It is fascinating to work with a wide array of allied health practices on their clinic marketing. Each clinic is subtly different. Therapy, Naturopathic, Physiotherapy and Chiropractic clinics all have their unique features.
Yet, there are some patterns that persist across every clinic owner we work with.
- They all want their patients to focus on prevention and long-term wellness.
- They all want to have more time to spend on the parts of the business they enjoy the most.
- And they all want a full clinic from a robust list of new and returning patients.
Time was, a clinic could be filled solely from referrals from other providers and patients. A fortunate few are still able to thrive using this model. But times have changed.
Clinic owners are looking around in 2024 and seeing a changing landscape and tougher patient acquisition.
New entrants appear, and tend to have the slick online presence that the younger crowd is looking for.
Long time competitors are modernizing and investing in making it easy for busy families to find them and book online.
Specialty clinics offer new treatment options for conditions your practice treats too.
The healthcare industry is competitive in 2024. For your clinic to thrive, you will need marketing that cuts through the noise. But, where to begin?
Many clinics have a series of gaps when it comes to marketing online
Marketing is it’s own discipline, and it is not easy to master. As a result, common clinic marketing issues are:
- Incomplete marketing, which sees you not top of mind, easy to find, easy to trust.
- Inconsistent experience, where a modern patient experience is missing.
- Suboptimal execution, without clear goals and data-driven insights.
To fill gaps, the first step is to identify them.
A comprehensive marketing audit assesses effectiveness and finds areas for improvement.
But clinic owners are busy and don’t have time for lengthy, detailed processes.
Let’s walk through a 20:80 version of a Clinic Marketing Check Up process, step by step.
Clinic Marketing Step 1 – Creating Awareness
Awareness is your first stop on your patient’s journey.
Provider and patient referrals are an excellent way to create awareness. When a stranger hears about you from a trusted source, it is more likely they will book.
But many people are selecting their next provider online these days.
Are you visible in the community through sponsorships, signage, and media?
Are you visible online, with a vibrant social media presence?
Do you have digital advertising in place?
Assess your ability to make a stranger aware of you, without a referral. Give yourself a score out of 5 for Awareness, where 5 is the market leader, and 0 is an invisible practice to a stranger.
Clinic Marketing Step 2 – Findability
Next, you need to become easy to find online.
The way to become easy to find, is to show up where people most often look.
Of course, you know this is obvious. But only a small percentage of clinics focus on becoming easy to find online.
You want to show up at the top of the key search that potential patients use when they are ready to buy.
They search used when someone is ready to buy health services is a ‘discipline’ + ‘city’ search.
For example, ‘Chiropractor Scranton’, or ‘Therapist Springfield’.
The clinic that places #1 in this search, receives about 1/3 of the clicks.
The clinics that place #2 and #3, share the next 1/3 of the clicks.
#4 to #10 share most of the remaining 1/3 of clicks on a declining scale. For example, #10 typically enjoys about 3% of clicks.
If you rank below 10th, you are as good as invisible in search. Typically, no more than 5% of searchers will scroll this far and then click on your page.
Go ahead, try if for yourself. Type the ‘discipline’ + ‘city’ search for your clinic into your browser.
Skip over the ads, and the local search pack, and start counting at the first ‘organic’ search result.
Where did you place?
Go ahead and give yourself a score out of 5 for Findability.
If you are #1, score yourself a 5. And take a bow!
#2 or #3 – 4 points. #4 or #5 – 3 points. #6 or #7 – 2 points. #8, #9, #10 – 1 point.
If you are sitting in spot #11, or #99, your score will be the same – 0 points.
Clinic Marketing Step 3 – Reputation
Trust is a key part of any business transaction.
When it comes to healthcare, trust is the foundation.
Patients need to believe in your expertise and the care your clinic provides. Yet, they don’t know you, and haven’t been referred to you.
This is where online reviews play a crucial role.
Potential patients use these tools to see what other patients have to say about the clinic.
They often first look for volume. 500 reviews are more impressive than a much smaller number.
They also look at the scores but tend to be tolerant of any average score above 4.5, or even 4.3. Everyone knows that real patients are not happy all the time, and that some people are tough markers.
They are also looking to see how you interact with your community.
Are you gracious for a positive review, or silent?
Are you open to constructive criticism, or defensive?
It all becomes part of your online record.
Now, generate your score out of 5 for Reputation. For simplicity, let’s use Google Reviews as the basis.
>1,000 reviews: 5 points
500 – 1,000 reviews: 4 points
499 – 250 reviews: 3 points
249 – 100 reviews: 2 points
99 – 50 reviews: 1 point
<50 reviews: sorry, 0 points
Note: We know that some regulatory boards restrict the active collection of reviews. Regulatory compliance is necessary. At the same time, your patients don’t know about those regulations when they are searching and consume what they find.
Clinic Marketing Step 4 – Conversion
So far, so good. You’ve made a stranger aware of your clinic, gotten found in search, and been selected for booking.
But, to use a sports analogy, the ball isn’t in the net yet.
This busy, time-sliced working person is looking to schedule, set up their profile, and pay. Right now.
What do you have to offer them?
A slow, confusing website?
A ‘Call to Book’ phone number at the top of your website?
A ‘Contact Us’ form where they request an appointment, and then play phone or email tag with your front desk?
A ‘Download Forms’ link where they pull down some clunky PDFs to bring to the clinic?
Or perhaps you have a fast, mobile friendly website. Easy to navigate, with patient-centric information easy to find and consume. You have Prominent ‘Book Now’ buttons visible throughout the site. The buttons link to an easy-to-use online booking, onboarding, and payment solution.
If this is you, score yourself a 5 out of 5 for Conversion.
If you have only a ‘Call to Book’ option, score yourself a 0. You are losing much of the traffic you manage to generate online unfortunately.
Auditing the patient experience and conversion rate for your clinic can get complicated. Please score yourself subjectively for Conversion between 1 and 4, otherwise.
Clinic Marketing Step 5 – Advocacy
Once the first visit is complete, the opportunities for growth are endless.
First, collect feedback from your patient on their visit. Ideally, this is in the form of a Net Promoter Score(R) (NPS) survey. This way, you get predictive, benchmarkable data.
Follow up with your customer on their treatment plan regularly.
Offer helpful information that new patients find helpful in a follow-on message sequence.
Once you know you have a satisfied patient, you can enable referrals. Simply make it clear to them how they can make the same care opportunity available to family and friends.
Auditing the post-visit patient experience is also tough to simplify fully.
Use your judgement based on guidelines above. If you have a system for each of the items mentioned, please score a 5. If you rely on complaints at the front desk and referrals that magically happen, that would be a 0. Please score yourself how you see fit, between 1 and 4, otherwise.
Healthcare Digital Marketing – Demystified
Total your 5×5 scores, and multiply by 4 to get a score out of 100.
Did you score less than 80? If so, a digital marketing strategy, roadmap and detailed plan might be in order.
To create these plans, simply map out how to respond to your Check-Up score in each of the five areas. With a concerted effort across all five steps of the patient journey, you are certain to see results.
If you are too busy to do this work, or would like a thinking partner, we can help.
Second Spring Digital is a complete digital and marketing agency and offers a free marketing consultation to qualified clinic owners.
Book your no-obligation Discovery Call with a Digital Marketing Strategists to get started.
