How do you attract more patients to your practice without spending too much or exhausting your budget? Establishing a marketing plan and budget is an essential part of running a healthcare practice. Practices of all sizes are always looking for ways to get more patients without spending an arm and a leg. Many firms become frustrated if they don’t have what they consider to be large enough marketing budgets to achieve their goals.
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If this sounds familiar, then here’s some good news. It is entirely possible to attract and convert more new patients without spending ridiculous amounts of money or time on healthcare marketing. There are still a few proven healthcare marketing strategies that will help you attract patients and grow your practice at a lower cost. Not only are these marketing ideas effective, but they are also profitable and can lead to sustained long-term growth.
The purpose of this article is to share five practice marketing ideas that cost very little to implement but can lead to better new patient acquisition and long-term growth. These tips will help you market your practice even on a small budget.
1. Strengthen your web presence
Your key to standing out in today’s healthcare landscape is to have a strong web presence. Potential new patients are much more likely to find you when you have a solid website, strong online profile, and active social media accounts. To reach more new patients, you need to appear online regularly with the right content and messages. An audit of your website and the information you present online will reveal if it is complete and accurate.
2. Build your web presence
Social media is especially important to your web presence if you’re looking to expand your reach and save money. You can easily increase the number of places you appear online by claiming unclaimed listings for your practice or creating new listings. Make sure your ads are accurate, complete, and consistent, and present your information exactly the same no matter where it appears. Google searches for the name of your firm or the names of your suppliers to find out where you appear online. Check that your information is correct everywhere.
Use Google My Business to build your profile and ensure your information is always available in more places online. If your budget allows, consider paid advertising on Google or social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Paid advertising can complement your organic search strategy. Paying for Google Ads helps you rank high on the search page for search terms you may not be ranking for organically yet.
Spend varies depending on the keywords you’re bidding on, and it’s easy to customize your bid and set a cap on overall spend so it doesn’t get too expensive. By bidding strategically on selected keywords, you can help your practice secure patients it might otherwise miss.
3. Modernize your website
Make sure your website is up to date. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about attracting people to your website and its content. A big part of SEO is having a modern, fully optimized practice website. To make sure your website is up to snuff, consider the following:
Is your website mobile-friendly?
A mobile-friendly or responsive site will load quickly and display well on any mobile device. More than half of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices. In fact, Google now prioritizes mobile search when calculating website rankings, so you can bet that potential patients are most often visiting your site from their smartphones.
Does your site load quickly?
Loading speed plays a huge role in the overall user experience. Make sure your site loads quickly. Site loading speed is a Google search ranking factor, which means slower=loading sites will appear lower in search results. Web visitors are notoriously impatient and more likely to abandon your site if a page takes longer than three seconds to load.
Is your content optimized?
Even if your site loads quickly, if your content isn’t optimized, you’ll still struggle to rank and find patients. Always follow on-page optimization best practices when it comes to your content and keyword usage. This will give you maximum value for your content and increase the likelihood that people will find your site and end up becoming your patients.
4. Ask for feedback and feedback from patients
If you really want more new patients to choose your practice, take a closer look at your online reputation. These patient reviews are the most important decision-making factor for potential patients looking for a healthcare provider, according to multiple sources and patient surveys.
Patients who are asked for their opinion are twice as likely to leave a review. That’s why asking your patients’ opinions should be a key part of your low-budget marketing strategy. It costs you nothing to ask. And there are several effective ways to encourage patients to leave reviews. Here are a few:
Ask your patients to give you feedback in person. The simplest method is to simply ask your patients to give you feedback immediately after receiving care or upon leaving.
Offer automatic digital feedback. You can automatically message your patients right after their visits and provide them with a link to your patient satisfaction survey.
Add a suggestion box. Having a suggestion box won’t help your online reviews, but it will help your patients feel valued and heard. This can translate to patients feeling more motivated to complete online reviews or satisfaction surveys.
5. Build trust with content marketing
Content marketing is simply the creation of content that informs, educates, or entertains your users while indirectly marketing your practice brand. Those great articles you read on blogs are all about content marketing.
Creating informative content on your site is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field. If you want more patients to land on your practice website, start blogging today. Blogging is a very effective marketing tactic because it allows you to write answers to questions that patients are looking for online. Most importantly, make sure your blog content is informative, entertaining, and of high quality.
When it comes to growing your health practice on a budget, digital marketing is your best investment because it’s cost-effective, customizable, measurable, and targeted to your audience.
What do you think of these tips for attracting patients to health clinics? Please share your thoughts on one of the social media pages listed below. You can also comment on our MeWe page by joining the MeWe social network.
Last updated May 18, 2022.
