How Marketing Connects To Culture

Speaking with a medical school student last week, she commented that she wished more time was spent on marketing a medical practice. I think she is going to be a bright doctor. It's something more medical professionals need to concentrate on to drive more profits to their practices. (By the way, they're called "practices" because they haven't been perfected yet.)

Marketing, however, isn't just advertising. Advertising is a very small component of marketing. In fact, if you simply made a few adjustments to how you interact with your steady stream of clients, you could slash your advertising budget substantially and still increase your business.

How you treat customers (patients) is marketing. The customer experience is marketing. How you handle customers on the phone is marketing. How long you make them wait is marketing. How you set up your waiting room is marketing.

Now here's the problem: if you do the marketing part wrong, you can have long dire effects on your corporate culture. Let me explain. The experience you give to your customers will be reflected back to you by your customers. Upset your customers and they will be upset with you - which creates an adversarial relationship - which, over time, creates an us-versus-them attitude and culture in your workplace. And the longer that culture exists, the more unhappy your employees will become with their jobs.

The less respect you offer your customers, the more damage you do in the long run to your own corporate culture. You will never turnaround culture until you accept an outward attitude of service which will create an inward Culture of Service. An outward Attitude of Accountability creates an inward Culture of Accountability.

If you want to build a strong culture, don't just do what your competitors are not doing. Do what they are not even prepared to do. Start with the experience you offer your customers if you want to start improving the Culture of your workplace.