How You Can Use Clever Marketing to Grow Your Patient Roster from the Ground Up
Successfully marketing your medical clinic when it opens can help it sail to big profit margins – or capsize with an early “For Lease” sign posted in your front window. There are many things you can do to ensure you have patients flooding through your front door, and in this blog we’ll outline a few of them.
Build Your Brand
Marketing starts with branding. Consumers love something that looks sleek, or comforting. They want to buy services that speak to them, and make them feel like they’ve made the right choice. To do this, you want to put thought into your logo, your adverts, and even what colour you paint your walls. A great brand will attract the demographic it is aiming to bring in, so doing research on the patient demographic in close proximity to your location is very important.
Post up and Send Out Flyers in Bulk
This is an old approach to advertising, but when your marketing campaigns are targeting a more condensed area, it can be a great way to make yourself known in the community. Leaving adverts in mailboxes and posting at your local coffee shops will drum up some interest!
Target Local Businesses
As mentioned above, old-school advertising can still be of great use to your clinic. As such, you should make every attempt to get to know the organizations and businesses that surround your medical clinic. These are bustling hubs of activity. People commute to and from these locations day in and day out and would love to have a doctor who’s close by. Get in their good books, and get them to help you advertise the grand opening of your clinic. If the organization is large enough and will net you lots of patients, you can also offer some free services, such as health classes, that will not only net some business, but also benefit them. Many organizations are promoting mental wellness, and this avenue can be a great way to make introductions.
Explore Social Media Channels
Social media is a very powerful tool in reaching out to the public en masse. Websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all have marketing utilities that not only help you reach out to new patients, but also provide you with analytics to go along with your adverts. See what works, and what doesn’t work, and make sure you diligently search for online groups that you can join where you can get drum up some attention.
Refer a Friend or Review us!
After you’ve started to generate some traffic, get your patients to help spread the message. Incentivizing them to refer others or review your clinic online will help you reach out to a secondary market you may not have access to. Plus, after you’ve met with your patient who is reviewing or referring, it’s easy to tell what kind of people they may refer or what type of a review they would leave.
Online Booking
Let your patients book online! People generally don’t like to make appointments over the phone or taking their chances on walk-in traffic. Online booking allows them to avoid this, and helps clear up your own receptionist’s busy schedule.
Don’t Slow Down
Your efforts need to continue even after you’ve opened. Don’t let marketing fall to the wayside! Even if you’ve reached out to the entire community, new people move into your neighbourhood all the time. Own the market share and don’t give competitors a chance to cut into your profits.
