I often hear friends and colleagues tell me they know that marketing is important to their dental practice, but they do not know how to start.
Most do understand that the continued health of a medical practice depends on attracting new patients over a prolonged period of time. Many even rely on word-of-mouth from existing patients to draw these referrals in the door.
Statistics show that for a healthcare practice to grow, a doctor should see 30 to 50 new patients every month. In order to attract new patients, your practice should offer a wide gamut of health services at the right price. While it is very important to retain existing patients, it is equally important to add new patients.
There are several proven ways that you can attract new patients to your healthcare practice. In this article, we will talk about the 5 most important ones.
- Concentrate on branding your healthcare practice: The right branding for your healthcare practice can build trust, loyalty, comfort, and repeat patients. Before you brand your practice, you need to find answers to certain questions. What makes you stand out from the competition? Who is your ideal patient? What do you do best? Once you have answers to these and other questions, you can concentrate on branding your practice. There are several ways you can do this: build a mobile-responsive website, host contests, encourage online reviews, use email marketing, invest in local SEO, get listed in local online directories, generate media exposure, post real photos of your staff, create brochures and business cards, and send email reminders. Once you have successfully branded your practice, you can target your core audience for repeat patients, as well as new patients.
- Take care of your current patients: If your existing patients are happy, they will tell their friends and family and your practice will grow exponentially. However, do not expect this to happen suddenly. You need to guard against becoming complacent over a period of time. Ask your patients for their suggestions and feedback on a regular basis and engage your current patients in order to get new patients.
- Use social media: Most potential patients today go online for health information, as well as for information about their doctors or future doctors. Patients also talk to their family, friends and community through social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. If you want to grow your healthcare practice, it is very important that you engage your patients and potential patients through social media. You can use social media in very creative ways in order to grow your practice. You can share information about your practice, remind patients about seasonal appointments (such as, flu shots), and share health-related articles and videos. You should also effectively use physician review sites, as these carry a lot of weight when people are looking for a new doctor. You can also encourage your existing patients to post reviews about your practice.
- Educate people: The appetite that patients and potential patients have for information about health-related issues is insatiable. You can post regular blogs on your website that will educate people about health issues that they care about. Besides blogs, you can write articles in your community newspaper on health-related topics. You can position yourself as an expert in the community on health issues of your choice. You can even be a medical or dental consultant on your local radio and TV station.
- Give back to your community: This is one of the best ways to garner new patients. You can offer to host talks, seminars, and Question & Answer (Q&A) sessions at local schools and colleges, seniors clubs, community centers, and charity events. You can also host medical support groups for community members who are suffering from chronic diseases and new diagnoses. During these events you can hand out informational packets with your logo and contact details to interested community members. You will soon gain a reputation as an involved community member and get visibility for your medical or dental practice that will translate into new patients.
While all of these marketing strategies will work well to garner new patients for your medical or dental practice, you can also consider hiring a marketing agency that will help position and grow your practice.
At IntellaHealth, we take care of all of your website updates, social media marketing, and practice branding so you can care for your patients. IntellaHealth can help you grow your practice and get more patients. We want to build brand awareness and help you turn the patients you already have into word-of-mouth advocates for your practice. And what’s more, we help you do all of this at an affordable price.
So, now you know how to go about attracting new patients for your healthcare practice.
For more information on how you can hire a digital marketing agency to help grow your healthcare practice, contact Kristine Grace DDS, MS, MBA at KristineG@IntellaHealth.net.
by Kristine Grace, Jun-6-2017