When it comes to running and growing a successful business, medical practices have it tough. They face the challenges of large companies in the form of special legal conditions, compliance requirements and regulations. They also face the challenges of a small business in the form of location-based patient acquisition and retention.
But at least there’s some good news: the right approach to medical practice marketing could help you break through your current challenges and maintain a healthy flux of new and returning patients.
Most medical practices rely on the provider’s personal brand and name recognition to bring in new patients. As they expand their team of doctors, they hope to bring on more and more prestigious and reputable providers and grow the practice with this organic interest.
But what forward-thinking practices are beginning to understand is that while the provider’s brand is important, it’s also necessary to brand the practice. Your practice’s brand is what attracts new customers (and new providers) to your practice. And you can build and promote that brand with the right kind of medical practice marketing.
Unfortunately, you can’t practice medicine and expect the recognition to follow. You must take an active role in your medical practice marketing to create a more desirable brand for both your practice and your providers.
Here are five medical practice marketing strategies you can use to promote your practice and your providers at the same time.
Have you put off establishing a blog for your practice? Get on it. Regular website updates will help you establish a web presence for your medical practice and get more exposure for your providers. Your providers should blog regularly as the subject matter experts and authors to help position them as experts in their fields, even to those that may not already know who they are. This will also provide a warm introduction to prospective patients who discover the blog in the information-gathering phase of their research.
Write and post to your website long-form content assets as a companion to blogging on common questions and medical topics that your patients bring up frequently. Providing prospective patients with free resources such as eBooks, webinars, or YouTube videos on living with a particular disease, pain issues or other topics will go a long way in establishing your practice as a leading (and the most caring) expert among your competitors.
As you begin to blog more regularly, promote those posts on your social media platforms to get more mileage out of them. Use different platforms to reach different goals. Specialists cite Facebook and Twitter as the most effective platforms for patient interaction and education and Google+ is best for overall SEO benefits to your practice website.
Whenever you write on your blog, make sure you cross-promote it throughout your marketing efforts. For example, craft a short message for your next email newsletter that recommends your newest blog post written by a particular provider at your practice. Provide a link back to your website to read the blog post and monitor clicks to see how many subscribers took you up on the recommendation.
When you attend community events, take a note from our post on social media tips for getting more out of trade shows. Seek out creative ways that you can connect the community with your medical practice marketing efforts online. Photos are a great content type for live events because they can be used on your website, your blog and your social media profiles.
Even if your medical practice is a household name within your community, you can’t just ignore that potential patients are looking online for answers to their medical questions. You have all the tools to provide the answers. Use these medical practice marketing tips to establish your practice’s unique brand and effectively promote it using tried and true content marketing practices.