Marketing Tips to Grow Patient Volume

Marketing tips to grow patient volume

Note: This article has been adapted from Provide The Path to Owning It's podcast episode six with Mike Shoun, president and CEO of Affordable Image Marketing Agency. Listen to the entire episode here.

Now is a great time for established and aspiring healthcare practice owners to reflect on where they’ve been, where they’re going, and how they’re going to get there. If your client is a healthcare provider looking to grow their practice by increasing their patient base, marketing is an essential step in the process. These nuggets of marketing best practices will help bring your vision to life and grow your physician practice into what you've always imagined.

Marketing best practice No. 1: View patients as customers and the practice as a business.

Thriving healthcare practice owners operate with a business lens. They understand patients are consumers and will decide where, when, and how they receive care. As a healthcare provider, the focus is on the clinical side; as a practice owner, there is an opportunity to embrace the business side, with marketing being an important element of their practice operations.

For startup healthcare practices, providers will need to begin with the marketing basics: logo, website, and written key messaging. If your client has acquired an established practice, they can make it their own with a rebrand (a logo, website, and key messages that they create). Your client’s website is a foundational piece of their brand, and they’ll want to design it with future patients in mind (this is where many prospects will convert to patients). It can be helpful to have your client think about the websites they like, trust, and find credible. How does the tone of the website’s messaging impact them? Is the interface intuitive and easy to navigate? Does the content provide enough key information?

Marketing best practice No. 2: Be cognizant of the patient experience.

One key strategy for both attracting and retaining patients is having your client focus on what each patient experiences at their practice.

How does your client want patients to feel at every touchpoint along the journey — from the first time the patient calls their office to the feeling the patient gets when arriving for an appointment? A friendly greeting, welcoming staff, and a warm and inviting waiting room can go a long way. According to Forbes, customers tell an average of nine people about a positive experience with a brand, whereas they tell 16 people about a negative experience.

As part of your client’s marketing, they’ll want their team to be trained in customer service, sales, and the services they offer. The team members answering the phone are the lifeblood of your client’s practice — they provide the first impression and must quickly build rapport with new and existing patients.

Your client shouldn’t expect their team to become their “sales force,” but they do want to ensure their team can properly answer patient questions, understand the offered services, and maintain a compassionate and friendly demeanor. When a practice is made up of qualified people who are trained and passionate, every patient can turn into a referral source. This is where your client can see the ROI on their marketing efforts.

Marketing tips for 2023

A well-built marketing plan can bring your client’s’ practice visions to life, but what tactics are best suited for their practice? The following four approaches can help healthcare practices increase patient volume and brand visibility within their communities.

1. Search engine optimization (SEO) — SEO expands a practice’s visibility in organic search results on Google, which can drive more visitors to your client’s website. The goal is to hopefully increase patient conversions and generate more revenue.
2. Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing — PPC allows healthcare practices to pay to have their website appear at the top of the search engine result page (SERP) when someone searches for specific keywords or phrases.
3. Social media — Having an active presence on social media can help grow the practice’s brand by allowing your client to nurture connections with their patients. Through organic social media, healthcare practice teams can interact with their communities by sharing posts and responding to patient comments. Once your client has mastered organic, they should consider dabbling in paid social. Paid social can help them reach hyper-specific audiences like a targeted demographic or geographic area.
4. Direct mail — In many areas, direct mail is still an effective tactic. Promotional postcards printed with unique tracking phone numbers allow your client to measure how many new patients they’ve gained through a mailer campaign. Direct mail can have a quick impact on your client’s practice and be used at any phase of the customer/patient journey.

A mix of these approaches can help strengthen your client’s existing connections and even help them build new ones. Each tactic has its own advantages, so it could be helpful for your client to partner with an agency or work with a marketing consultant to discuss which combination would be best for them and their practice.

Provide wishes your client the best of luck in achieving their practice ownership dreams this year and beyond. If they would like to dig deeper and learn more specific marketing strategies for their startup or practice acquisition, share our conversation with Mike Shoun, president and CEO of Affordable Image Marketing Agency, on Provide’s podcast, The Path to Owning It. If your client would like to begin their practice ownership journey, direct them to our practice marketplace to browse available healthcare practice listings by city, specialty, and annual collections.

Recognition

At Provide, the company prides itself on the incredible quality of its people, including its network of industry experts. If you’re interested in joining their network and collaborating with dedicated people who are passionate about healthcare practice ownership, contact Paul Motter at paul.motter@getprovide.com or Tom Muck at tom.muck@getprovide.com.