Practice marketing (2020) — 6 tips for more patients

Every “company” suffers when it has too few customers. Medical practices are not excluded from this. But how do you reach more potential patients and improve your own image on the Internet? With the right practice marketing, this is possible. In this blog post, you will learn how to advertise your medical practice correctly and create a positive opinion of you from patients.

Tip 1: Practice marketing through social media

Nowadays, anyone who wants to make a service, a product or simply themselves known must be present on social media. You must be discoverable, have a reputable and professional profile, and interact with subscribers or followers.

First of all, you have to be easy to find. This is the first step to get into the focus of interested parties. For this purpose, you should choose a name that is easy to understand and not too long. Because if a potential patient is looking for you, for example to read reviews or find out about your service, they shouldn't have any problems finding you.

When the interested party has found you, they will see your profile. This should now make a professional and reputable impression so that there is a direct positive feeling in connection with you. But what makes a profile reputable? On the one hand, all relevant information must be clearly visible. This includes your name, the address of the practice and, for example, your field of expertise.

After the data that your customers need, the photos must also be high-quality and reputable. Good photos are a must, especially on Instagram and Facebook. Therefore, if you want to publish pictures of your practice, you should perhaps hire a photographer. He can then take the optimal photos with which you can present yourself online.

Further information and tips for successful social media marketing can be found in our Blog post about social media marketing.

Tip 2: Improve online reviews

New patients looking for a doctor rely more and more on review portals such as Google and Jameda. Even if you are not convinced of Jameda, for example, the influence of these portals is undeniable. And it is precisely for this reason that online reviews cannot be ignored. Because practice marketing includes not only what you communicate yourself, but also the opinions of others about your own practice.

But before it comes to how to collect positive reviews, the handling of reviews in general should be improved. First of all, it's important to answer reviews. Whether positive or negative, the authors are happy to see that their feedback is received. But if you make the effort to read the reviews, you should also try to understand constructive criticism and implement suggestions for improvement.

However, you also have to make sure that there are more positive reviews than negative reviews. that Socialwave WiFi marketing package helps, among other things, to collect positive reviews, whether on Google or Jameda. Because this package provides your practice with a free WiFi hotspot that your patients can use. After a predefined period of time after logging in, your guest will then be asked to leave a review. The positive reviews then end up directly on Google or Jameda. We will send you the negative feedback directly so that you can use it for yourself.

Tip 3: Climb the Google ranking through practice marketing

Another extremely important factor on Google is the ranking in search queries.

So when someone searches for “dermatologist,” for example, they are shown specific results. The order of these results is decided by an algorithm. This algorithm shows the pages higher up the results list that have a website that is as optimized as possible overall. This optimization includes images, texts and keywords. Agencies such as Docrelations GmbH from Düsseldorf, which operates on Search engine optimization for doctors are specialized, can help here.

The easiest and easiest steps of this optimization are the images on the website. You should simply make sure that the images you use are not too large, i.e. that the file size is not too large.
The texts and headlines on the website should contain terms that are as relevant as possible so that they can be easily found on Google. These terms are called keywords. With free tools such as Ubersuggest It can be checked how relevant they are.

However, the position in the Google ranking is also increasing due to increased positive reviews, so the tips from the previous section also help here.

Tip 4: Offer & communicate patient-related services

Patients no longer want to spend their time waiting in a waiting room. This is precisely why doctors with long waiting times are becoming increasingly unpopular. To avoid this problem, you need to offer your patients something to make them feel less wasted time. An easy way to add value to patients is to offer free WiFi. Then they can use the time for things other than just waiting with the reading circle.

To provide this WLAN, you can use a hotspot provider such as Socialwave or MyHotspot order. The WLAN marketing package from Socialwave, for example, offers you a legally secure WiFi hotspot. This not only offers your customers free WiFi, but also enables you to carry out individualized marketing.

In addition to free WiFi, you could also organise competitions for your patients. Even though doctors' competitions are not yet a particularly common marketing tool, they are becoming more and more common. For example, you could give away small hygiene items such as disinfectant gel for traveling or everyday items such as umbrellas.

But aside from what services you offer to your customers, it's important to communicate that. If you are recently offering free WiFi, then you should publish announcements on Facebook and Instagram or in a newsletter. Because direct communication with patients is an important point in practice marketing.

Tip 5: Keep an eye on competitors' practice marketing

Since you're probably not the only doctor in the local area, there are other practices you're competing with for the same patients. In doing so, you should keep an eye on what measures the competition is taking to get more customers. If these measures then appear to be successful, you may be able to use them for yourself as well.

By observing competitors, you can in particular see which practice marketing tools are well received by patients.

Even the best marketing won't help you if you either don't reach the patients or it simply doesn't appeal to the people you reach. Here, the measures themselves, as well as the content, i.e. the message, must be considered in order to gain helpful insights.

Tip 6: Increasing accessibility through practice marketing

Increase your accessibility to attract new patients. If a potential patient can't find you, they won't seek treatment from you. So you need to optimize your profiles on social media, Google, and review sites so that people can find you.

All of your business data must also be completely available on Google. This works best with Google My Business (GMB). This is basically a profile of your practice on Google.

Here, searchers can see all relevant information at a glance, such as opening hours, address, telephone number and website. Always try to keep this profile up to date and complete. This is the only way to reach everyone who is looking for you or your area of expertise.

But not only on Google should all information about you be complete. Information about you must also be visible in review portals such as Jameda. It is also useful to check your entries in business directories. These are a good way to find services from a wide range of industries. Your practice should therefore also be included in these registers. Registration is usually free of charge and only takes a few minutes.

conclusion

Practice marketing is a very complex field that consists of many individual areas.

In order to be successful at this, you have to consider a number of different things. On the one hand, the presence on social media should be maintained and the followers should be interacted with. You also need to manage your own online reviews in order to be displayed as high as possible on review portals and on Google.

This involves responding to reviews and getting patients to leave reviews when they're satisfied. The WLAN marketing package from Socialwave can be particularly helpful here, as it fully automatically supports the collection of reviews.

Through reviews but also through an optimized website, you can improve your own ranking on Google and are thus shown more often in search queries.

In addition to online marketing, practical services are also relevant for acquiring new patients. For example, if you offer free WiFi, customers can make better use of the wait time and are more satisfied with the service you are offering.

Another relevant point is monitoring the competition. This allows you to gather important insights about patients in their environment, their interests and points of contact, and thus optimize your own marketing. And the last tip you should follow to do successful practice marketing is to increase your reach. This is because potential patients must be able to find you on all common portals and in all directories.

If you follow all of these tips and make your practice popular, you should be able to collect many new patients in no time at all and significantly increase your success.

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