Pablo Luna
@nci
In this day and age of global pandemics where everything is changing quickly, physicians must learn to adapt in this ever-changing world, and investing in a good marketing strategy to promote their practice is one way to help their business stay ahead of the curve. Failing to implement effective marketing strategies for medical practices will ultimately hinder a health care provider’s ability to attract and retain patients. The following are a few proven marketing techniques that should come in handy.
What Is Marketing?
Marketing is an ongoing process that involves public relations, media planning, client support, market research, and community involvement as well as advertising. Investing time and money in a smart long-term strategy can quickly boost your medical practice’s online and offline presence, making it easier for patients to find you. Determine who your clients are and identify their wants and needs so that you can focus your efforts on improving your medical practice through exemplary patient care, successful outcomes with treatment due to your expertise in the field of medicine, and your achievement of overall clinical excellence.
Build A Website That Optimizes Patient Experience
Gone are the days of advertising your medical practice in newspaper ads and flyers. Today everything from thingamajigs to whatchamacallits is promoted on the world wide web. So, hire a professional to build your website and make sure the design is interactive and includes customized features, fast page speed, and is mobile-friendly. You can find freelance contractors on sites like UpWork or Fiverr. Ultimately, hiring someone qualified to improve your patient’s experience on your website will significantly increase patient leads and retention and will be well worth the cost of investment.
Write a Medical Blog
To build your brand and show who you are, create a regularly updated blog connected to your medical practice with topics that include your niche specialty, trends, and patient stories that will simultaneously improve your websites internet ranking while providing a unique opportunity for you to address the needs and interests of your audience.
Hire A Professional IT To Improve Your SEO
A solid Information Technology (IT) department can drive growth by allowing a business to process large amounts of data using a huge quantity of processing power, complex computer software, and deft human analytical skills. Search engine optimization (SEO) improves the probability that patients will find your website via an online search. Improving your SEO can help drive targeted leads to your website. Adding your practice’s address on your web pages may help improve your SEO with localization. Link your website pages to other sites when possible and create original content for your website.
Hire A Medical Marketing Firm
If everything noted so far seems overwhelming and time-consuming you may want to consider hiring a medical marketing firm that will allow you to focus on your practice while outsourcing this important facet of your business. The specialists at Inbound Medic who cater to non-startup, niche medical practitioners, and surgeons whose medical practice gross at minimum one-hundred thousand dollars per month in sales suggest many of the marketing tactics mentioned in this article. Hiring someone to provide medical marketing services will not only improve your business but will also reduce your stress and enhance your quality of life. Letting professionals handle your medical marketing may save you time and money in the long run.
Position Yourself as a Media Health Expert
Put stage fright aside and work to become the next Doctor Oz by being cited in the media to establish expertise and gain exposure through journalists for print, online, and TV who regularly seek out medical professionals to provide context and legitimacy for their news stories. Visit your local television news channel and local newspaper agencies and offer to partner with them on a health column or news segment which will position you as the expert to prospective and current patients. Sign up for services like Help A Reporter Out and ProfNet to give you access to media queries and provide you with an outlet for pitching story ideas to journalists.
If you are a doctor seeking to build your practice realize that today more than ever, potential patients are searching on the web for local physicians and healthcare services to establish know, like, and trust relationship before booking an appointment. Individually, any of these proven marketing tactics can help a doctor sustainably grow a medical practice. Employing these marketing strategies in tandem is ideal for overall success. Managing these strategies in a coordinated, sustained manner will enable any doctor to maintain a stable practice while growing his customer base over time. In the end, these marketing techniques will support and enhance each other, producing much better results than any one strategy alone.
