While it’s important to maintain a relationship with your existing patients, it’s just as important to grow your practice with new patients. Regardless of what you have been told, promoting your practice and gaining new patients doesn’t have to be costly and time-consuming. Here are seven ways to attract new patients to your practice.
Get social.
Build a beautiful website, implement a creative blog, and create an active Facebook presence. It’s 2018, so if you haven’t already, it’s time to embrace social media and make it work for you and your practice. In today’s world, it is essential to have a working social media strategy, even in the medical field.
Don’t be scared to ask for help.
Encourage positive reviews from your current patients as they are a great opportunity for free publicity. Ask them to make referrals to friends and family and post positive reviews online.
Connect with your community.
Make yourself relatable to potential patients by offering patient friendly tips and guidelines. Utilize your blog, social media and emails, but try to think outside of the box as well. Work out a deal for a local TV segment, write an article for the newspaper or organize a presentation for the neighborhood church.
Utilize marketing materials.
People love free stuff. Spread the word about your practice with informative brochures, pens, notepads or magnets branded with your office logo and contact information.
Monitor online presence.
Be sure to dedicate consistent time to monitoring your practice’s online presence. Ensure the information you find is accurate and up-to-date. If you find bad reviews, don’t ignore them, as that is the quickest way to scare away a potential patient. When you encounter a negative review, contact the patient and express to them that you’d like to discuss their concerns. Responding to them personally increases the chances that they remove the negative review. If you choose to respond online, don’t get into specifics and always keep it professional.
Give back.
Put forth those volunteer efforts and give back to your community while doing something good for your practice. Volunteer to help a sports team at the local high school with annual physicals, conduct seminars at nearby gyms or have your office team take part in events that raise awareness. Showing your community that you are involved and willing to help speaks volumes about you and your practice.
Say thanks.
A little effort goes a long way. Take the time to personally follow up with new patients that come in with a phone call or hand written note.
As medical practices continue to change and evolve, so will the way they acquire new patients. While the best way to keep patients and attract new ones is quality service, a practice’s ability to interact with those inside and outside of the office will play a huge role in building new and strong relationships.
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