Trying to market a medical business?
Looking for ways to get more patients to your clinic?
Medical marketing can take a lot of time and effort to get right, especially if you don’t have a solid plan in place. It’s important that you make use of the best marketing strategies for the healthcare industry so that you can grow your practice as easily as possible.
Below we’ll look at the best tips and strategies for marketing your medical business effectively while ensuring you never run out of patients.
1. Brand Your Practice Right
Before you get too far into marketing your medical practice it’s important that you’ve perfected your brand. A great brand will help you stand apart from the pack and allow you to get clients even if there’s a lot of competition in your area.
You need to find the right angle to market your practice and ensure you get some great promotional materials together. Make sure to invest in great photos and a well-designed logo for your business.
Then use these promotional materials to create a cohesive presence on your social media channels and other marketing outlets. By thinking about your branding first, every other marketing action you take will be much more effective.
2. Start With Referral Marketing
For the medical and healthcare industry, referral marketing is often the best way to get new patients. Much of your business will probably come from referrals anyway so make sure that you capitalize on this. Ensure that it is as easy as possible for your current patients to help you promote your business.
You need to encourage new patients to tell their friends about you. To do this you may consider creating a special offer for patients in which they’ll get a discount on their next appointment if they refer a friend or family member to you.
3. Use Internal Marketing
It can be a mistake to focus only on external marketing strategies. Internal marketing can be a great tactic for your medical business and can help you turn one-time visitors into loyal patients. It will help you ensure that your patients keep coming back to you time after time.
For internal marketing, you’ll want to place relevant promotional materials inside your office or waiting room. This may include advertisements or brochures about treatments that your patients may need, for example.
By placing marketing materials in-house you’ll be able to promote your business freely and easily to the people most likely to be interested in your services – your current patients.
4. Get On Social Media
If you thought that social media wasn’t for medical marketing you’re wrong. Social media can be a great marketing tool to get more patients into your practice or medical business.
It’s crucial that you are on at least a few of the main social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Then, you’ll want to use these channels to communicate with your potential patients.
Social media is a great way for your audience to get more comfortable with you and feel like they know you on a personal level. However, remember to be personable and avoid being overly promotional.
5. Work on Your Medical Business Website and Blog
Aside from social media, it’s also critical that you have a professional website as well as a blog to market your medical practice. Your website will serve as the face of your business online so make sure that you take the time to make it look great.
The website should be easy to navigate and have an attractive design. It should also have pages that discuss which services you offer and a contact page where visitors can book an appointment. The Bliss Medicine website is a great example that clearly shows potential patients everything they need to know.
Also, make sure to fill your blog with relevant and useful content. This will allow search engines to find your website more easily and will also allow you to prove your expertise to visitors.
6. Use Local SEO Techniques
Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques have can also be very helpful for marketing your business. Make sure you’re using all of the best SEO practices on your website so that search engines will be able to find your site and send traffic your way.
Local SEO is particularly important. While general SEO can help, using local SEO techniques will help search engines send only the most relevant traffic your way.
Local SEO techniques include actions such as managing your Google My Business page, ensuring information is consistent across online directory sites such as Yelp and using locally relevant keywords on your site and blog.
7. Consider an Email or SMS Marketing Campaign
Direct communication strategies such as email marketing and SMS marketing can also be invaluable. It’s a good idea to use these methods to send previous and current patients updates on services, special offers, or other types of communication.
Even in the age of social media email is a great way to communicate with patients and has a grade conversion rate. Mobile marketing techniques and text message marketing strategies are also becoming more popular for marketing. Many people are on their mobile phones throughout the day.
Both of these direct lines of communication to patients can be a great way to market your business and stay on your patient’s radars.
8. Manage Your Online Reputation
It’s important not to overlook the importance of your online reputation. You need to be aware of any reviews that have been left for you on Yelp, Google, for Facebook. If there is any negative feedback online for your medical business, try to repair the damage by responding to reviewers or by using other reputation repair techniques.
Additionally, it’s a good idea to get into the habit of asking happy patients to leave reviews for you online.
If you don’t currently have any reviews online you need to get some. Positive reviews across the web can be a great tool in convincing prospective patients to give you a call.
Final Thoughts
Marketing a medical business can be tricky. However, as you may have realized by not, there are a lot of options out there for getting the word out about your practice. By employing the strategies above, you’ll have a great chance of consistently bringing in new clients time after time.
Looking for more marketing and business tips? Check out our business resources blog now for more great advice.