Medical marketing is the process of attracting customers to your health facility for treatment and care through various channels. Oftentimes the marketing behind a medical facility is a combination of multiple factors including in-person tactics, online engagement, and traditional media engagement.
Marketing is a necessary component of any medical facility, whether that be informing patients of illnesses or enticing a new patient to sign up for your services. Without effective marketing, your practice can’t reach its full potential. Furthermore, you may not be able to give patients the care they need.
Medical Marketing Benefits
A. Attract New Customers:
Effective marketing in the medical field will help customers trust you for their care and treatment. Customers must trust a brand before choosing a product. Even more so for the medical field. Your practice can attract new customers by focusing on marketing that establishes trust and makes it easy for customers to get the information they need.
B. Improve Customer Experience
Medical marketing isn’t just about the online experience (although that can be a large part of it). It also involves the front-end services that will directly interact with patients. This includes office and administrative staff as well as the material given to a patient concerning care. By implementing the correct policies, you can improve the experience of patients.
C. Open new Channels of Revenue
Engaging in effective marketing can open new channels of revenue for your business. This could be as simple as marketing a new service you are offering or offering new ways to connect with patients (such as telehealth). You can open new avenues and launch them successfully with the right type of marketing.
10 Steps to Gain Customers with Medical Marketing
1. Engage Customers in their Preferred Marketing Channel
One of the best ways to make sure your medical marketing is effective is to provide multiple channels to find customers. This often means using a combination of marketing channels to target new customers.
2. Have a User-Friendly Website
A website is a website, it just needs to contain your information and business hours, right? Wrong. In fact, 88% of online shoppers say they won’t return to a website after a bad user experience. Creating a website that is easy to use, mobile-friendly, and access to the information that patients need. Common features of a user-friendly website include:
- Clear Call to Action
- Multiple Pages with Clear Direction
- Fast Loading Times
- No Spammy Popups
- Clear Next Steps for a Customer to Reach Out
A clearly designed website can be an effective method of marketing.
3. Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
Nowadays, making your website mobile-friendly is a must. Over 60% percent of website visits came from mobile devices, and that number has only increased year over year. Not having a mobile-friendly website is going to negate how most customers interact through the internet. You effectively limit your potential customer base.
4. Use Google My Business
Many customers are finding care facilities based on their Google My Business presence. It usually looks a little something like this:
An updated Google business profile will allow Google to index your company faster and more frequently. Furthermore, Google My Business allows customers to easily find your information like:
- Website
- Address
- Contact information
- Patient reviews
You’ll also be able to respond to reviews, post special announcements about your practice, and update information as time goes on. If you are not on Google My Business, you miss out on all the potential customers that could be coming your way when they Google a certain key phrase.
5. Market Your Services on Sites Like Vitals / Healthgrades / etc.
Websites like Vitals/Healthgrades and others are platforms where users can rate and connect about doctors and care. These websites are vital for establishing expectations and trust between patient and doctor. If patients are easily able to find reviews about a doctor showcasing their positivity, they are much more likely to contact that doctor about care. You can establish a profile on these sites and help customers find information about your practice. Some websites will also allow you to respond to customer reviews. You can also use these platforms to showcase awards or certifications your practice has received.
6. Create Multiple Options to Connect with Doctors (telehealth)
While doctors and nurses always want to help patients, the methods of doing so have changed over time. One of the best marketing tips you can implement is to showcase all the different ways you can connect with patients. You can attract customers through useful features:
- Telehealth Services
- Patient Portal Services
- Phone Call Checkups
Any service that allows for flexibility in care should be included in your marketing efforts. It gives a patient and doctor more options and is an effective selling metric. All of these items can be contained in a robust patient portal. A flexible patient portal gives patients access to communication with the staff they need to in the manner they choose. This is a simple feature that more and more patients are expecting.
7. Build Trust Through User Reviews/Address Patient Feedback
One of the most considerable factors when it comes to enticing customers is user reviews. Reviews are fundamental to establishing trust between a new customer and a brand. It is especially important when it comes to medical practices. Your medical marketing can benefit from instituting user reviews and gaining patient feedback
User Reviews:
You can use patient reviews on your website. Make sure they are displayed clearly and at the top of your website. Furthermore, offer customers incentives to leave reviews on places like Google My Business. Google My Business reviews make it much easier for patients to decipher where to receive quality care. Highly rated businesses on Google often receive more traffic and more click-throughs. Moreover, reviews on sites like Yelp and others can be useful for attracting patients.
Patient Feedback:
Feedback forms whether completed through email or at the doctor’s office also provide real value. These users are verified to have used your services and can explain their experience with care. Better yet, you can design patient feedback forms to measure specific services such as:
- How did you find out about our practice?
- Was it easy to sign up for care?
- How helpful was the administrative staff?
8. Use PPC To Build Your Business
PPC is a powerful tool for attaining customers. If you are not already using PPC, you’re missing out on one of the best tools to attract customers. Essentially, PPC allows you to be shown at the top of results on Google when customers search for specific search terms.
An example could be:
PPC provides you the ability to compete for multiple phrases or to specialize your marketing around certain key phrases related to your care. This is extremely important for clinics that treat something specific like dermatology or diabetes.
9. Staffing
It may seem obvious but hiring the right staff for your clinic can make all the difference. Although marking professionals such as PPC managers, social media managers, and marketing coordinators are helpful, those won’t make the biggest impact on your patients.
Your administrative and front-facing staff are going to improve your marketing through word of mouth. To do this, you want to teach staff effective customer service. From the moment they walk into your offices they should feel at home. Focus on:
- Clear communication with guests
- Problem-solving
- Attentiveness
- Convivence for patients
- Knowledgeable about care
- Adaptability
10. Have the Right Tools
Lastly for our tips to help with medical marketing are to have the right tools. With the right tools, you can make lives easier for both patients and staff. Here are a couple of examples.
Customer Relationship Management System (CRM)
CRM tracks the channels from which customers find you and allows you to communicate with the customer. The CRM will also catalog and store this information for the future and track data among marketing channels. This will help you stay on top of your leads as well as provide better communication.
Patient Software and Billing Services
There are many different types of software for medical clinics. Most different types of software help with billing, scheduling, patient care, and more. While these services do similar things, they complete them through different methods. Furthermore, some clinics find they don’t need a cumbersome software system, they just need a way to keep up with their billing or scheduling. Clearly define what you need before choosing a medical software or billing services.
There are three main types of patient software services you can use.
EMR (Electronic Medical Records)
EHR (Electronic Health Records)
PMS (Patient Management Software)
At the end of the day, no matter which tool you use or which strategy you choose, the best marketing is providing a positive customer experience. The most important aspect for patients is the care and respect they receive during treatment.
If you’re interested in tools that can help your practice such as PMS, outsourcing your billing, or other medical software, 360Connect can help! We pair customers with high-quality suppliers in their area.
Just fill out our contact form and receive 100% free quotes on services. It takes less than 3 minutes!