Hi doctors and other healthcare friends reading. In this article, I will explain:
1. How to bring in more patients.
2. The best marketing strategies and advertising resources.
3. Digital marketing, local advertising, what’s free, what’s expensive and more.
4. How to most effectively present your message when marketing.
Maybe you already have high volume patients and this doesn’t seem like a concern at all. Read my ‘Patient Cleanup’ article and you’ll see just how important marketing and demographic re-evaluation is for every practice. No matter the current volume.
You may not think this applies to you because someone else handles the marketing, but as a business owner, administrator, or even doctor, you need to be part of this to help oversee the process.
Marketing Goals
Your marketing should transition from you pursuing new patients, to new patients lining up at your door. Following the right marketing strategies will make your practice turn into a magnet, for the demographic of people that you want to help. Ultimately, you want to be spending next to nothing for marketing because of your demand. That may not be possible at first, as getting momentum can require capital, but that is the goal.
Marketing Research
Before you take any marketing action, let’s start with marketing research. You want to target a demographic. Start by finding out how your ideal patients found you. Ideal patients are those who don’t give you hassles, their insurance pays, they show up for their appointments on time, yeah, you know what I mean. Add a question to your intake that asks how they found out about you. Don’t just put that info aside. Tally that data and find out what your current effective means of marketing are. And only chart that data from the intake forms of patients who are currently bringing your practice success.
This could already be an indicator of a strategy that is working. Maybe throwing some gasoline on the fire, aka increasing your marketing budget and focusing your effort there will amplify those results, bringing in more ideal patients for your practice’s success.
ROI
To be effective with marketing, you need to understand the concept of ROI, return on investment. ROI is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment, in this case, the money and effort you invest into a marketing strategy. ROI is calculated by dividing the results of that investment, by the cost of the investment. Thus ROI is expressed as a ratio. Okay, back to English. ROI is basically what you want to consider anytime you are investing in a marketing strategy. Ask yourself, “Is the amount of effort or money worth the results?”
Okay, I addressed concepts of identifying your demographic and considering your ROI. Now let’s talk about the meat and potatoes.
I’m going to cover some common digital marketing strategies, then we’ll go over local marketing.
SEO
First, SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO applies when you search content online via search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Having good SEO means that you’re one of the first websites to pull up when someone is searching for treatment within your scope. Let’s say you’re a physical therapist in Sacramento California and someone with back pain searches ‘physical therapist Sacramento’ … you want your practice to be the first website listed on the results page.
When making a search, there is organic SEO and advertised content such as Google Ads. The ads typically display at the top and are often looked over until the viewer finds the organic search results, which don’t have the ‘ad’ symbol next to them. This is why being the first organic result is so important.
SEO clearly has benefits and is a good investment over time. If you were to perform some SEO setup yourself, it can be done for free. However, pursing SEO has its drawbacks as improving your ranking can take a long period of time to achieve and setting up your website for SEO isn’t always an easy process. Hiring SEO services can be expensive and there is no instant results to be expected here. Like I said, a good investment to start now, but don’t expect your website to pop up on the first page of search results anytime soon.
To setup your own SEO, it starts with the structure of your website’s coding. To explain this simply, the coding language needs to be organized in a way that makes the content more searchable for Google. To have a good website structure, your website hosting platform needs to be good for SEO.
Website Platform
WordPress is a popular one as about a third of the internet’s current websites are made through WordPress. I’ve used WordPress, and it isn’t exactly the easiest to setup. There is a learning curve to it. Consider some people’s jobs are solely dedicated to building WordPress sites for others. An easier option is GoDaddy’s website builder. Both WordPress and GoDaddy have a lot of templates to choose from but GoDaddy, while easier to put together, isn’t as customizable.
There are other popular platforms like Wix and Squarespace but these don’t exactly offer that ideal coding structure that is SEO friendly, even though they claim to do so. If you’re not in a spot to change your website platform, then at least take advantage of whatever SEO tools are offered through your current host.
Building a fully custom website would require a little bit of knowledge of html, css and javascript languages. If you consider yourself a computer literate person, then I would recommend learning those languages. Html and css are the easiest of computer programming languages. Start learning at w3schools.com and use Codepen as your building tool.
Free Lancers for Website and SEO
If you’d like to hire someone to set your website up for a promising SEO future, hiring a free lancer would be the most economic option. They’re often experts, but more affordable. Upwork is a great source where you can post jobs to hire freelancers.
Google My Business
General SEO is important, but Google Maps SEO is just as important, if more. Get your practice listed on Google maps by setting up a Google My Business Account. Make sure that everything is filled out that you want to be made public, especially pertinent key words to your specialty, treatment or practice’s services. Take a look at your review ratings regularly. Request reviews from your current, good-standing patients to improve your overall rating. Businesses with more reviews are often the first to appear, especially when they have higher ratings.
One great way to provide your current patients an incentive to give you a five star rating is to host a gift card raffle. All patients who leave a review on your google listing receive a raffle for the drawing. Just an idea. I’ll let you work out those kind of details.
There are also search engine ads and pay-per-click campaigns but this isn’t a strategy that I’d recommend as much for private practices, so I’m not going to go in depth on those.
Email Campaigns
One strategy that practices should take more advantage of is email marketing. Email campaigns are great for your current patient pool, But they’re meant to expand and become an outreach tool for obtaining new patients. Once setup, you can have an email blast sent to all your patients in a personalized format. Be sure to collect your patients’ emails in your intake forms and add them to a csv or excel file. This file can be uploaded to an email campaign platform that stores the contact list of your patients.
One widely used platform is MailChimp which allows you to store up to 2,000 contacts free of charge. It’s not a trial, it’s ongoing. It has a lot of software integrations and lets you embed custom subscription forms to your website or landing page. You should look into getting a landing page by the way. This way anybody can instantly join your email contact list just by subscribing their email into your subscription form.
They’re great for newsletters, promotions, and referral incentives. Keeping your patients engaged while out of the office and encouraging them to share your content is key. Keep in mind that email campaigns are only as effective as you are consistent with them.
CRM
If you have an employee managing your email campaign, consider having them use a CRM (customer retention manager) that’s linked to the email campaign platform. CRMs are great for onboarding new subscribers or potential patients. It can be time consuming trying to do it by yourself, which is why I only recommend linking a CRM if you have someone assigned to managing it. This may even be a job best suited for a freelancer on Upwork. One CRM platform that I recommend is Hubspot. Its essential features are free, up to a million contacts. Hubspot’s free plan is also ongoing, not a trial. The best part about having an email following, is that emails don’t change. Social media does.
Social Media Advertising
On the topic of social media, it’s good to have a presence, but don’t make it your main focus. It’s not the most effective with getting patients in the door. I’ve seen practices get results with paid advertising through Facebook and Instagram, but the ROI is low. Advertising on social media can be expensive for the amount of results you receive. If you decide to experiment with social media advertising, you’re going to want a budget of at least $1000 per month.
Mailed Flyers
Now let’s go over local marketing strategies. I find that local marketing often – not always but often – has a greater impact in healthcare than digital marketing.
One strategy that I’ve found more effective than expected are postal mail flyers. It may seem primitive and old fashioned but as much as they hate it, people still go through their mail don’t they? To make this effective, you have to create a flyer that stands out. Look for an EDDM (every door direct mail) service that will single your flyer out, rather than throwing it in a catalog or an envelope full of other flyers. My favorite mail out service is Next Day Flyers. They have a do it yourself flyer design tool along with affordable EDDM. To elaborate on EDDM services, it’s basically a delivery plan where you select what zip codes or regions you want to mail your paper ad to. Then every residential address in that area will receive the flyer or postcard that you designed.
Billboards
Another local strategy is billboard advertising. Billboards have a reputation of being pricey but now digital billboard segments have changed everything. Blip is a great billboard service that’s available in many US urban regions. For as little as $10 a day, you can run an effective billboard campaign. But don’t settle with one day. The most effective campaigns last about a month. The more money you invest in the campaign, the more advertised segments you’ll get. It’s common to display your ad on various billboards simultaneously. Just make sure that you sectorize to the same traffic. Don’t spread yourself thin.
Onsite Banners
Remember that your location may have the ability to become an advertisement itself. Don’t shy away from putting up a banner or two closer to the road, assuming your location permits.
PR, public relations can be a great move for local advertising as well. Get involved in your community. Participate in volunteer work, seminars, races with a cause. Sign up for booths at local farmers markets and health conventions. Becoming a public figure in your area not only gets your name out there, but it can also build trust and present networking opportunities. You’re going to want a banner for whatever event you’re hosting or participating in. Try designing and ordering your own banner on Vistaprint or next day flyers.
If you’re not a wizard with graphic design or photoshop, no sweat, putting together an ad isn’t all that difficult. Mailchimp, Next Day Flyers, and Blip all have their own do it yourself designer tools. But if you’re using a different platform that doesn’t, or you’re going with a whole different strategy and need a design, I would recommend Canva. Canva is free and easy to use. It lets you save your image designs in pdf, png or jpeg format. If you want to hire design services for advertisements, website styling, or maybe new logo creation… I’d recommend hiring a freelancer on Fiverr – that’s FIVERR.com. I’ve hired a freelancer on there for various occasions, who makes outstanding logos for only $7.00.
Anyway, moving along with other strategies…
Insurance Panels
Being listed as an in-network provider on an insurance panel can have its pros and cons. It’s marketing pro is being listed on the insurance payer’s doctor list. Make sure that your attestations are up to date so that patients can find you at the correct location through their insurance provider.
If you have a specialty in behavioral health, I strongly recommend being in network with every insurance payer that’s commonly carried in your region. Mental health therapy is in huge demand right now, so being listed on an insurance panel opens your doors to those searching for a therapist in their area who will be covered by their insurance. For mental health, being in-network with various payers is often all it takes to bring in more patients.
Re-evaluation
Whatever the strategy you choose, analyze your ROI. Measure the sales funnel width. Ask yourself, How many outreach attempts do you need to get a lead? How many leads do you need to get a patient? How much does it all cost? What is the cost per patient in the end?
There are other marketing strategies that I didn’t cover such as affiliate and influencer marketing so I encourage you to read up and learn as much about marketing as you can. For the next 6 months, replace all your books and learning consumption with marketing education. Find out what strategies are best for your practice.
Take Accountability
Figuring out a marketing plan is certainly a learning experience. I remember spending over $7000 on SEO for one of my first businesses. That may not seem like a lot for some, but keep in mind that I was a poor college student with little savings. It was embarrassing to see how unsuccessful it was. Despite all the reassurance I received from the third party offering the service, it failed hard. They showed me all the research data and laid the evidence out, practically proving that this was going to work and that I was making the right move. Little did I know that my website host wasn’t setup for SEO success from the beginning. All that money wasted. A year later, I discovered an advertising source that was perfect for my niche. It cost only $500 for the whole year, whereas the SEO was costing me over $1000 per month. For the next three years, my marketing overhead was low, and the leads were great.
Looking back, it’s easy to blame that marketing agency who took my money and gave me nothing of it. But really, I blame myself for the lack of education on my end. It was my business, I was the owner, I needed to be held accountable and make better marketing decisions. Don’t trust what the salesmen tell you, trust what you know, and learn what you don’t know!
Create a Hook
Before concluding, I’d like to briefly touch on presentation. If your flyers, billboards, emails, posts, website content, or whatever your presenting don’t have an attractive appearance and sales based wording then it doesn’t matter what strategy you pursue. Marketing doesn’t work if the message doesn’t have a hook.
Creating a hook requires a catchy line that lures potential patients in.
For example,
‘Get quality physical therapy from an expert whose results speak for themselves.’
This should be in big bold letters. This makes up the header of your advertisement, the subject line in your email, you get the idea.
Next, you need to think of a potential doubt that your audience will have so that you can acknowledge it right away, showing that this doubt won’t be an issue. Think of the common doubts your new patients have had when you onboard them.
For example,
‘No more routine exercises that don’t work.’
Let’s put it together now,
‘Get quality physical therapy from an expert whose results speak for themselves, without doing those routine exercises that don’t work.’
I’ll let you be the creator of this, as you know your specialty, and what sets you apart from others best.
Great presentations aren’t shy. They’re direct, even to the point of giving a guilt trip or shaming the audience for the lack of action or procrastination. Don’t just present information. Make them realize that their prompt decision to act TODAY is vital and even life changing.
Call to Action
With that said, your message needs a call to action. This may be a signup form, a phone number to call, or a link to set an appointment with you.
Two marketing experts that I really like are Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson. Look them up and start with their ‘how to’ presentation material.
Start researching your best marketing strategy today. Don’t let this plethora of information overwhelm you.
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