Branding
When a medical professional graduates university, they have expectations and dreams about the kind of practice that they want to create. Doctors, dentists, physical therapists, audiologists and other medical practitioners usually have a specific idea in mind for the type of practice that they want to create and the people that they want to help.
The majority of graduating medical professionals have a specific brand identity in mind when they first begin. Your medical brand is far more than just a logo or your marketing literature; it is a unique statement about your identity as a medical professional. A quality brand will feature the consistent use of targeted colors, evocative images, emotive text, and a core message that describes both your mission as well as your fundamental philosophy. Your brand is what separates you from other practicing medical professionals.

What is a brand strategy?
Marketing experts define a brand strategy as the ongoing plan for developing and sustaining a successful brand in order to achieve certain concrete goals. When a brand strategy is well-executed, it will have a strong influence on all aspects of your business, connecting your goals and aspirations to the needs of your patients.

What is the brand identity?
The term “brand identity” is synonymous with your brand itself, the public face of your business. Your brand identity will represent your unique personality, company’s values, and the services you and your company provide. A quality brand identity will create an indelible impression in the minds of your patients, generating loyalty and positive feelings of pride and value for clients as well as your employees.

Difference between marketing and branding
Branding is the underlying core concept of your business. Marketing is the effort to get your brand into the public eye. Branding is often distinguished as being “pull”, as opposed to “pushing”, the goal of marketing. Your brand will communicate you and your company’s values, attributes, and unique characteristics that give it a virtual personality in the mind of your clients and employees.
Branding builds customer loyalty and encourages people to feel attracted to your services. Branding works hand-in-hand with your sales and marketing efforts. While marketing is geared towards exhorting customers to actively buy/request your services, your brand is a passive statement of who you and your company are. Branding is an identity while marketing is an effort to convince people to get to know (and like) the brand.

Branding is strategic. Marketing is tactical.
Marketing is a subset of branding, a way to contribute to your brand image. After marketing has worked its course, your brand will remain. Your brand is what will remain in the mind of your clients, even when they did not respond to marketing efforts and follow through with a solicitation of your services.
Marketing can entice people to seek your services, but your brand is what determines whether a consumer will be transformed into a loyal customer. Marketing can convince an individual to come in for a single treatment, but your brand will be the reason why a customer regularly comes to you for all of his or her needs.
Your brand is the grand total of everything that your patients hear, see, or feel in association with your medical practice. Starting with the way your office is decorated and continuing to the look and feel of your website, your brand becomes the sum total of how patients will describe their experience with your office.

How to build your brand:
• Stake Your Claim to Fame – First, identify all of the best traits of your medical practice. Highlight your experience, the technologies you offer, your services (such as evening and/or weekend office hours), and anything else that makes you unique. Always stick to the truth and resist the urge to embellish. When you make inflated claims about your identity, customers will sense a falsehood and become turned off by your brand.00
• Ask for Outside Opinions – We are all myopic when examining ourselves. Request outside opinions from objective third parties to get a more accurate assessment of your brand image and identity. Ask your patients how they feel about your practice, and incorporate their answers in shaping your brand identity.
• Know Your Target – It is essential to be well-informed about your target demographic. Creating a brand identity for a children’s dental practice is far different than a brand identity for an orthodontic practice specializing in adult braces.
• Keep Your Brand Message Consistent – Resist the urge to re-invent the wheel every few months or years. Use the same colors, logos, and general brand feel to create a lasting identity. In general, it is not a good idea to change your logo, font, and color scheme once you have already formulated your brand identity.
• Spread the Word – Your website is the public face of your practice, and often the first encounter prospective clients will have with your brand. Make sure that your website reflects the energy and values of your practice. Further, buttress your public image through the use of social media, group emails, and blogs.
• Stay the Course – Market penetration requires patience and perseverance as it takes time to build a strong and resilient brand. Stay the course with a consistent brand identity, and resist the urge to change your fonts, colors, logo, and other brand identity markets if you aren’t satisfied with your results during the first few months of your practice.
In summation, your brand identity is virtually identical to a person’s characteristics. Your customers should be able to describe your brand as they would an individual’s personality, attributing emotions, behavior, and identity to your brand.