Like any business or organization, a medical practice needs to invest in the proper marketing to ensure a steady influx of patients who know and trust the practice with their healthcare. Whether through social media marketing, print marketing or networking events, medical practices must be willing to make an effort – as it doesn’t matter how amazing the practice’s care is if no one can find any information on it. Check out these helpful tips for marketing a medical practice.
Establish Branding for Your Practice
Branding will help potential patients instantly recognize your practice across many forms of media: social media, newspaper ads, and your website, for example. Choose a color scheme and business name that appears professional and symbolizes your practice. It helps to make your logo stand out from others as well – so, don’t use other logos as “inspiration,” rather come up with something that will relate to your practice’s unique philosophy. Keep this branding consistent throughout all of your marketing materials so patients can easily recognize that the information is coming from your practice.
Be Accessible to Internet Users
Most people who will be looking for services will use the internet to search for providers, look at reviews, and email/message to ask questions. It is a good idea to have a mobile-friendly, professional website with frequent blogs as well as active social media pages to ensure your practice’s services and contact information are readily available to the masses. In particular, social media provides an avenue for you to be personable and professional with users – as well as run ads in your local area, increasing your outreach. Make sure to post at least 5-10 times per week to help your business appear more frequently on the feeds of people in your community.
Give Out Health Tips
By providing health tips, you are reassuring patients that they are being considered and that you care for their well-being, even when they aren’t in your office. You can provide health tips through physical or digital newsletters, social media, or blog posts. Including these in your marketing plan reaffirms your practice’s professionalism in its field, as well as the compassion of its staff.
Send Out Appointment Reminders and Follow Ups
Patients notice and appreciate attentiveness, especially in the form of appointment reminders and follow ups. If your practice uses a HIPAA-compliant reminder system, it’s very easy to set up. However, if your practice is smaller and you have the staff available for it, personal text or phone call reminders are useful as well.
Be Active in Your Community
Maintaining a presence at sporting events, health fairs, town festivals, and anywhere else you can set up a booth will lead to more people knowing your practice’s name. At these booths, run small raffles, or at the very least hand out pens, small fridge magnets, and other accoutrements advertising your business. This way, your practice will be on the fridges and in the offices of local residents.
Another effective way to be active in your community is to donate a physical or other basic service to a local charity auction. You should also be available to local news centers for interviews that can advertise your practice. These methods will help spread your practice’s name to the community and potentially those that surround it.
For any medical practice to succeed, it’s paramount that patients can have access to information and be able to easily spread the word. Start by establishing branding, maintaining an active website and social media pages, following up with current and potential patients and being an active presence in the local community.
