A strong online presence is key to the success of medical clinics, especially in today’s age when online popularity determines the success of our business. If you want to gain popularity and retain a loyal patient base, then you should focus on more than just getting patients through the door. This is where medical clinic marketing comes in.
Marketing for medical clinics consists of an array of strategies that aim to put the clinic on the map. It consists of garnering organic and inorganic as well as referral traffic to your medical website. If you are thinking of doing digital marketing, then we are here with the best guide for you.
We shall discuss 12 easy yet established ways that will create traction for the online visibility of your medical practice and boost the ROI.
What is Medical Clinic Marketing?
Medical clinic marketing means promoting a healthcare facility through online or offline modes. It encompasses all endeavors that aim at augmenting a medical clinic’s brand awareness, patient conversion, ROI, etc.
When we talk about marketing for medical clinics on the online platform, we mean taking all adoptive measures like SEO, PPC, social media marketing, patient outreach, etc. This type of marketing can range from marketing the medical facility on the whole or marketing specific services like MRI, CT Scan, Ultrasonography, or preventive care health checkups.
It is an immensely useful way to tap into new markets as it leverages multi-channel methods to spread brand awareness. When done in a structured manner, such marketing can garner huge profits in a matter of months!
4 Benefits of Healthcare Marketing
Digital marketing means gaining better online visibility. With over two-thirds of the global population accessing the internet on a daily basis, digital marketing holds a host of potential benefits that you can unlock.
Let’s take a look;
1. Patient Retention
Medical marketing instills the brand name in the minds of your existing customers. This will allow you to retain more patients, have more follow-up bookings, and better return on investment.
2. Expand Market
Medical clinic marketing casts a limelight over your healthcare facility. Before the expansion of digital marketing, healthcare facilities completely depended on the local surroundings for their business. However, SEO can give you the ultimate online exposure that can help you expand the market.
3. Competitive Edge Over Competitors
About half of medical clinics do not use digital marketing. Hence, using online marketing strategies automatically gives you an edge over your competitors. As for the ones who already have a digital presence, you have to simply be good at it to beat them.
4. More Return on Investment
It takes quite some capital to establish a medical clinic. The rooms, amenities, and machines can cost quite a lot of money. Spending a small amount on digital marketing can Fastrack return on investment and shoot up the profit figure.
12 Killer Marketing Strategies for Healthcare Services for More Patient Conversions
Your medical clinic can be the best in the locality and yet get less business than your competitors. The reason is that your competitors’ online visibility and marketing strategies are superior to yours.
If you are looking for better online visibility, then adopting a more effective approach to your medical clinic marketing is necessary. This is why we are here with the 12 most effective marketing ideas.
1. Your Website Is Your #1 Medical Practice Marketing Asset
In the domain of digital marketing, your website is your biggest asset. The user experience of your medical website and the overall navigational ease can make or break your healthcare marketing efforts.
Your website acts as the face of your medical practice for people who do not know you personally. It is the No.1 asset that you can leverage to skyrocket your medical practice by attracting more prospective patients.
As medicine is a serious field, the website should look professional but not at the cost of functionality. Visitors must be able to navigate from one page to another freely. Your website should have critical information about the staff, visiting doctors, and their available dates.
Another way to hype up the patient conversion rate is by adding a call-to-action tab on the website to expedite the appointment booking process.
2. Superb Website Content Has No Alternative
Do you know which is the no.1 ranking factor according to Google?
It is HIGH QUALITY CONTENT.
Gone are the days when stuffing keywords in any website fetched higher website rankings. With the introduction of NLP (natural language processing), the tables have turned 180°. Hence paying attention to your website content is primary.
Also, as the owner of the medical clinic website, you have to abide by the HIPAA Privacy norms. As you are not a professional content writer, it is best to leave this job to a content marketing firm. However, if you are determined to do it on your own, make sure to go through some content marketing tips before you start writing for your website.
While writing content, make sure to infuse keywords organically and use meta tags, meta descriptions, infographics, and image alt tags in the content body. Make sure that your content has a personal touch and professional tone.
You can start a blog section. Here, you can address common medical concerns, their remedies, and life-saving emergency tips. These are valuable content that people search for. Addressing these questions helps the website garner credibility.
3. Invest in Social Media Marketing for Doctors:
In 2024, devising a solid social media strategy is one of the fundamental perquisites of effective medical clinic marketing. An average user spends 2.5 hours daily on social media platforms. Squeezing into their timeline within this wide span should not be a problem if you approach SMM for medical clinics in the right way.
Social media is a powerful tool to broadcast advertisements, discounts, and any other ongoing offer at your clinic. Potential patients who might be searching for doctors like orthodontists, orthopedics, pediatricians, or simply preventive care tests might come across these posts and make up their minds to visit the clinic.
You can use social platforms to connect with your current patients and potential patients as well. Healthcare marketing on social media holds the potential to boost website traffic and actual footfall in your clinic.
A robust social marketing strategy involves sparking conversions, imparting knowledge, and fostering trust and relationships with the page visitors. Regular interaction with followers, including prompt responses to comments and messages, is essential for maintaining engagement and credibility.
4. Win Local Search Results for Your Leading Treatments
When medical clinics are concerned, most of the footfalls they receive are from the local population.
So, charting up the local search results should be one of the top priorities of your medical clinic marketing strategy.
To top the local search results, you can claim your Google Business profile, use local keywords in your website content, and enlist in the local directories. Also, ensure that your NAP SEO is on point to ensure you get the calls that new clients are trying to make.
If you have a clinic in more than one location, then try making location-specific content to resonate with the local masses. Engaging in local SEO ensures your search visibility increases for better discoverability.
5. Leverage Paid Ads to Target the Right Audience
Leveraging Google Ads, or paid ads for that matter, is one of the strongest formulas in the field of marketing for medical clinics. It is a sure-shot measure to strengthen the patient base.
However, if you are thinking that this is a DIY method, then maybe you need to rethink again. PPC for doctors involves hundreds of micro-elements that are best left to professional pay-per-click experts.
PPC for healthcare marketing includes choosing relevant keywords and then bidding on them to find the best placement of the page. Crafting a compelling ad copy is perhaps the most important aspect of PPC.
The Ad copy for medical clinic marketing has to be PERFECT!
If it does not speak with the audience, the PPC campaign is doomed!
Also, you have to set a cap on the maximum ad spent. Although you will do geo-targeting and take all the measures to prevent bad clicks, it is best to set a limit on spending just as a measure.
PPC for healthcare professional’s targets specific demographics who are likely to be in need of medical attention. You can tailor the ad campaign according to the intention, geographical locations, or demographic cohorts for the best ad clicks and conversions.
6. Generate New Patient Reviews
The recent online patient reviews are the same as yesteryear’s word of mouth marketing. A portfolio of good patient reviews is a direct reflection of the service quality of your online facility.
90% of people evaluate a doctor or medical facility by looking at the patient reviews! The number is strikingly high. Hence, if you want to be in the game, not getting bad reviews is not enough. You have to actively engage and ask patients to leave a positive review on your website or on Google My Business, Yelp, Healthgrades, etc.
As search engines prefer businesses with higher positive reviews, your medical practice might fetch better rankings on the search engines and attract new patients.
Asking patients for a review right after a health checkup might be a bit too salesy for medical professionals. In such scenarios, you can use automated message requests or in-office prompts asking to leave a review.
However, challenges like a few negative reviews can mark the reputation of your medical clinic facility. In such a scenario, approach a PR services agency to control the damage.
7. Start Collecting and Marketing Patient Video Testimonials
If one image is worth 100 words, a video is worth 100 images!
Video testimonials offer a compelling and authentic way to showcase the genuine experiences and outcomes of patients. Harnessing the power of video marketing is one of the most potent ways to attract new patients, maintain the existing patient base, and reign supreme in the medical field.
This is an easy medical marketing strategy you can use on your own. You can also use the help of your medical staff or anyone with a phone and simple video editing skills.
You can take short videos of patients who have fully recovered under your care. Or patients who have had a good experience in your medical facility while treating critical illness.
You can record the genuine testimony on your phone or a professional camera. The choice is yours!
You can totally upload the patient’s testimony without editing. However, editing the video smoothest out the edges. At the end of the day, it’s your choice.
Apart from uploading the video on your website, you can repurpose the patient testimonials for email campaigns, social media platforms, and other marketing campaigns for your medical clinic.
8. Streamline Payment Process with Online Portals on Your Website
We are circling back to how your website can be a determining factor in the profit figures!
Adding a self-payment portal on your website can give you mileage with existing and potential clients. It is a good marketing idea to increase the booking volume.
This option adds convenience for patients, as they can pay medical bills with just a few clicks. It can streamline the payment process and boost the overall patient experience as they will not have to stand in a queue to pay the bills. It also reduces the administrative burden, making a win-win digital marketing strategy for medical clinics.
Popular opinion of the eCommerce industry is that ”prepaid orders have lesser cancellation percentage.” Hence, when patients pay for a booking in advance, they aren’t likely to cancel.
The security of patients seeking medical services comes first. When you add a payment option to your website, make sure to ensure data security. Make sure to use end-to-end encrypted software for the transfer of funds.
9. Add Self-Appointment Capabilities to Your Medical Practice Marketing
Self-appointment facilities are the standard practice of many medical clinics today. This helps patients have a free handover appointment booking. Offering self-appointment capabilities empowers patients to take control of their healthcare journey. It enables them to schedule appointments on their own.
The self-appointment feature also saves some bucks. With this, you do not have to keep a designated person to attend calls, make appointments, keep track of the patients, and update you on the canceled bookings. A simple look into your website tab in the ”appointments for the day” section should suffice to give you a complete idea of the line of patients you have to check today.
If you plan on implementing this marketing strategy for your healthcare facility, then you have to work on your website a great deal. For instance, you have to activate real-time appointment availability features, automated appointment reminders, and integrate patient health records for better patient satisfaction.
10. Generate New Patient Referrals Through Physician Outreach
Physician outreach is a proactive strategy that helps you build a better network within your community and gain more new patients through referrals. A patient referral program involves establishing open communication and forming collaborative partnerships with local doctors.
You can implement a referral program to gain more patients. It fosters a better relationship with the other healthcare professionals within the community and is beneficial for all.
For instance, your medical clinic houses a host of doctors of varied fields. However, it lacks a cardiologist or a pediatrician. If you know patients looking for a heart doctor you can refer them to a doctor who is within the referral program, and other doctors would do the same for your healthcare facility.
To have a full-fledged referral network, you can consider engaging in activities like education seminars, networking events, and meetings with other doctors.
11. Use Gamification in Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Gamification as a means of medical marketing strategy is a coming-of-age technology that you can incorporate to boost the follow-up visits of the existing patient base.
Smart doctors understand that patients can soon get bored with routine checkups, especially when they do not have any data at hand. You have to walk an extra mile to use gamification as a digital marketing tool.
First, you can develop an app for your medical clinic where patients can track their wellness records and play games that compel them to stay fit and earn points. It would be better if the app had a feature that let users compete against their friends.
The benefit of gamification as a means of medical clinic marketing is that it will allow your existing patients to remain healthy by using the app. Also, with the data obtained through the in-app gaming platform, they will be more concerned about health and come for regular follow-up checkups. The in-app mode that lets you compete against friends can also help you earn referrals.
12. Depend on Medical Marketing Analytics to Make Decisions
Whether you take the DIY road for medical clinic digital marketing or entrust it to an expert, you need to keep track of the marketing analytics to draw profitable figures.
With the latter road, a weekly or monthly analysis of your marketing efforts comes included. However, if you do it yourself, remember to keep an eye on the Google Search Console.
Also, if you are using a referral program or an in-app payment method, it is important to track those as well.
Leverage tools like website analytics and social media metrics, as well as advertise performance dashboards to track the KPIs for medical practices. The main KPIs of marketing efforts are conversion rates, traffic volume, actual footfall, user behavior, and ROI.
An effective monitoring of marketing strategies will give you accurate insights and data that are immensely beneficial for formulating future strategies.
FAQs
Healthcare services that want to garner better online visibility should use marketing strategies like paid advertising (like Bing Ads and Google Ads), SEO, social media marketing, and email marketing. Other strategies that work well as a part of digital marketing for healthcare businesses are gamification, referral programs, in-app payment gateways, etc.
HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects the sensitive information of patients. HIPAA-compliant ways to engage with patients are using secured messaging platforms and implementing secured online scheduling platforms.
If you have/ need or want to use healthcare patients’ information, you should always get their consent in advance.
Mobile optimization is super important for SEO ranking, as Google prefers websites that are mobile-friendly. A mobile-friendly website not only ensures a good user experience and a bounce rate but also a better ranking on the SERPs.
The online reviews say a lot about your company. A company with positive online reviews on Google, website ad directories come across as a trustworthy source to search engines. This is why such companies get more organic traffic, as they are ranked higher. Also, most people these days check online reviews before visiting a healthcare center. Hence, online reviews hold immense significance for your medical clinic.
Some of the best marketing tactics for medical clinics are SEO, PPC, email marketing, influencer outreach, guest posting, etc. If you want to incorporate out-of-the-box measures for your marketing strategy, include gamification or augmented reality in your marketing efforts.
Medical clinic marketing requires a lot of effort into a lot of channels. Hence, tracking all the outcomes from all of the channels can be difficult. Hence, tracking the key performance indicators can be fruitful. The KPIs that you should track are the conversion rate, organic traffic volume, traffic through paid search, user behavior, bounce rate, and ROI (return on investment).
A positive graph points to marketing success for medical clinics. However, if you see negative results, do not be disheartened. You can always tweak your marketing strategies for profit figures.
Final Words
Medical clinic marketing can be both a cakewalk and a challenge. It depends on how you approach it. We have enumerated 12 strategies that can help you gain traction on the SERPs and have better footfall of patents in your clinic.
There are certain strategies like SEO for medical clinics and acquiring positive reviews that you can do on your own. However, healthcare marketing strategies like launching paid ad campaigns and gamification might require the help of some professionals. No matter what you do, be sure that you are tracking the marketing campaign for best results.
Additional Resources:
- SEO for Doctors (Proven SEO Tips to Grow Your Medical Practice)
- PPC for Doctors: The Ultimate Guide to Generating Online Leads
- Advanced Lead Generation Strategies for Doctors and Healthcare Providers
- Your Easy-to-Follow Guide to Plastic Surgeon SEO
