Top Creative Ways to Increase Patient Volume in a Medical Practice
Getting the leg up on the competition and attracting potential patients can be difficult and deciding which actions you need to take can be even more daunting.
But if you have found yourself asking, “What are creative ways to increase patient volume?”
Well here are 6 highly effective medical marketing strategies you can implement to increase patient volume and get more patients to your practice.
Table of Contents:
- Invest in a High-Quality Medical Website
- Optimize the Practice Website for SEO
- Advertise On Google Ads & Social Media
- Build an Online Community on Social Media
- Grow New Patient Referral with Physician Liaison Marketing
- Protect Your Physician Reputation & Generate Reviews
- Increase Patient Volume at Your Practice & Get More Patients
1. Invest in a High-Quality Medical Website
Your practice website is one of the most critical digital assets of your business, and that is an investment that needs to be taken seriously.
If you think of building a healthcare marketing strategy like building a house, your practice website is the foundation. It is what every other strategy is built upon. Invest in a great foundation, and the program will reap the rewards. On top of that, your website serves as a 24/7/365 salesperson that is always ready to deliver information to potential patients right when they need it.
To create a well-performing medical website that will drive patients to your practice, you need to communicate a few critical things.
- Make sure you tell your unique story
- All the awesome conditions and treatments you address
- Make it easy and clear how to book a new patient appointment
- Blog and video content to engage potential patients
Make sure your medical website is unique to the patient experience of your practice and user-friendly.
Good questions for websites that want to increase patient volume:
-Is your website fully responsive to mobile devices?
It’s crucial that patients can easily view and use your website while on the go.
Potential patients search for physicians and medical practices on their phones or tablets, making it essential that patients can easily navigate your site, and collect information.
And most importantly, there needs to be a clear and straightforward call to action to schedule an appointment.
-Have you highlighted your featured services/treatments on the home page?
This may seem obvious, but this is your opportunity to promote your high-revenue services or procedures. Consider down selecting your services to feature your core high revenue procedures.
Are you an ENT physician that can improve the quality of life for someone suffering from sinusitis with a non-invasive balloon dilation procedure that reduces patient recovery time?
Maybe you’re an Ophthalmologist that helps patients see clearly with Lasik, whatever your specialty take advantage of this sales opportunity.
-Does Your Website Have a Blog?
Ensure that patients visit and stay on your medical practice site with a robust educational blog area. The more original and keyword-rich content on your website, the more love you get from Google search results.
-Do you have a designated staff and provider page?
Patients want to know who will be handling their care and want to learn about their physicians. To boost the medical SEO for your practice physicians; dedicate individual pages for physician bios, credentials, and more that way you guarantee when patients do specific physician search your medical practice website shoots to the top over review sites.
-Do you have the proper SEO & Keyword Research?
This is a biggie! A solid search engine optimization (SEO) strategy for a medical or dental practice starts with the foundation of your website.
-Are your patient testimonials featured?
Patient reviews are a HUGE influencer to generate new patients for a practice.
Potential patients want to hear from others who have been treated at your practice.
Here is an example from a client we do orthopedic marketing for and we have added a simple carousel to showcase new patient reviews.
Simple yet extremely impactful considering 80% or more patients read reviews before booking appointments.
Learn more about our reputation management for doctors services to help you generate new reviews.
-Do you have lead forms on your medical website that are easy to use for patients scheduling appointments?
A well designed medical website makes it VERY easy for a potential patient to request a new appointment on their website.
-Are you collecting potential patient information with an email newsletter?
Make it easy and clear with a call to action on your website to sign up for the practice newsletter.
A proactive medical practice newsletter that is jampacked with educational info, specials, calls to action, is a great way to keep on going touchpoints with current, past, and potential patients.
-Are you showcasing your before and after cases?
This may not apply to every medical specialty, but it’s essential to find a way to showcase patient case studies for specific treatments you offer.
Patients like to see cases that are similar to their own and view the results.
-Do you have videos that feature your physicians?
Patients prefer video, and it has quickly started to become the preferred way to get information online. According to a 2019 study, an astonishing 85% of online traffic will be generated by videos.
-Is your website optimized for speed?
Avoid high bounce rates and long re-loads with a website built to deliver information rapidly to users.
2. Optimize the Practice Website for SEO
One of the top ways how to increase patient volume is via the growth of your website in local organic search results.
In 2018 nearly 80% of all patients turned online to search for medical information, physicians, and practices.
In 2019 it is imperative that you are ranking high in Google for your main medical services and keywords over your medical practice competitors.
This starts with having well-constructed treatment and conditions pages on your website so you can rank for the things you do best like “hand surgery near me”.
How would you go about ranking for a treatment like that? By creating a really well-thought-out page on hand and wrist surgery. Not just listing the procedure on your services page.
Here is a great example of an orthopedic SEO client that ranks #1 for knee surgery-related searches in their market.
As you see it is a page that is all about knee surgery and the title tag matches.
3. Advertise On Google Ads & Social Media
Healthcare digital advertising has become an essential tool for a digital marketing strategy for medical practices.
Patients turn to Google, Facebook, and other platforms and search engines to find a local practice or information on a particular procedure.
You want to be there when and where they are looking for information about medical services and surgeries.
Here is an example of a digital advertising strategy for a urology practice to drive more vasectomies via digital ads.
4. Build an Online Community on Social Media
4. Build an Online Community on Social MediaA fantastic way to promote and share your services is to utilize the world of social media.
Social media platforms are one of the top search results on the web.
For example, search for a local dermatology practice by name, 99% of the time their Facebook page will be on the first page.
Patients love to interact and disseminate information about their healthcare and practitioners on social media.
Get your providers involved and start creating video content that patients can relate to.
Social media can be an easy and resourceful tool not only to attract patients, improve search, but help your practice engage with patients as well.
5. Grow New Patient Referral with Physician Liaison Marketing
Develop a proactive physician outreach program to connect with the referring physicians and practices in your community.
Build strong physician referral relationships with your neighboring physicians by employing a physician liaison or physician relations manager.
A physician liaison will help you connect your medical practice, and its physicians to referring physicians, grow patient referrals, and increase overall practice revenue.
A designated physician liaison can make sure referring practices have all the materials they need to refer to easily.
A physician liaison will also serve as a practice ambassador for the physicians they represent to streamline communication and provide value for referring doctors.
Need help getting started as a physician liaison or training a physician liaison? Check out our physician liaison training course.
6. Protect Your Physician Reputation & Generate Reviews
8 out of 10 patients read reviews before they book an appointment with a new practice.
This statistic will only continue to rise as what we refer to as the “Amazonification” of healthcare continues to take hold in patients.
What that means is patients (unfortunately) now search for healthcare in a similar manner as to how they look for products on Amazon.
They start by doing research and reading other patient reviews.
That means it is critical to protect your reputation as a physician and practice by being proactive in generating new reviews for your practice.
The best way to do that is by leveraging a physician reputation management service to easily integrate it into your existing workflows.
Not only will you get more patients by generating new reviews but you will see a direct relationship in the increase in local search rankings that we spoke about earlier in this post.
That is because your Google My Business is a top local SEO for medical practices ranking factor and what helps your Google My Business rank high? Reviews.
As you can see in the above chart, when you combine Google My Business (GMB) and Reviews on that GMB they result in 40% or more of the local SEO of your practice.
Check out this case study on how an infectious disease practice generated 211 new patient reviews.
Wrap Up – Increase Patient Volume at Your Practice & Get More Patients
If you have been wondering how to get more patients just following these strategies and you will be well on your way to increasing your patient volume.
Want to know how to grow your clinic? Need some help on creating a strategy? Or executing the initiatives discussed in this post? We can help!
We are an agency that focuses exclusively on medical marketing services and has the experience and skillsets to help you reach your goals and drive patients!
