Grow Your Practice: 7 Key Digital Approaches to Get More Patients

The growth of healthcare providers is clearly visible through the footfall of their patients. In today's digital world, the marketing techniques to get more patients have changed immensely. 

Traditional marketing methods have become vague in the healthcare industry, and it is now crucial for healthcare providers to grow their online presence and implement digital strategies for direct growth in their earnings.

Nowadays, the ways patients find a doctor have changed. The patients rely on online ratings and reviews for choosing their doctor. 88% of patients find their healthcare providers through search engines. 

The healthcare industry has shifted its focus to attract more patients by implementing digital marketing strategies. But the competition among healthcare providers is high. Hence, learning and implementing the latest online marketing techniques is crucial. 

This article will help you understand these strategies, get more patients, and grow your practice.

1. Develop a Strong Online Presence

Nowadays, patients use the internet to select their healthcare providers and make informed decisions. A robust online presence will help you to attract more patients and boost your growth. 

Doctors and healthcare providers must develop a strong online presence to sustain their competitors. 

These are a few tips for healthcare professionals to increase their online presence -

• Build a Professional Website - Seek help from professionals and build an informative website that answers all the queries of your patients.
• Create Social Media Accounts - 72% of social media users are daily active users. Regularly upload creative and descriptive posts on your accounts. 
• Set up a Google Business Profile - Make a Google Business Profile for your practice and start managing the account.
• Proactively Respond to Online Reviews - 82% of patients see online reviews of a healthcare provider and assess the efforts made by them for the patient's satisfaction. 
• Design Online Campaigns that Provide Valuable Information - Regularly share informative content for better user engagement on your social accounts. 
• Regularly Send Newsletters and E-mails to Patients - Newsletters and e-mails will help you create personalized content for your patients. 

2. Leverage Healthcare Content Marketing

Healthcare content marketing can be beneficial for healthcare providers to build a patient base. One in twenty searches on Google are related to healthcare. 

Healthcare professionals need to understand the needs of their target audience and create content that resonates with those needs. It will spark an interest in the audience's mind and encourage engagement. See this infographic to understand the feedback of practices using healthcare content marketing.

Source: SEMRUSH

Healthcare content marketing can help providers establish credibility and authority in the medical industry with valuable, informative, and research-driven content strategies. 

Healthcare providers can create informative videos for better engagement and reach. They can also focus on creating blog posts, infographics, articles, and guides to grow their practice. The survey results indicated that the top-performing healthcare content are videos, case studies, and short-form articles. 

3. Implement SEO Practices

SEO for healthcare refers to optimizing websites and social profiles for search engines. Suppose you started building your online presence and added content to the website; you must implement a research-driven SEO strategy to attract the audience organically. The top five search results on Google get about 68% of the total clicks. 

Implementing SEO to your online presence will drive organic traffic and help get more patients. In the long run, SEO will help healthcare providers increase their online presence and ultimately grow their practice. We can implement SEO to appear on top in the results of online searches. Making our websites mobile-friendly also helps us to rank higher in the search results.

4. Offer Telemedicine

The healthcare industry is revolutionized with the concept of telemedicine. After the Covid pandemic, telemedicine emerged as the solution to break barriers between doctors and patients. 

More patients wanted telemedicine services as compared to earlier. The benefits of telemedicine are reduced operational costs, fewer no-show appointments, better time management, patients' comfort, reduced risk of infection, and increased accessibility between patient and doctor. 

Implementing telemedicine in healthcare can have challenges like internet connectivity, patient safety, and patient privacy. Healthcare providers can assess these challenges and try to overcome them systematically for a smoother flow of telemedicine services.

5. Attract Online Reviews

With the advent of technology, 79% of patients check out a healthcare provider's online reviews before deciding. Positive reviews by satisfied patients help build the reputation of the healthcare provider. 

• Some ways to encourage the patient to write reviews are as follows -
• Redirect your patients to review links through your website and social media accounts.
• Educate your patients about the online procedure to write reviews. 
• Send videos and e-mails thanking your patients and asking them to share their positive feedback.
• Use software that helps you to manage your online reputation. 

Healthcare professionals also need to proactively respond to all online reviews, whether negative or positive reviews. It will ensure the patient that the healthcare provider shows interest in the patient's care and is committed. Try and respond to all the online reviews on healthcare review platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, WebMD, and more.

Related Read: 10 Ways to Ask Your Patients for Reviews

6. Start a Patient Referral Program

Patient referral programs can do wonders for your healthcare practice and help get more patients. The patient referral program is an effective and pocket-friendly marketing strategy. With its proper implementation, you can grow your practice immensely. 78% of healthcare providers consider patient referrals vital to get more patients. 

The first step to starting a patient referral program is to select the reward for referring patients. After the reward is finalized, you can start spreading the information to your current patients that they will be rewarded for each patient that comes through their reference. Finally, you need to give away the reward to them. A well-executed referral program will help your practice to get more patients through a steady stream of new patients. 

7. Focus on Patient Care and Experience

In all the above points, we talked about how to improve patient care and ways to better their experience.

Satisfied patients will help you build your healthcare practice's online presence. If healthcare provider focuses on patient care and their experience, they will receive more positive reviews, and there is a greater chance for them to get more patients through referrals to family and friends. 

Simply put, a better focus on patient care and experience will directly improve the patient's feedback about the healthcare provider. Practices focusing on patient satisfaction witness 1,382 additional patients annually on average.

Conclusion

Our goal should be to prioritize growth by implementing different strategies. Healthcare providers can get more patients by systematically applying these tips to their practice.

Follow these strategies and tips for potential growth in your healthcare practice and get more patients. Save time and revenue with these growth tips. The healthcare industry is changing, and healthcare practitioners must follow the trend!