Marketing Strategies For Doctors Offices

Marketing Strategies & Software For Healthcare Medical Practices Costs $599/mon. No Long Term Contracts. Used By Top Clinics in USA & Canada.

Thousands of medical clinics, doctors struggle every day to fill their calendar with patients, but it does not have to be this way. Marketing for doctors can be divided into two main areas:

1.  Offline – Traditional Marketing

This includes bill boards, print media, placing an ad in local movie theatre to drive patients to your clinic. This type of marketing is on the decline, as more and more patients are online now.

2.  Online Digital Marketing

For doctors and medical clinics, this is constantly changing and covers 6 important areas. It requires constant technology changes, medical industry knowledge, HIPAA issues, and deep online marketing experience.

PatientGain.com, a healthcare specific software & marketing company has worked with thousands of advertising & promotional campaigns coast to coast. We have found that thousands of medical clinics, doctors struggle every day to fill their calendar with patients. Many doctors question if it is ethical to advertise. Some focus on referrals only. Some have taken small steps- Not sure if advertising and specially online advertising and marketing for doctors will produce results. Physicians and practice owners have vastly differing levels of promotional experience and sophistication which can be summarized as follows:

Three Levels of Online Marketing Adoption By Doctors & Medical Practices

Level 1. Beginner/ Introductory Level

Marketing & Advertising is considered an unimportant priority, an  after-thought that can be managed by any clinic staff member from front office staff to clinic administrators. The general perception is that with any kind of basic, free web site presence, the applicable patient base will be auto-directed to the clinic via Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. – What could be simpler?

Level 2. Intermediate Level

The clinic has acceptable average daily patient counts. With a clinic admin person working with a local web – designer, a nice looking web site, but there is no focus on online success. Hoping that free Search Engine Optimizations (SEO) will naturally result in steady and predictable patient / clinic growth. Some online advertising – some optimizations.  Some Email Marketing – and a Facebook business page with no intelligence. Online marketing is how your competition is acquiring new patients – This is not a decision that should be taken lightly—after all, this is your image and reputation on the line.

Level 3. Optimized Level

Reality –  the clinic owner understands that online strategy is by far the #1 method to grow patient volumes and secure clinic profitability. Driving patients to your door and out-smarting the competition online requires a depth of online promotional expertise combined with a profound understanding of medical practice operations that very few marketing / advertising companies can provide. Example of this execution includes top performing brands.  Medical practices with more than 100 locations, dozen locations, to a single location use PatientGain.com’s Patient Advertising & Marketing Platform.

Thousands of medical clinics struggle every day to fill their calendar with patients.  They have a great location, dedicated professional medical staff, proper equipment, many hard earned certifications and qualifications. They also have a nice looking Website.  However what they lack is a sophisticated online marketing software and expertise. These days having a nice looking website is not enough to generate new patient clients. If your clinic needs to retain existing patients for repeat services and procedures, then you need additional strategies and intelligent software. PatientGain.com has 20+ applications designed just for this.  These applications are used by the TOP healthcare companies from coast to coast.

PatientGain.com Provides Additional Benefits for Medical Practice Marketing

Clinic owners, practice managers, dentists and doctors are often forced to work with multiple applications and incompatible online tools to help drive their business. There’s a lot to keep track of: website management, social media, Facebook, online advertising, website lead management, generating positive reviews, minimizing negative reviews, monthly email marketing, call tracking, online payments and much more… it can all be difficult to juggle. What’s more, where do you find the time to manage your efforts online while running your clinic effectively and treating your patients? PatientGain.com data shows you will save 21 to 44 hours a month ( on average 32 hours a month)  by using an Integrated Comprehensive Medical Practice Marketing system from PatientGain.com. At $47/hour, your average opportunity cost,  this is savings of $1527 per month, or $18K per year, per clinic. This does not include improvement in increased patient acquisition and patient referrals and patient engagement.

Example of a FREE Intelligent Website – Included with the GOLD Package.

Impact of Medical Marketing on Physicians Earnings

Thousands of Physicians & Specialized Medical Practices struggle every day to fill their calendar with patients. Despite having a great location, a dedicated and professional medical staff, proper equipment, and hard earned certifications and qualifications, their daily patient counts aren’t where they’d like them to be. Many clinics don’t realize that what they are missing is online expertise and a sophisticated software solution to power their patient acquisition efforts. These days, your clinic’s strategy for generating new patients online has to be more than just having a good looking website.  Review of 162 online campaigns reveals that 72 percent of the patients are searching for medical services on a mobile device. Exactly the same test revealed that this number was 54 percent 12 months ago. PatientGain.com predicts that this number will be close to 90 percent in the next few years.  As a healthcare practitioner and a physician you are aware that average income of primary care physicians, while has increased in the last 6 years (possibly due to ObamaCare), and averaged $194,000 per year. But this should not be compared with "savvy" physicians, who are using online medical marketing software to increase the value of services they provide.  For savvy physicians, these numbers are significantly higher.  We wish you to be in the “savvy” category.

Medical Marketing Key Performance Indicators (KPI's)

Many practice managers often confuse medical practices objectives and goals with medical marketing KPIs. 

Goals and Objectives for your medical practice can be as follows: (these are examples)

1. Increase daily patient count at location in Palo Alto California by 20 patients per day in the next 12 months 
2. Increase patient satisfaction by 30% at location in Palo Alto California in the next 12 months
3. Reduce patient acquisition costs by 10%at location in Palo Alto California in the next 6 months 

In order to achieve these goals, objectives or desired business results, the practice manager or medical director of a practice has to typically consider "how"  to achieve these desired goals. Next step to select software, vendors, service providers and consultants for these various tasks.  Sometime  the practice manager or medical director has enough resources like an internal staff like marketing manager who can oversee these initiatives and provide status to the practice manager or medical director.  Once the practice manager or medical director has established a strategy, he or she has to come up with KPIs to measure ongoing progress and success of each area.

Working with hundreds of healthcare providers, PatientGain.com has established that there are 6 key KPIs for your medical marketing strategy.  These are built into you Medical Marketing Dashboards. 

Most Important KPIs. There are many - actually hundreds of ways to measure what happens online to promote your practice/clinic. Some of them are simply "noise"- We recommend the follow as a best practice.

1. Actual Patient Count - no one will question you if your actual patient count increases
2. No Number of phone calls - 73 percent of patients still want to "call you" 
3. Appointment requests/inquiries - Using apps on Facebook and your mobile site allow patients to request an appointment
4. Local SEO Rankings - Extremely important to optimize Google, Yelp and Facebook business pates
5. Organic SEO Rankings
6. PPC Data & Metrics
7. Engagement Data - Social Media - Facebook Posts
8. Mobile Engagement Data
9. Emails Marketing
10. Non-Social Engagement 

8 Reasons Why Content Is Important. 

Your Content Is the Single Most Important Factor in Your Online Success. 

1. Content defines your brand.
2. Content expresses who you are, how you conduct your business.
3. Content is read by the Search Engines - and this results in GOOD or POOR rankings - You should NEVER copy content from another site.  Checking ideas from other websites is OK, but copying content is like shooting yourself in the foot.
4. Content can make your marketing flourish.
5. Content can make your advertising irresistible.
6. Social media loves GOOD content.
7. Email marketing with good quality content will give you higher open-rates.
8. Best of all - Patients LOVE Useful content.

6 Steps for Online Success For Clinics

Step No 1.

As medical practitioners, we have to realize that patient behavior is changing.  Patients are now looking for medical services online. 88 percent of patients search online for medical services and clinic information. Even 47 percent of existing patients look for additional, related services online on your own website or your competitor’s websites. So you must be present on the Web.  60 percent to 72 percent of patients look for your services, check your online reviews, using a mobile device. Make sure that you have website that is focused on Mobile Marketing for doctors.  Here are many examples of great ( and free Mobile, responsive and intelligent) websites.  Once your medical practice is online, there are 5 additional important areas to cover.

Step No 2.

In US, approximately, 78 percent of the time, your patients are going to use Google search engine to look for medical related services, reviews and other information.  So your first step is have a top notch Google presence.  Other places are important also, like Facebook, Yahoo, Bing etc. But start with Google.  There are 6 important aspects of Google presence. 

1. Google Local Listing for your medical practice
2. Google Maps, verified listing
3. Google Reviews rankings
4. Google Posts
5. Google Organic results
6. Google Paid Search 

Each of these should be addressed by your online strategy for your medical practice.  Many doctors and practice managers think that having a nice looking website will suffice. Unfortunately it is no longer enough to have a nice website and a Facebook page.

Each of the above mentioned 6 important aspects of Google presence require attention to detail, time and commitment, not to mention financial investment.

Step No 3.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization for Doctors & Medical Practices can be defined in many ways. To provide you with a high level guidance, these 5 areas are most important: 

A. Google Local Listing for your medical practice

1. Create a Google account
2. Add you clinic’s accurate information – Name, address are the most important information – Phone should be checked.
3. If your practice’s information is incorrect, you will have correct it
4. You may have to claim your listing also.
5. In certain cases you may have duplicate listings, these should be resolved.
6. There are dozens of other Local directories – They should be checked and updated.  But Google, Facebook, Yelp, Yahoo/bing are the most important ones. Start with these.

B. Google Maps, verified listing

1. Create a Google account
2. Add you clinic’s accurate information in the Maps
3. If your practice’s information is in correct, you will have correct it – sometime the Map Pin is Inaccurate
4. You may have to claim your Map listing also.
5. In certain cases you may have duplicate listings, these should be resolved.
6. There are many of other map based directories – They should be checked and updated.  But Google, Map Quest, Apple Map are the most important.

C. Google Reviews rankings

1. Create a Google account
2. Check you reviews and ratings
3. If your practice’s reviews are 4.5 and over 100 reviews on Google, then you are doing well. If less than this, you will need to focus on this area.
4. Other important review sites are Yelp, Facebook and HealthGrades. But start with Google.

D.  Google Posts

Posting on Google is a new way to share relevant, fresh content with the people who are searching for you. Use images, videos and even animated GIFs to engage your audience, and add inline links to drive traffic to specific content. This enhanced format allows searchers to hear directly from the primary source — you — and complements existing results from across the web. One important note the Google Posts expire every week. You have to post every week.

E.  Google Organic results

Your content on your website is the most important factor on your website.  Content refers to your text, headings, sub-headings, main paragraph, images, videos, blogs etc.  Your website must contain non-copied, non-plagiarized content.

Step No 4.

Every year, billions of dollars are spent on online advertising. Very broadly, online advertising can be divided into 2 main categories:

1. Display advertising
2. Search advertising

As a doctor and a medical practice manager, both of these are important for you. You can acquire new patients using both of these mediums.

Step No 5.

Reviews marketing is another emerging area. Online reviews are impacting decisions of your prospect patients dramatically.  This is one area that will make your medical clinic shine or impact negatively more than any other strategy. In fact it should not be a marketing strategy, it should be a necessity.

There are 4 ways to acquire positive reviews, and at the same time, minimize negative reviews. So your marketing strategy should be to minimize any negative reviews, and maximize positive reviews.

4 Ways to acquire online reviews

1. Using SMS/Texting apps. A text is sent to a patient asking for feedback after a visit.
2. Using Email apps. An Email is sent to a patient asking for feedback after a visit.
3. Using an iPad in the lobby.  A patient  is asked to provide feedback right after the visit.
4. Using Social Media or your Website.  An app can be added to your business page on Facebook or your website, asking patients to provide feedback.

There is no quick and foolproof way do this “quickly”.  There are pros and cons for each approach.  Google and Yelp understand that businesses are striving to acquire more positive reviews and “bury” negative feedback, their algorithms are aware of SMS requests for reviews – and they are blocking reviews posted using SMS originated requests.  Having an iPad in the lobby can cause block of IP Address and so on.

Step No 6.

Social Media Marketing is another very important aspect of your marketing. Your potential and existing are hanging around on Facebook. You have to make it easy for them to do business with you.  Here are 5 steps.

5 Steps for Facebook Success for Doctors & Medical Practices

1. Create Facebook Business Page for your medical practice.
2. Optimize FacebookBusiness Page for your medical practice.
3. Add apps to your FacebookBusiness Page for your medical practice. For example, add Contact Us app, add Appointment Requests app, add Promotions app.
4. Add content to your FacebookBusiness Page for your medical practice
5. Advertise your FacebookBusiness Page for your medical practice  on Facebook – There are multiple ways to promote your FacebookBusiness Page for your medical practice. You can hire a professional ( recommended ) or do it yourself.  Professionals who are certified advertising professionals will produce better results for you.

Summary for Online Success For Doctors

These 6 steps are proven to add value for hundreds of medical practices. There are many other steps you can take to further improve your strategy. Monthly Email Marketing is another strategy, among many others.  Contact us so we can help you and view details GOLD package here.