Doctors need to promote their clinics to have a steady flow of clients. They can start with practical marketing strategies that they can easily use. With consistent use, marketing strategies can help build long-term relationships with clients and keep them updated with the latest activities in the clinic or hospital.
Here are some of the marketing strategies that doctors or health care practitioners can try for their clinic:
Table of Contents
1. Video Marketing
According to animated video production company Wyzowl, 88% of people said that they bought a product or service after watching a video. Also, 96% of people watched a video to learn more about the service.
Videos can help doctors explain to their patients the procedure for treatment. More so, doctors can show visual aids, and the steps patients will undergo to prepare for the surgery.
Doctors and patients can benefit much from video marketing because the explanation for particular illnesses is already available in the videos. Also, as reported by Digital Authority Partners, patients can educate themselves about the procedure and the treatment outcome.
Here are some of the content that you can use for your video marketing:
- Overview of procedures and treatments
- Frequently asked questions
- Feature one doctor every month
- Patient testimonials
- Interview with the medical staff
Videos help establish the connection between the brand and the target audience. Doctors can make the most of videos by sharing summaries of health seminars. They can share diagnoses and treatments for seasonal infections and encourage patients to participate in upcoming health events such as vaccination days.
2. Social Media Marketing
According to Medical Marketing and Media, U.S. healthcare professionals spent 7.6% of their marketing budgets on social media marketing in 2021. This channel ranked fifth among the most used marketing channels.
Social media is a popular channel that doctors can use to share relevant content with their target clients. Posts keep clients engaged with the clinic’s activities, such as free consultation and health drives. Social media helps attract the brand’s target audience.
Doctors can easily use social media to announce holiday clinic hours or changes in the doctor’s schedules. Most of all, FAQs on medical treatments can be quickly relayed to patients via social media tagging, sharing, and messaging.
Here are some social media marketing tips for doctors:
- Show quality and compelling photo
- Encourage the target audience to connect and build relationships
- Strive to post original and creative content
- Encourage your target audience to comment, like, share, retweet, or subscribe
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing has a promising revenue growth in the next couple of years. According to ReportLinker, it could grow from $10.89 billion in 2023 to $17.9 billion by 2027.
Email marketing remains a robust strategy that doctors can use to promote their clinic or hospital.
Doctors can use email marketing for the following purposes:
- Following up on scheduled consultation
- Verifying requests for laboratory test
- Welcoming new clients and patients
- Introductory information on first clinic visit
- Orienting the patient on how to sign up for the Electronic Medical Record
- Registering for health seminars and promos
- Sending health care blogs
Email marketing keeps patients in the loop on what they need to do next for their medical treatment and what they can expect from the results. Doctors should use email marketing to seal their communications with their clients and patients.
4. Posting Patient Reviews
Doctors can also post patient reviews to boost brand presence online.
Positive reviews can encourage other clients with similar medical conditions to undergo surgery or treatment. Clients anticipating a surgery soon may read previous or current patients’ feedback, comments, and testimonials and learn how the treatment can help improve their health.
Doctors should also strive to respond to both positive and negative comments consistently.
Positive comments help validate the clinic’s quality service. On the other hand, doctors can dispel misconceptions about the surgery or the clinic by responding objectively to online comments. If there are issues, doctors can provide more information to clarify the matter and reassure the public about the clinic’s observance of protocols.
Health care professionals can encourage patients to leave reviews by handing out or emailing follow-up notes or flyers accompanying a survey questionnaire. Another way is to send “thank you” cards, which include mini slips that ask for a quick summary of their experience in the clinic.
5. Building a Website
Doctors can also invest in creating a website to feature their services, explain their vision, and educate the target audience about specific illnesses. A good website can help promote further the goals of the clinic or the hospital and provide a step-by-step guide on medical procedures.
Below are some qualities of a good website that doctors can consider.
Security Features
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) of the United States requires all medical websites to ensure patient data privacy, confidentiality, and security of all patient’s data.
One way to comply with this is to build the website using Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) internet communication protocol. This protocol:
- Observes and implements data privacy and file transfer security in websites;
- Encrypts all data on the website so that hackers cannot easily tamper, copy, or download medical documents;
- Ensures that the patients’ Electronic Medical Records are safe.
Doctors must ensure that patients or immediate family members can conduct safe file transfers, document downloads, or online payments. Doctors can seek the services of a professional website builder to create HIPAA-compliant medical websites.
Responsive Design
Medical websites must be mobile-friendly, meaning the content is readable and fits the laptop or smartphone screen. One way to quickly achieve this is to opt for a more straightforward or minimalist design. This way, only the actual content, images, and videos are featured. A clean-looking website fits clinics’ branding image and keeps essential information in place.
High Download Speed
A good, responsive website usually can download content and images within one second. High speed adds points to the user experience, which helps the brand gain favor from clients and patients who need to access the information soon.
Final Words
The practical marketing strategies that every doctor’s office should use are customer-centered techniques that utilize video, email, social media, and website tools. Responding consistently to patient reviews also helps boost the clinic’s or hospital’s brand image and paves the way for more doctor-patient understanding.
Focusing on the excellent user experience of patients through a mobile-friendly website will surely help your clinic gain excellent feedback.
