How to Promote Your Medical Practice

47% of patients search for information about doctors or other health professionals online

Let’s think for a minute… how did you find your current medical doctor? There are a few ways this could have been done. Maybe your doctor has been in the family for years, perhaps he/she was a referral, or maybe you even found them through an online search. If the doctor has been in your family for years, retirement may be on the horizon. If you were referred to the physician that was probably due to them having a strong patient base. Any way you swing it, there is constant need to market your medical practice.

Are you ready to start marketing your practice to prospective patients and continue to improve your rapport with your current patients? Let’s talk about a few ways you can do this at your practice.

Email Communications

Market research completed by Marketing Sherpa stated that 60% of patients prefer to be communicated with through email. That is a large percentage of the patient population! If you aren’t sending out emails to prospective patients or current patients through this medium, you may be missing out on a vital opportunity to engage with your patient population.

Email is a quick, easy, and simple solution to promote your practice. Through this medium, you could talk about the compassionate providers that your practice has. If hours have changed, this would be a great way to update everyone on this change. The hardest part of tackling email blasts is coordinating who will craft the messaging and graphics. Once you have this figured out, be sure to make your communications consistent and concise!

Social Media

Are you currently utilizing Facebook to post quick updates to your patient base and any potential patients that may be watching? If you aren’t yet, now is the time to hop on the bandwagon! Social media is a great way to post immediate updates if something needs pushed out to your audiences quickly. From there, your patients have the ability to share or tag friends in comments to let them know that there has been an update from your practice.

A quick example as to how social media could be useful, if your practice experiences a weather emergency, someone at the organization could let everyone know that the practice is closed. Social media requires clear, concise, and visually appealing content regularly. Someone at your practice will need to be in charge of this, and be sure to pick your social media platforms wisely! One size does not fit all, and you want to make sure your practice finds success with this endeavor.

Website

Have you taken the time to optimize your website for mobile usage? Have you delved into SEO to decipher the benefits or change up your messaging for what patients really want to hear? Your website is, essentially, a reflection of your practice and what you represent as an organization. On your web-page you should be welcoming and informative. The interface should be easy to navigate and provide useful information that someone would be searching for.

Running a website is not for the faint of heart and requires a lot of work in maintenance, content creation, and constant optimization. Page load times need to be at a minimum. Also, the page needs to be mobile friendly, and google algorithms need to be referenced frequently to make sure your page doesn’t fall behind the curve. Though there is a lot of work involved with the upkeep and utilization of a responsive website. With that being said, it is worth it in the return it can bring for your practice. Start promoting yourself online today through the use of a website.

As you can see, moving towards promoting your practice in any direction requires time and potentially money. The benefits of doing anything, and doing anything well, come at a price and we are sure you’ll see the ROI if you move forward with these initiatives.

Are you looking for tools to help you promote your practice online? MicroMD’s eService Partner, Demandforce can help. Visit us at micromd.com or call us at 800-624-8832.