2022 Best Practices | How To Get More Patients for Your Practice
Posted: December 22, 2021 - By Health DevGetting more patients is a fundamental part of your medical practice. On average, a doctor must see about 30 new patients every month to grow their practice. However, many doctors are unable to find 30-50 new patients each month.
If you are a healthcare provider who wishes to maintain a steady flow of patients by retaining existing patients while also achieving a more loyal following from new patients, then you’ve come to the right place.
Here we will guide you through a patient acquisition strategy that will help you get more patients. These strategies include the use of social media accounts to promote your practice.
We will also discuss healthcare marketing campaigns, referral programs, the use of search engine optimization for digital marketing, and more. Here are a few proven ways to bring more potential patients to your medical practice.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
So how do you attract potential patients to grow your medical practice? Good online marketing strategies are essential for expanding your network and online reputation.
Demandforce’s Online Reputation Management tool lets you capture reviews from former patients and publish them directly to Google and other sites that matter most to your practice.
To achieve a more prominent online presence, you will have to focus on your target online audience.
Most people’s lives revolve around the internet. It is one of the reasons why medical practices and doctors should be utilizing online marketing and search engine optimization to gain more potential patients.
SEO is vital in today’s digital world. Many medical practices gain patients by building their online presence. If you want more patients for your medical practice, then potential patients should be able to find you immediately when searching online. SEO will help revolutionize your healthcare website by bringing more traffic to it.
Since the SEO landscape keeps changing, hiring an SEO expert to take on your search engine optimization campaign can be beneficial. An expert will help create a positive user experience, increase brand awareness, and grow your website traffic.
SEO also helps you reach your target audience more effortlessly. In addition, SEO services can help optimize your website, make it search engine friendly, improve your ratings, give you access to your target audience, and enhance awareness about your medical practice.
Paid Online Advertising
Paid online advertising is another efficient way to attract new patients to your private medical practice.
In the United States, eight out of ten internet users surf social media for health information. Keeping this in mind, Facebook ads and Google PPC are some of the platforms that can help bring more patients to your medical practice.
Facebook advertising will help extend your reputation and also create more awareness about your private practice.
Moreover, many users on social media look for health events and healthy living ideas. They watch videos of medical practices and learn more about nearby healthcare providers.
So if you use Facebook ads for advertising your medical practice, you will be able to convert your page visitors into potential patients. Another excellent tip is to link your Facebook page with your website or blog.
You can also add contact information and operating hours on your Facebook page, making it easier for potential patients to contact you after they have discovered you via Facebook.
It will also attract more traffic to your website, bringing prospective new patients to your medical practice. An active Facebook page will also help with referrals. You can also ask your existing patients to leave reviews on your Facebook page about their positive experiences, which can help build trust between you and new patients.
Google PPC
Google PPC ads are another good way to attract new patients to your practice. PPC, or pay-per-click, is a popular internet marketing model in which the advertiser pays a fee for each click their ad gets on the search engine. Basically, it’s a way to buy visits to your website rather than earning them organically.
You can bid for placing an ad in the sponsored links of the search engine. Thus, your link will show up when a visitor searches for a particular keyword related to your business.
For instance, if you bid on the keyword ‘’medical practices Texas,’’ your ad will likely show up at the top of the search results when someone searches for this keyword.
Every time someone clicks your ad, you pay a minimal fee to the search engine. However, PPC is worth the cost since you may have to pay a $2 fee for a click that will bring you a patient that pays over $100 in your clinic.
Paid ads through Google are a cost-efficient way to gain more referrals, new patients, and recognition for your medical practice. You can also set your budget for Google PPC ads ahead of time.
Online Listings
When building an online presence to attract more patients to your practice, accuracy and consistency are crucial. Many patients avoid healthcare professionals with incomplete online listings.
The Listing Management tool from Demandforce directly integrates with over 150 websites, letting you manage your listings consistently so that patients can find accurate information about your practice, irrespective of the site they use to search.
If you wish to get more patients into your medical practice, it’s essential to keep your online information updated for local search. Prospective patients should always be able to find accurate information about your medical practice.
One of the ways to enhance your online presence accurately is by building a strong WebMD profile. An enhanced WebMD profile will help get you noticed by users, as it will make you stand out from your competitors online. Demandforce’s Listing Management tool helps you do just this.
Moreover, you can use Google My Business to gain more patients because Google helps bring more traffic to your website. Firstly, you have to set up a business profile. When patients search for you in Google searches, your Google profile shows at the top of the search results. This way, you receive traffic from Google searches and get noticed immediately.
Similarly, you can grow your practice by using Yelp. Yelp is a review app where your patients can leave reviews regarding your medical practice. Yelp helps build your online reputation, especially when your current patients leave favorable online reviews about your healthcare practice.
Moreover, Yelp has millions of users who visit profiles every day, which means that having a Yelp profile will enhance your practice’s exposure to the platform’s many users. This will help with visibility, which will bring more patients to your practice.
Online patient reviews play an essential role in promoting medical practices. Many patients look at reviews before deciding to visit a doctor. In this way, patient feedback and negative reviews can significantly affect your practice.
You can encourage your current patients to leave online reviews about their positive experiences. These reviews will be beneficial in growing your medical practice, as it encourages other patients to contact you.
Keep a Social Media Presence
Millennials love to do their online research ahead of decisions or purchases. Because of this, it is crucial to maintain a social media presence.
If you wish to build a solid social media presence, you must set up a mobile responsive website and link it up with your social media pages and accounts.
Setting up a practice website is helpful because it can help convert your potential patients into regular patients. Your website should have basic information regarding your practice. You can also make it possible for your current patients to leave reviews.
The most exciting thing about setting up a practice website is that you don’t have to make it fancy or complex. Instead, it should be a basic and easy-to-navigate website. Another critical factor is that your website should be mobile responsive.
You must also make sure that it has valuable links to your social media accounts and up-to-date details about your practice.
You should also consider adding a patient portal—such as Demandforce’s Patient Portal—to help drive meaningful engagement between you and your patients. Patient portals are online tools for healthcare websites that help patients keep track of test results, prescriptions, and billing.
Here are some other ways to maintain a strong social media presence.
Engage Your Audience
Engaging your target audience is essential to gaining more patients because active profiles help attract social media users.
Since many potential patients will be searching for a medical provider’s online presence, you would be at an advantage. In addition, you can engage your audience by offering discount vouchers to patients.
You can also hold live streams on your social media accounts and offer advice to viewers about diet, exercise, and more. Live streams are also an effective way of addressing the common concerns of your patients.
Since solid relationships are vital to building doctor-patient trust, live streams will help you establish a good relationship with your regular patients.
Build a Community
Another thing that could help you maintain your social media profile is building a community. A loyal following means more patients and a thriving medical practice.
You’ll have to take active measures to connect with the community, but the benefits of doing so include having loyal patients who will only come to you.
After linking your website to your social media pages, you can hold seminars. You can advise your patients about their various prevalent health concerns. For example, teach your patients about the importance of taking precautions to avoid getting the coronavirus.
Patients will appreciate these measures; thus, they will come to you when they need a doctor. Here are some other ways to build a community with your patients:
- Start an Online Discussion: Make a blog or a public Instagram page and discuss a topic. For instance, if you are an OBGYN, you could talk about postpartum maternal health. You can also share new research and case studies in easy-to-understand language for your patients.
- Partake in Local Wellness Events: Finding patients online works wonders, but you also have to do some work on the ground. For example, if your area organizes a farmer’s market every month, you can set up a stall and offer advice about healthy recipes.
- Organize Health-Oriented Events: If you have a considerable social media presence, you can also do online organizing for in-person health and wellness events. For instance, you can organize a walk-a-thon or bike race.
- Reach Out to Local News Sources: Local journalists are always on the lookout for a trusted health expert who can provide context and legitimacy to news stories. You can gain exposure by appearing on local TV as an established medical resource.
Since you’ll be serving your patients and frequently educating them on social media, news sources, and at local events, they will be more likely to trust you.
This trust will help convert new patients into regular patients. A sense of community will also help expand the list of your potential patients.
Be Active
Many healthcare professionals do not use their social media accounts frequently. There is nothing worse than visiting a practice’s Facebook page only to see that their last post was in 2017. This creates the impression that the practice isn’t open anymore.
This is why you must stay active on your social media accounts. Staying active will attract new patients and help your existing patients remain in contact with you.
Moreover, new patients who visit your profile for the first time will be engaged, which will help increase the traffic on your social media pages.
If you have interesting healthcare posts on your accounts, it will keep patients coming back for more. They will read your blogs and watch your videos. This will encourage them to reach out to you when they need to consult a doctor.
