Healthcare & Medical Marketing Tips

Whether you’ve been in business for a year or a decade, marketing your healthcare business is vital for both short-term cash flow and long-term stability. These tips from our pros at McCauley Marketing Services can help you make the most of your marketing budget.

First Things First: Define Your Brand and Mission.

At McCauley Marketing Services, we believe strongly in the importance of branding your medical practice. A strong brand is the only way to set yourself apart from the countless other practices in your field. That brand should be consistent and prevalent in your logo, your website, your office, and all your marketing materials.

Your brand isn’t just about your marketing, though. Every experience a patient has with you needs to reflect your brand. If your goal is to have a warm practice that makes every patient feel like family, your staff needs to use that warmth during every phone call and every office visit. It’s important that everyone in your practice thoroughly understands your brand and is committed to exuding that brand every day.

Don’t Underestimate Your Internal Marketing.

Most people think of marketing as a way to get new patients. While that’s one function, you also need to develop marketing strategies that focus on retaining your current patients and expanding the services those patients purchase from you. For example, your medical spa might have a patient who comes in for Botox® every few months, but you want them to start seeing you for facial filler injections or fat reduction treatments too. Make sure your staff members are telling patients about new treatments, following up after their appointments, making further recommendations, and more.

Develop and Follow a Patient-Centered Strategy.

Just like in your office, your patients come first when it comes to marketing your medical practice. Invest time in thinking about who your patients are, what they’re looking for, and what will be helpful to them. This is one of the most important aspects of marketing and if you’re willing to invest time and money into doing this, it will pay off. If you were someone looking for a new medical practice, what would you want to find out from a healthcare practice’s website? As you do this, be careful not to get hyper focused on one segment of your patient base. You can put more resources into this group than others, but allocate some of your budget every year to reaching those other demographics too.

Track Your Results.

Marketing is an ever-changing field and it’s a constant learning process to find the strategies and tactics that work best for you. The only way to know what is working and what isn’t is to track the results of your marketing campaigns. Every time you’re in contact with a new patient or potential patient, whether it’s on the phone, over email, or in person, find out how they heard about your practice. You also want to track how many of those leads from each source are turning into patients and how much revenue you’re getting from them.

Prioritize Customer Service.

Developing a reputation for consistently exceptional customer service is extremely beneficial for medical practices of all sizes, but it’s easier said than done. Patients tend to tell far more people when they have a bad experience than when they have a good one. You also need to realize that the majority of your business will come from getting repeat business from your existing patients, and you won’t have any repeat business if your customer service isn’t exceptional. Go out of your way to try to get feedback from patients about your practice’s customer service and how you can improve. Our medical practice training experts can also help by retraining your staff, auditing your customer service to identify areas for improvement, and more.

Ask The Right Questions.

If your marketing strategy isn’t producing the results you want, you may not be asking yourself the right questions. What are your core values? What unique benefits do you provide that your competitors don’t? What are your areas of expertise? In what specific areas do you want your practice to grow? And most importantly, what message do you want to convey about your practice to new potential patients? These are just a few of the questions we ask our clients so we can craft a targeted and strategic marketing plan.

Prioritize Patient Retention.

Patient retention needs to be a large part of your overall marketing strategy. Problems like poor customer service, lack of follow-through, billing issues, and more can keep patients from coming back. Are people calling but not booking appointments? Booking appointments but forgetting or canceling them? Receiving consultations but not following through with procedures? Having one procedure and never coming back? Knowing this information and spending time strengthening each area is an important part of maintaining a high patient retention rate.

If you’re spending all your money on attracting new patients while you have those problems that will chase them away, it’s like trying to fill up a bucket that’s full of holes. Our medical practice consultants can identify those holes and help you close them so your marketing brings a better long-term return on your investment.

Set Yourself Apart.

The world of healthcare marketing is extremely competitive. Your marketing content needs to portray your practice as professional, dependable, and trustworthy, while also being relatable. Focus on what makes your practice unique and what you do best and find ways to drive that message home in your marketing. Don’t be afraid to zig while your competitors zag in order to draw the attention of potential new patients.

Reflect Your Brand in Everything You Do.

Sometimes practices get so caught up in grabbing onto the latest and greatest types of technology and marketing techniques that they lose their brand in the fray. Your branding needs to be consistent and prominent in everything your practice puts out. This applies to your website, social media pages, advertising content, business cards, letterhead, direct marketing materials, and more. Your patients should have understanding of your practice’s “personality” and identity. It should also be reflected in the way your staff treats patients, how your front desk answers the phones, and how your practice operates overall.

Marketing is one of those tasks that seems straightforward until you start learning about it. If you don’t have the expertise to navigate the complexities of digital marketing, grassroots marketing, internal marketing, patient retention, and more, call McCauley Marketing Services and we’ll be happy to help.