It?s important to the success of medical practice to welcome a steady flow of patients. While it?s important to maintain a good relationship with your existing patients, you must also aim to add new patients to your database to grow. Yet, increased competition and a lack of marketing could prevent a clinic from reaching its potential. If you want to enjoy a successful 2018, you should read the following informative advice on how to attract patients to your medical practice.
Define a New Target Audience
Understanding your target audience is essential for an effective marketing campaign. Try to identify an audience who are underrepresented when it comes to healthcare campaigns. For instance, if your direct competitors focus on over 50s healthcare, you could target a younger demographic, such as teenagers or college students for medical check-ups or age-related health conditions. This will help your practice appeal to a new audience, which could separate your marketing campaigns from your competitors.
Train Your Employees
Your reception team will be the first people to greet your patients, so they must offer a great first impression. Not only must they appear both friendly and polite, but they must also answer any patient questions to the best of their ability, which will encourage trust in your practice. Offer detailed training regarding patient satisfaction, your medical services, procedures, processes, and equipment. By doing so, you can increase confidence in your brand and encourage word of mouth marketing.
Follow Up with Your Existing Patients
Do you often follow-up with patients following an appointment? It is one of the best ways to retain their loyalty. Yet, many medical practices reportedly spend approximately 90% of their resources attracting new patients but retaining existing patients could be a more cost-effective option and can increase referrals. So, invest time following up with existing patients after appointments and procedures, which could encourage them to return in the future.
Schedule Appointment Reminders
In addition to following up with patients regarding their health, consider sending email reminders, too. They should inform existing patients when they are due to attend a medical check-up, which will ensure they return to your practice and never miss an important appointment. It could help to retain loyalty to your practice, as they might appreciate your helpful email and make an appointment immediately.
Integrate the Best Technologies
Technology can help practices stand out from the crowd in the healthcare industry. If you want to continually attract patients, you must strive to provide a high standard of healthcare every day, which can improve their health and eliminate hassle. For example, if you are running a busy radiology practice, you could integrate MedInformatix RIS system, which can improve patient registration, scheduling, reporting analytics, billing, and collections. You can learn more at medinformatix.com.
Build a Professional Website
Modern patients will turn to the internet to learn more about your practice, doctors, and fields. Not only will this provide informative information regarding your clinic, but it can also encourage trust in your medical practitioners and services. You must, therefore, build a professional template that reflects your practice.
Not only must it provide informative content regarding your doctors, specialisms, contact information and opening times, but it must also be a mobile responsive website to ensure it is easy to use on any device and ranks highly in the search engines. What?s more, ensure it is easy to navigate and aesthetically-pleasing, and it must feature meticulous grammar throughout, which will highlight your professionalism and attention to detail.
Remember, the sole aim of your website is to encourage web visitors to contact your practice, which is why you should feature an effective call to actions on every web page to convince a user to book an appointment.
Start Blogging
Make the time to write well-written, insightful blog posts related to your industry and target demographic. For example, you could provide your patients with helpful advice regarding a specific medical condition or can feature interviews with your medical practitioners or staff to help people learn more about the clinic. A blog on your website can also support a search engine optimization (SEO) campaign, which can increase your appearance in Google. As a result, you can drive more traffic to your website and, in turn, more patients to your practice.
Promote Your Practice on Social Media
Spread the word about your medical practice by developing social media campaigns, with the aim of connecting with both existing and new patients. Every time a patient likes, comments, or shares one of your social media posts, you can boost awareness of your clinic, which could boost traffic to your website or footfall to your practice. It can, therefore, be a great way to reach out to your current patients whilst generating leads. Simply strive to publish helpful, relevant content related to your industry and your target audience, so they will engage with your practice and share your content.
Host Social Media Contests
The more followers you have on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the more people you can potentially connect with online, and the more patients you can add to your practice?s database. Social media contests can be one of the best ways to increase your reach and following, as people will want to win a free prize or procedure. Launch a giveaway in exchange for social media users to spread the word about your practice by liking, sharing and/or commenting on your posts, which could help your practice attract many leads.
Humanize Your Practice
There is a stereotype that practices and doctors are both cold and clinical, which can be off-putting to patients if it lives up to expectation. Aim to humanize your practice by posting real photos of life inside the clinic, rather than publishing stock photos on your website and social media profiles. This will allow prospective patients to get to know the people who help to run the practice, whilst proving how comfortable your clinic is, which can add a little personality to your medical brand. It could ultimately convince them to pick up the phone to make an appointment.
Ask for Patient Reviews
Many healthcare practices can underestimate the power of online reviews, but they could be the difference between a growing database and a struggling clinic. Invite patients to share their feedback based on their experience at the practice. You can reach out to existing patients with a follow-up thank you email, before encouraging them to leave a review either on your website or a third-party review site. It might also be helpful to provide existing patients with a discount or free service in exchange for an impartial review.
If a patient writes a glowing review, you could then promote their feedback on your homepage, blog post or social media platforms, but you will need the patient?s permission to do so. As a result, it could convince a new patient to register for your practice.
Focus on Providing a Quality Service
It?s vital your patients walk away feeling satisfied with your practice. It is therefore important to streamline your services to deliver the highest standard of healthcare every day. You can do so by not only providing patients with a warm and welcoming greeting at reception but by showing a genuine interest in your patient?s healthcare, so they will feel in safe hands when attending the clinic. You must also try to clearly communicate with every patient in a positive and uplifting manner, so they will understand what you are saying and how much you want to help them overcome any medical issues they are facing. This alone could help you retain patients whilst increase referrals.
Improve Flexibility
Patients will be tempted to head elsewhere if you lack flexibility. Many people will have full-time jobs or busy home lives, which can prevent them attending appointments during 9am to 5pm. Prove your dedication to healthcare by increasing your office hours, so patients can attend early morning, lunchtime, or evening appointments, so your practice works for them and not the other way around. Making yourself available could help to grow your practice exponentially, which can ensure its long-term success.
Communicate with Your Community
Boost your practice?s credibility by connecting with your community when possible. Find opportunities to educate adults and children across local neighborhoods, so they can learn more about how to care for their mind and body, as well as information regarding various health conditions. This will not only help to improve community health, but residents might be more likely to consult your practice when they require a medical appointment.
Answer Every Call
People don?t like to be ignored. If no-one is there to pick up a patient?s call, they might never call back. Make it your mission to answer every patient call as soon as possible. Not only will it help you to communicate with new and existing patients, but it will also ensure no emergency call is left unanswered. If you go above and beyond for your patients, you will always have their loyalty ? and they will become the biggest ambassadors for your practice.
