Having Trouble Getting Patients?

7 Proven Techniques for Successful Patient Attraction

Maybe it’s an overused expression, but patient attraction (besides providing superior medical service) is the cornerstone for building a successful practice. Let’s face it, if you can’t make your phone ring, your practice is in trouble.

Additionally, a large part of maintaining a successful clinic involves keeping the wolves away. What does that mean? Every day when you open for business, your competitors are actively and aggressively hunting for your patients.

How are your competitors going after my patients, you ask? They do it through their advertising and marketing campaigns. In fact, your competitors may not even realize the chain of events started with a single ad.

Every promotional piece that goes out has been programmed with a selected target. This is a horrible analogy (but accurate), it’s like a heat-seeking missile. It only has one job, that is to grab the attention of and to compel the reader to pick up the phone and call its maker.

Thus, if you live in an average city (where people will only drive so far to do business with you), whom do you think your competitor is targeting with their ad?

According to David Ogilvy (father of modern advertising), “The only purpose of advertising is to get a new client.“

Again, every time your competitor releases a TV or radio spot, a flyer, or some coupons, they’re targeting your patients. What are you doing to keep them away? What are you doing that your competitors aren’t? Are you upgrading the quality and quantity of your business?

Every business keeps its doors open because they attract a constant stream of new patients! Medical practices are no different; unless you become a patient magnet, you will eventually have to close your doors.

Recently, author Rhonda Abrams wrote an exceptional piece for USA Today titled “Strategies: 10 rules for small business success.” Ms. Abrams is a long time business development consultant and strategist provides great insight with robust data that should pay serious dividends for all medical practice owners.

She states that she has dealt with all different types of small businesses, and she’s Patient attraction learned certain realities always apply. These rules are keys to small business success. Ignore these rules at your peril: “I’ve seen many new entrepreneurs fail because they ignored one or more of these business basics to be a patient magnet.”

Here are 10 of the most important “Rhonda’s Rules” for small business success:
Continue reading Having Trouble Getting Patients?

9 Proven Ideas For More And Happier Patients — Secure Your Competitive Advantage

What makes you better than the competition in your patients’ minds?

Any business that enjoys a durable competitive advantage is likely to have a long history of profitability — Warren Buffett

You must be able to emphasize, with clarity, the benefit you provide to your target market that’s better than the competition! That’s your competitive advantage.

It’s a shame that far too many doctors don’t approach their business as it really is. There seems to be an attitude that simply by hanging their shingle over their door, patients will come!

Every business school in the country teaches that business success is a daily struggle for survival. Every day someone is going out of business. Likewise, every day someone is trying to build their business; however, in a crowded marketplace every time a clinic gains a new patient, someone else loses one!

Though you can make the argument that the world is your “patient” oyster, depending on geographic limitations, population density, availability, and opportunity, your pool is not nearly as large as you may believe.

The fact it is that every day your competitors are actively marketing to your patients. If they’ve done a good job of incentivizing, they are doing everything they can to compel your patient to become their patient!

This article has a single purpose: to show you how you can keep your patients (both current and past) from jumping ship. As we go along, you will also learn to attract more patients and increase your clinics traffic and profits.

There are only three ways to increase your business (incidentally, this transcends all industries):

I. You must increase your traffic.
II. You must convert the curious into believers.
III. You must retain your patients for many years.

These next points refer to vital attachments to the original three laws for increasing your clinic’s profits –

1a. Attract more patients – this tactic correlates with patient retention (points I and III) because, if done properly can lead to referrals of friends and family to your practice.
2a. Provide more services for the patients you have – you achieve this by incentivizing your current patient base.
3a. Raise your prices – if you ever analyze what the market will bear for your services, this strategy may have merit. You still may want to proceed with caution when using this approach.

Logically, the goal for every doctor, which owns their own practice, is to attract as many potential patients, convert those people into actual patients, and retain the “best” patients for years to come.

The question then becomes “How does someone stand out amongst all of the competition?”

Continue reading 9 Proven Ideas For More And Happier Patients — Secure Your Competitive Advantage

5 S.E.O. Tactics You Must Start Doing IMMEDIATELY!

We’ve all heard it, if you want to attract more patients, you MUST improve your SEO!

To begin with, for those readers that are less tech savvy than others, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of your website in an organic (“natural” or unpaid) way.

Therefore, the above statement is fine and well, but how exactly is that optimization achieved? In our many conversations with Healthcare providers, we find that it falls upon many of these doctors to generate new business.

Fact, most doctors are extremely busy. To create and maintain their patient-centric information they often shift that responsibility on others. This action creates an unexpected problems. These “issues” arise on two fronts: You request an employee to handle the responsibility. However, if that staff member has a lot on their plate the task never gets accomplished. Or, you hire a freelancer, the work gets done but they don’t really capture your message or your essence.

Very often the doctors are the ones who write their sites blogs and articles to attract more patients. Frequently, the job gets done when the uninterrupted doctor has time to compose.

Sadly, in far too many cases the vital work of patient relations never gets done.

At the end of the day, there is an undeniable fact that a medical practice is a business. As such, it is subject to the same realities of every business — if you don’t get more patients, you go out of business!

Whether you are the person responsible for blogging or not, your content must attract patients! Moreover, it must draw those patients from a finite geographical pool.

Therefore if your content doesn’t draw patients in, your advertising is reduced to the equivalent having a billboard in the middle of the desert.

When we refer to “Content Marketing,” we mean creating and sharing valuable information to attract and convert prospects into patients. Additionally, impress them enough so that they emerge as repeat buyers of your service.

The type of content you share is closely related to the service you provide. In other words, you’re educating patients so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.

Examples of this would depend on your particular specialty, such:

If your specialty is in sports medicine: Treat Your Own Rotator Cuff.
If your specialty is veterinary chiropractic care, you may wish to write something like: Where Does My Horse Hurt? Consider writing a blog providing a hands-on guide to evaluating pain and dysfunction.
If your specialty deals with pediatric chiropractic care, write about that, etc.

According to Whatisseo.com, “A successful search engine optimization campaign will have, as part of the improvements, carefully select, relevant, keywords. Then the ‘on-page’ optimization will be designed to make prominent for search engine algorithms. SEO is broken down into two basic areas: on-page, and off-page optimization. On-page optimization refers to website elements which comprise a web page, such as HTML code, textual content, and images. Off-page optimization refers, predominantly, to backlinks (links pointing to the site which is being optimized, from other relevant websites).” Continue reading 5 S.E.O. Tactics You Must Start Doing IMMEDIATELY!