How to Get More Patients in Your Clinic – Recommended by Top Medical Marketers

Patients are the lifeblood of your medical or dental practice. You cannot survive without them, and you will not be able to grow your business without acquiring more. Gaining more patients every month, week, and day should be the primary focus of your healthcare marketing and advertising. There are hundreds of ways to advertise and make it easier for potential patient patients to find the healthcare services you offer.

Depending on the nature of your healthcare practice, you will need a steady flow of new patients to your clinic to be successful. The rate of new patients replacing those that no longer need your services will be different for every owner. However, it is safe to say that the patient base you have no will not be identical 12 months from now. Below are some tips and suggestions for bringing more patients through your front door and into your medical practice.

8 proven steps to improve your patient acquisition strategy

Table of Content:

1. First, understand how patients find you.
2. Target the needs and expectations of potential patients in your community.
3. Analyze the sentiment of the community you serve to deepen your understanding of their needs.
4. Identify the best target audience for your medical practice.
5. Create a streamlined, simple patient referral program that incentivizes referrals
6. Develop a relationship with other practices for referrals. 
7. Develop a system to measure improvements
8. Start using a proven digital solution 

1. First, understand how patients find you.

Patients look for your services on:

1) Google SEO (Learn more about how healthcare SEO works)
2) Google local SEO (Learn more about how local SEO works)
3) Google Ads (Learn more about how Google ads work)
4) Facebook, Instagram Ads (Learn more about social media advertising)
5) Digital ads on other secondary websites (Insurance websites, healthgrades, vitals, and other medical and dental directories etc)
6) Offline traditional advertising (Newspapers, Yellow pages, billboards, leaflets, flyers, USPS mailed attention grabbers)
7) Referrals (Referrals from your network of other providers)
8) Word of mouth (Existing happy patients tell their family members, friends and neighbors)
9) Ecommerce apps (Like Amazon, etc)

The top 4 are the most important for your healthcare practice.

2. Target the needs and expectations of potential patients in your community.

No two communities are the same. Every location has a different set of unique health care needs. Your clinic should be able to target as many of these needs as possible. Once you understand the needs of your potential patients in the community, you will be able to target your marketing better to capture them. However, you should not only concentrate on a community’s needs but also their expectations. Patients will have certain expectations of their healthcare professionals. You may be able to provide a service that meets a need, but if they do not get what they expect, they will not be loyal patients. They will continue to look for a healthcare solution that meets their expectations and needs.

3. Analyze the sentiment of the community you serve to deepen your understanding of their needs.

To develop more effective marketing, research the sentiment of your community to see what their expectations are of healthcare in the area. You may discover that they are historically underserved in an area or have had universally bad experiences in the past. You can use this information to promote your medical practice so this community can get the medical care they have been needing. You may need to engage with local community leaders to gain a more in-depth understanding of the healthcare needs of the area you are serving.

4. Identify the best target audience for your medical practice.

While it should be the goal of your practice to be widely recognized in your community, not everyone who lives there may need your services. Therefore, you must identify your best target audience for your marketing efforts. For example, if you are a pediatrician, chances are you will not get much return on your investment by advertising to an assisted living facility. Know the audience, demographic, and needs of your target audience, and you will get the most out of your marketing efforts. Depending on the nature of your medical practice, you may have several target audiences that may or may not overlap. Instead of having one overall audience to target, try to divide them up into groups. Marketing campaigns that are more customized to a target audience are often much more effective in converting people into your patients.

5. Create a streamlined, simple patient referral program that incentivizes referrals

Often, the most potent form of marketing is recommendations from actual patients who came to your medical practice. A flashy pamphlet or a professionally written Google search ad will certainly get some attention will get more, but someone who has physically visited your clinic and received treatment at your clinic. A word of mouth recommendation from one of your patients has a very high conversion rate. Patients who are very appreciative of your services will probably recommend you to others. Still, it is very beneficial for you to have a streamlined system that encourages referrals and quickly takes them in. To promote your referrals numbers, provide some incentive to your patients. Check with local law and regulations about what type of incentives you can give, but the more you make their efforts worth, the more likely you will get referrals.

On the other side of this process, your practice needs to treat referrals with extra care. If a referred patient has a negative experience at your clinic, it is unlikely they will come back again. Worst yet, if it gets back to the referring patient that their friend had a terrible experience, they will not refer people again and may even leave as your patient. Patients referred by other patients need to be highlighted so that they can provide the best service possible.

6. Develop a relationship with other practices for referrals. 

It is unlikely your medical practice can do everything. You are not a multi-county regional hospital system! The good news is, other medical practices also can not do everything. Work to find colleagues in your area that can provide service in areas you do not cover. Ideally, you should complement each other so you can refer patients to each other. Work to establish referral relationships with several other doctors in the area, so there is a steady flow of referrals from other medical practices.

The key to referrals from other practices is to make the process as easy as possible for the referring doctor and patient that is being sent to you. A doctor should be able to quickly and easily send over all medical records to your location to be reviewed by your provider. Ideally, the patient should be able to come and complete as little paperwork as possible. Forms should be sent to them to complete online, or the records sent over should be copied into the file at your medical practice. Again, make sure these patients get the best service possible. A negative experience may slow or completely stop future referrals from a doctor to your location.

7. Develop a system to measure improvements

As a business owner, practice owner or a practice manager, one of the most important steps you can take is to measure improvements (or lack of improvements) in your new patient acquisition one a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. For example, the following case study, a podiatrist who has been in business for 11 years, data from PatientGain performance dashboards.

Data from : the first month, after going live with GOLD service. 88 total new effective inquiries received.

Data from : 10 months later, 179 total new effective inquiries received.

Data from : 12 months later, 309 total new effective inquiries received.

8. Start using a proven digital solution 

Your medical or dental practice cannot do everything. If your focus is on helping patients and you provide a good healthcare service to the community, consider using the GOLD service from PatientGain.

Growth in your patient count is key to the growth of your medical practice. The tips above should help you get more patients to your business by refining your current medical marketing efforts. The more finely tuned they are, the more effective they will be, and you will see a higher return on investment (ROI). Contact the experts at PatientGain.com today and let our specialists help you create, refine, and implement a top-notch medical marketing plan to boost your patient count.