean and clean?
- Are your systems in need of tuning?
- Can you renegotiate your suppliers?
- Will you be doing more remote or home service care?
- Does your website need a refresh?
- Can you do more in terms of marketing, ads, and social media?
Stuff your stocking
With supply chains still clogged from pandemic induced disruption, it’s important you stock up in readiness for the holiday season and beyond.
While it’s important not to over-order and disrupt your cash flow, it’s also important that you have what you need and never run out of essential stock. That’s a quick way to burn a client and look unprofessional and unorganised.
Check your systems
When was the last time you audited your clinic’s systems? Before a new year begins, it’s time to get your house in order.
Have a fresh look at your:
- POS
- booking software
- CRM
- eCommerce
- client notes
- accounting and payroll software
It’s likely there are steps you can take to automate more of your daily tasks, integrate solutions together and reduce the steps and work involved in your internal and client processes.
Renew your business plan for next year
You should take a fresh look at your clinic’s business plan every year.
The holiday season is prime time to dust off your business plan and refresh it with renewed information and insights.
The pandemic likely shifted a lot of your expectations and clinic data over the past year and you need to account for these changes in outlook and operations. Be sure you’re on the right track next year.