Physicians may be in the business of helping people, but they are still a business. Medical practices, including doctors, dentists, chiropractors, and others, need to build a patient base and make a profit just like any other business. So when it comes to creating marketing strategies for a small medical practice, what should these doctors do? Medical practices must use sound digital marketing principles to build a steady stream of new patients and a solid base of repeat patients, but how? If you’re looking for marketing ideas for medical clinic or small practice, you’ve come to the right place.
IMPORTANT: In this article we are talking about strategies, NOT specific tactics. There are thousands of potential platforms and marketing tactics to help your clinic grow, but the tactics are useless if you don’t have a sound strategy guiding your day-to-day marketing efforts.
Online Marketing Strategies for Doctors and Practices
Doctors, dentists, chiropractors, and other medical practices need strong marketing strategies and plans in order to compete with large medical groups and local hospitals. Below is our number one strategy online that all doctors and small medical practices should be focused on immediately!
1. Drive More People to Your Website
Despite social media and the many other ways people obtain information these days, your website is still the best place for you to showcase your practice and the physicians that work with or for you. Any advertising or promotion that you do should focus on directing people to your website, NOT directing people to other platforms.
Once people get to your website, it’s important to make sure the site is responsive, meaning it’s easy to navigate on any browser size, whether its a smartphone, tablet, or computer. A poorly designed website can be enough to turn people away in an instant. Just because your practice is small doesn’t mean your website can’t look just as nice as those larger practices with expensive marketing teams behind them.
Have a Professional Website for your Medical Clinic or Office
Put yourself in the shoes of a prospective patient — what will they be looking for when they come to your website? They’ll want to understand what kind of care they can receive at your practice and who will be providing it to them.
Information about the services you offer and the doctors on your team should be front and center. Invest in professional headshots for your physicians and make it clear what services each person offers. Your site should also focus on what differentiates you from your competitors.
2. Capture Contact Information and Building your Database
Your website is also a great place to capture information about your prospective patients that you can use to follow up with them later. Too many offices are focused on going viral on social media or driving people to “like” their social media accounts. This is not a great long term strategy because it puts the platforms in control. You MUST be in control of your own list – including prospective patients.
Marketing Tip for Doctors: Stop focusing on the number of likes you have. Start focusing on the size of your patient database.
How to Get More Patients From Your Website
An easy place to start is by adding a pop up to your site asking people to provide their email address to sign up for your mailing list or for a coupon or special offer. People complain about pop ups but they work. Try it and see what happens – you can always turn it off.
Some people might voluntarily give up their contact information, but more discerning customers won’t be motivated unless they know they are going to receive something in return. Consider creating an email newsletter with medical tips or links to health-related articles and blog posts that relate to your practice.
You can also follow up in future months with coupons and other offers to get new patients in the door of your practice. Again, focus on driving traffic back to your website to schedule an appointment and make sure that scheduling an appointment is easy!
If you capture name, email, and phone number, you can always follow up with emails, calls or even implement a text messaging campaign to continue the conversation. If Facebook or Instagram decide to change their algorithm and you suddenly can’t reach your followers… no big deal. You can send an email or text message out and have new patients coming in your door tomorrow. Owning your list and growing your marketing database is so important for medical practices. Unfortunately, many look past this step and focus on getting more followers.
Using Social Media for Your Medical Office
Your goal with social media should be collect their information and add it to your database. Don’t let third-party platforms own your leads and potential patients. Drive those followers to your website, collect their information and continue marketing to them.
How to Market Your Medical Practice?
There are some many effective options out there but none of it matters if you don’t get the first two steps down. Drive people to your website and capture their information so you can grow your database. Focus on that and then the next step is to ask “How”.
How do I drive more people to my website?
How do I capture contact information and grow my database?
You answer these questions with specific marketing tactics that will have a return on investment on your medical practice.
Step 3: Follow Up and Re-Market
The other interesting aspect of medical practices is that people only see a doctor when they need to. Staying top of mind is important so that your practice is what comes to mind whenever a prospective patient is in need of care or medical services.
The best way to do this is to establish a consistent communication stream that provides value beyond talking about how great your practice is. Developing this larger content strategy takes time, but will pay off with more engaged patients in the end.
Your follow up strategy should include email as discussed earlier, but also social media and online targeting. Have you ever noticed that after you view a product on some websites, you start seeing ads for that exact thing on other sites you visit? This is a concept called remarketing, and it can be effective for maintaining brand awareness.
For example, you can set up a campaign that would display ads for your practice to people who visit your site and then go to other sites like WebMD or Healthline. That way, your practice is never far from view when people are looking for health-related information.
Putting It All Together
There’s no universal solution to cultivating new patients. The best approach is a multi-touch marketing strategy that provides value beyond the services that your physicians offer. Focus on how you can use information sharing to your advantage and then translate that expertise into patient visits through a consistent communication plan.
If that sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is. No one ever said that marketing a small medical practice was easy. However, companies like ours specialize in marketing and content and will take care of all those details so you can focus on what you do best — providing patient care and running a successful business.
Need help creating Marketing Strategies for a Small Medical Practice? Contact Conversion Strategies today for a free consult and discovery call. We’ve been in business since 2012 and have worked with dozens of medical clinics and doctors across the United States.
