Starting a medical practice that no one knows about isn’t a medical practitioner’s dream. Often doctors assume that just opening a medical practice would be enough to line up patients at your doorstep. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
To ensure good business, you need to get the word out about the spectacular patient services that you’re offering. To do that, you need to get listed in various online directories, build an online presence, network with other healthcare professionals and more.
Marketing strategies for your medical practice is about going out there and exploring multiple channels and modes of communication. Try not to put all your eggs in one basket and focus on incorporating different elements to give your marketing strategy a holistic feel and ensure a high return on investment.
Before we explore the 10 marketing strategies for your medical practice, let’s explore what marketing is all about:
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Marketing is an ongoing process. You need to keep adapting your strategy with the changing market trends and global scenarios.
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Marketing is different than advertising. The latter is a part of a larger marketing strategy.
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Marketing is a long-term investment. You need to be consistent and dedicated to see positive results over a period of time.
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Marketing is all about establishing a healthy dialogue between you and all your important stakeholders.
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Marketing claims that cannot be backed up by strong data can hamper your brand image.
10 Marketing Strategies For Your Medical Practice
1. Build an Amazing Website
Your offline medical practice needs an online home. It’s one of the places where you have the most control over the patient experience. Your website is the one place where you can drive potential patients to learn more about you.
You can either use online freelance services such as Fiverr or Toptal to hire someone to build this website for you. Or you could use user-friendly platforms such as Wix and Squarespace to build this website yourself. The choice depends on the time and budget you have at hand. A well-built, well-designed, and mobile-friendly website may seem like a costly investment in the beginning but it offers long-term benefits.
2. Claim your Local Listing
Since your business is primarily local, claiming your local listing forms a significant part of marketing strategies for your medical practice. Make sure you cover all the important search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This way when a local patient searches for a service that you offer, chances of your practice showing up in the search results improve.
Ensure that your listing is correct and properly optimized. Add photos, fill out working hours, specialties, maybe a short description and any reviews that you might have in your listing. Google My Business also has a Q&A feature so ensure that you’re on top of that and answer any questions that the users are asking. A good practice is to visit your listings on a regular basis to ensure that all the information is updated.
3. Start and Maintain a Blog
Content marketing is a great way to answer people’s questions and address their pain points. And blogs are a great way to do that. Publish content that is relevant to your practice and the services that you offer.
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What are your patients’ biggest concerns?
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What are some of their most common questions?
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What kind of procedures do you do and how do they help?
Find topics that are relevant to your business and valuable information for your patients. You can also talk about the innovations in the health industry, tips to stay healthy, or any other area of a subject that your users might be interested in. Blogging is also a great way to improve your SEO and show up in search rankings.
4. Send a Newsletter to your Patients
Email is 40x more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter combined. It’s a great way to stay in touch with your patients. You can use email to send out appointment reminders or share their prescription. You can also share your new blog posts or share information about a new upcoming event that your readers might be interested in.
If you’re doing any special promotions, then emails can be a great means to communicate that information. Email marketing systems such as MailChimp allow you to automate your email marketing process. You can target your message to only those subscribers who have been engaging with you.
5. Send Surprise Care Packages
Marketing strategies for your medical practice does not necessarily have to be online. It can have flavors of offline promotions too. Freebies are loved by everyone and imprinting your details on goodies such as pen, mugs, t-shirts, water bottles, magnets and sharing it with potential patients is a great way to ensure that your information is easily accessible and shareable.
Unexpected perks are a great way to form positive relationships and they can also help you amplify your social media promotions. If your patients like what they receive and if it made them feel good, they may share that on their social feeds giving you a great word-of-mouth promotion.
6. Invest in Paid Search Campaigns
Paid search is a great way to drive traffic to your website and if targeted well, they can give a great return on investment. Advertising on search engines is a great marketing strategy for your medical practice especially if you’ve just launched your website.
Paid search will help you show up when a patient is looking for a service or procedure that’s specific to you. You can set metrics such as total calls received or total online appointments booked trough the website to gauge the success of your paid campaign. A good practice would be to amplify your other marketing campaigns when your paid search is live because your website will stop showing up as the first result once the campaign is over.
7. Use Social Media to Engage with your Patients
Social media platforms are great to solidify your branding and connect with your patients and other relevant influencers. You can use Facebook and Twitter to run polls, share health tips, promote your latest blog, post announcements of any promotions, share news from the industry, and more.
You can also explore LinkedIn to connect with other healthcare professionals and strengthen your network. You can become part of groups and participate in discussions. When creating a plan for social media, research and find platforms that are most relevant to your target audience. Also, ensure that you have the bandwidth to be consistent on all the platforms that you join.
Social media is more than just posting content. It is also about actively engaging and establishing a dialogue with your audience.
8. Make the most of Patient Reviews
A positive word from your current patients and other referring doctors is the best fuel for your marketing activities. Leverage the positive word from your happy clients to attract new patients. Requesting for reviews not only gives you great marketing content but it also helps you understand how your patients perceive you and what they like about you the most.
It’s a great resource to further build and strengthen the brand. Patient reviews are like a mirror to your medical practice. Embrace the feedback to build a successful practice.
9. Get Published in Medical Journals
Medical journals allow you to highlight your expertise in a particular field to the medical community. Medical journals are heavily research-based and share an in-depth understanding of a subject. You can reference and share these articles on your social media profiles, website, and your bio to establish authority and expertise.
Not only does this help you build a positive image in the medical community but it also encourages potential patients to trust your expertise on the subject.
10. Start a Patient Referral Program
While positive word-of-mouth can go a long way in building a great reputation and attracting new patients; there’s nothing wrong with giving a friendly reminder every now and then. You could print out a referral card that has all your information and a message such as “Give the gift of good health” and ask your patients to give it to their friends and family.
You can give this card to them when they visit you or it can be a part of your care package. And if you do get a referral, reach out and thank the referring patients for their gesture.
Build a Strong Marketing Strategy for your Medical Practice
Individually, all these strategies are great and effective but they give the best return on investment when used in tandem with each other. Forming a marketing strategy is a continuous process. You keep trying and testing to see what message and what platform delivers the maximum results. The more you explore, the more you’ll learn, and the stronger your strategy will be.
This article offers general information only and is not intended as legal, financial or other professional advice. A professional advisor should be consulted regarding your specific situation. While information presented is believed to be factual and current, its accuracy is not guaranteed and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. All expressions of opinion reflect the judgment of the author(s) as of the date of publication and are subject to change. No endorsement of any third parties or their advice, opinions, information, products or services is expressly given or implied by RBC Ventures Inc. or its affiliates.
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