Hoards of physicians are facing stringent budgets because reduced Medicare and insurance reimbursement rates are affecting practice revenue protuberance.
In today's challenging economy, the need to market your medical practice is robust than ever.
However, today's medical practitioners can attract patients with various online and offline marketing strategies.
Whether you are designing a website and hiring SEO experts to optimize it or reaching out to your existing patients with a direct marketing campaign, there are several ideas to keep your patients glued to your practice and attract new business.
Planning The key to successful practice starts with adequate planning.
As a physician, you should develop a strategic one-year marketing plan, which includes media placement, public relations, patient and community education.
Today's physicians are reluctant to follow that path and instead opt for shortcuts.
This is probably the biggest marketing mistake they make.
Unfortunately, this will not serve their purpose.
One needs to have a plan before starting a real marketing campaign.
Go Beyond Advertising Apart from advertising, physicians must look out to explore other avenues of marketing such as reputation management, website development with search engine optimization, and patient and community outreach and education.
Determining what makes your practice different from others and communicating it to patients will make your marketing initiative more successful.
Identify your target market and focus giving them the best that you have.
Customer Service over the Phone Make sure your support staff is well educated and trained in handling all types of calls and inquiries and comfortable with recommending services or asking the patient to come in for an appointment.
Delivering outstanding customer service can help you retain existing patients and fetch the new ones.
Website Design By carving out a niche for your practice through website and search engine optimization, you can ensure easy access to patients providing all relevant practice information, including phone numbers, hours of operation, physician information and areas of expertise.
Moreover, a website allows physicians to include information related to diseases, treatment options and service lines that you would not normally be able to include in a newspaper ad of television commercial.
Educational Videos Let the patients learn about the services you offer while they sit in the waiting room.
With the help of video developers, create a high quality and professional video that displays your key skills and some of the breakthrough cases.
It will help in engulfing confidence in the patients.
Social Media Platforms Many of your patients are internet savvy.
Encourage them to check in on social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook so that they can share your practice's information with their friends and relatives.
In addition, you can offer special discounts to patients for using social media.