Four Marketing Tips For Medical Professionals

Posted on Oct 6 2016 - 6:35pm by Editorial Staff

medical

Even if your medical practice is great and you’re a top-notch doctor, this isn’t always enough to get you all the patients you need or even to keep the ones you have coming back. Even if you’re doing fine now, changes in the technologies people use to find healthcare providers are increasingly causing doctors to have to step up their marketing efforts. Whether you have some marketing plans in place but need to update, or you are new to the whole idea of marketing your practice, the following tips are all great ways to get started!

Get Out There in The Community

Community engagement is a great way to get your name out and give your patients something positive to associate with your practice. Get a booth at a local festival, participate in a charity run, or volunteer at career days at nearby schools. You’ll meet much greater pool of potential patients than you would otherwise and have a chance to make your first impression a really positive one. And community involvement isn’t just good marketing—volunteering is a great way to make you feel more connected and engaged, too!

Personalize Your Patient Communications

Sometimes patients feel that their doctors or doctor’s offices are a bit impersonal. Make sure you are really connecting with your patients and making them feel special. Send them cards on their birthdays or even personalized letters after their visits. These small actions can make a huge difference in how patients feel about you. After all, visits to the doctor are rarely fun experiences that people look forward to, so just giving patients something to remember about you besides the cold exam table or the embarrassing gowns is a good way to make them want to come back to your offices when medical needs arise.

Prove Your Expertise

To improve your reputation in the eyes of potential patients and other healthcare professional, start marketing yourself as the expert in your field. You can do this by attending conferences, giving talks and lectures on the topics that you specialize in, and offering yourself as an expert on healthcare issues to local newspapers and networks. This will increase your name recognition and strengthen your reputation.  Not only will you have people calling in because they want to be seen by the doctor they just saw on the news, they’ll also start finding you on the internet from all of the mentions you’ll get online.

Start The Change from Within

While a lot of marketing efforts and the like focus outward on things like attracting new patients or increasing your practice’s reputation among other healthcare professionals, it is also important to take a good look inside. It’s quite possible that part of your problem ispoor patient satisfaction. Do you have long waiting lists and crowded waiting rooms? Do your patients complain about your bedside manner? If so, there are solutions.

For scheduling problems, consider consulting experts like Luma Health to revamp your scheduling system and improve your reputation. For less-than-ideal doctor-patient interactions, tryimplementing a staff training like H.E.A.R.T. or other techniques to improve your customer service. These are the kinds of things you can fix on the inside that will make a big difference. Once patients see a change in their interactions with staff or experience an easier scheduling system, they’re much more likely to return or to recommend your practice to others.

Last Thoughts

When you truly make an effort to market your medical practice, you’ll see the difference. Patients will come in after hearing about you via a local community event or after seeing you mentioned as a medical expert online. They’ll remember your efforts to at making a person connection through birthday cards and personalized notes or the improvements you’ve made to your office and scheduling system. With all of it added together, you should be flush with patients before you know it!

Photo by Unsplash, CC0 1.0

About the Author

Editorial Staff at I2Mag is a team of subject experts.