You’ve worked hard to build a practice that provides outstanding patient care, but patients have plenty of options. There are more than 1 million professionally active physicians in the U.S., according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, so your practice needs to stand out.
Choosing the right healthcare marketing techniques can make all the difference. Here are a few ways to get your practice on patients’ radar.
3 healthcare marketing tips to increase patient awareness
1. Create a memorable healthcare practice brand
Establishing a brand that resonates with patients is a process that involves many components. These individual pieces work together to create a trustworthy brand that people feel comfortable with.
This includes designing a logo that represents your practice and speaks to patients. It should be as synonymous with your practice as its name, so take the time to do it right.
You should also create a tagline that tells your practice story. For example, a chiropractor could use the tagline “We’ll get you back to doing what you love.”
Also important is ensuring you’re telling the same story across platforms — i.e. your healthcare website, blog, and social media pages — as this creates trust. Make sure your “About Us” pages share the same history and that your voice is consistent on all properties.
Incorporating all of these steps into your healthcare marketing plan will define your brand identity. This will draw new patients to your practice and give existing ones a sense of belonging.
Read: Increase online search visibility for your healthcare practice through branding
2. Climb to the top of local search results
Having a beautiful healthcare website is nice, but it won’t achieve much if patients can’t find it. Therefore, it’s important to create a high-performance website that loads quickly.
It takes an average of 15 seconds to fully load a mobile landing page, according to Google. Unfortunately, 53 percent of mobile visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.
Page speed is a Google ranking factor for both mobile and desktop users, so it’s important to ensure your healthcare website loads fast. If it doesn’t, expect both your rank to fall and visitors to become frustrated and move on to the next.
Patient reviews can also help boost your local search engine ranking. Ideally, satisfied patients would take the initiative to write these on their own, but many people need a little push.
Two-thirds of consumers (67 percent) have been asked to write a review for a local business, according to BrightLocal. Of those asked, 51 percent complied.
Boost your online reputation by sending patient satisfaction surveys after each visit. Promptly address any issues, and invite satisfied patients to write a review.
Check out: The dos and don’ts of patient reviews for healthcare practices
3. Target prospective patients with online advertising
As with any business, a well-placed healthcare advertisement can increase awareness for your practice and bring new patients in. Online advertising in the form of paid search and social media ads can help put your practice on the map.
Paid search allows you to advertise your practice on search engine results pages — typically at the top and bottom of the page. Ads work on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, meaning you don’t pay until a user clicks on your ad.
When properly executed, this online advertising strategy can be very effective. In fact, 75 percent of people say paid search ads make it easier to find the information they were searching for online, according to Clutch.
Social media advertising is also an important healthcare marketing approach. Approximately seven-in-10 Americans use social media, according to the Pew Research Center, making sponsored content on these platforms a great way to get in front of your target demographic.
More specifically, Facebook ads have a potential reach of 1.9 million users, according to the Global Digital Statshot report from We Are Social and Hootsuite. Also impressive, Instagram ads have a potential reach of 849 million people.
Clearly, the potential to promote your practice through digital advertising is nearly limitless, so it’s important to invest in a thoughtful strategy.
A comprehensive healthcare marketing plan is the key to bringing more patients into your healthcare practice. Different tactics attract different patients, so a well-rounded approach is needed to captivate your entire demographic.
Get more help building awareness of your practice by downloading the whitepaper “2020 healthcare marketing trends for independent practices.”
