Tired of lockdown and all things COVID? Yeah, me too.

During the first lockdown, everyone was baking bread, cleaning out their garages and doing daily workout videos, and bragging about it on Facebook. This wasn’t for general practice though.

In the latest lockdown, it’s been freezing cold and the kids have been eating you out of house and home, and you didn’t realise how much excitement an Amazon delivery could bring. Not for general practice though.

We could have a good old moan about it but, hey, we’re where we are, and it’s sounding like a broken record now. So today I’ve got a momentary solution for you to consider – a refreshing break from what’s going on in general practice (if you fancy and can take a break, that is). The answer is marketing.

I’ve been doing primary care marketing for over 16 years now. Doing it little, well and often is the key, and that’s all there is to it – most of the time. It’s a bit like spring-cleaning. The past year, however, has seen me doing everything from:

• Designing and printing shedloads of signage at 24 hours’ notice
• Whacking together cracking websites for PCNs in a month
• Training practice teams to tackle their social media with ease, and
• Crafting the perfect, most soothing of responses to those patients who think it’s okay to fly off the handle on Facebook because their fingernail has come off and they want a same-day appointment “or else I’ll go to the papers”. You’ll know about these joys, all too well!

We understand just how tied up you are right now, but if you want a break, I’ve recently worked with the lovely folks at Practice Index on a brand-new eLearning course. It’s a Practice Marketing Checklist [FREE] and it’s a useful, short course that looks at the basics of marketing in your practice, offering some tips and tools to effectively market your practice for maximum impact.

Even if you choose just two or three things from the checklist to have a go with each month, it will make a massive difference. And if you need more hands, we’ve got a couple here at Yorkshire Medical Marketing, so please give us a shout.