Healthcare marketing is more confusing to navigate for health practitioners than diagnosing their patients. Healthcare companies now invest billions in marketing. And if you have a private practice, you may end up doing all the health care marketing. To top it all, digital and online marketing have emerged in the past thirteen years as a new trend in marketing for medical practices. That’s even a new ballgame. Plus, now we add lead generation tactics to the laundry list of marketing chores?
To start off, you’ve created a professional website, but how can you use your website to generate a good return on investment?
In addition, how can you use it for b2b healthcare marketing (meaning building and nurturing relationships with other providers)?
And finally, how can you use it for b2c health marketing (meaning building and nurturing relationships with your patients)?
How can you lead them into your website? How do you get qualified leads?
Three Factors of Lead Generation Tactics for Your Medical Practice
It’s all about meeting the following factors:
1. Great user experience
In the healthcare industry, patient experience plays a key role in getting and retaining patients. It all starts from the moment the patient looks up the provider’s information online, setting up an appointment, and getting seen in the clinic.
And it does not end with the patient visit. All your work at lead generation will have failed if you don’t get your patient’s loyalty in the end.
2. Value-based offerings
Unless you offer something that will meet their needs and address their health problems, they will ignore your offerings. We’ll discuss below what kind of lead generation strategies you can employ that add value to your patients’ quality of life.
3. Patient Satisfaction
What you aim for is excellent patient satisfaction. Therefore, you want your net promoter score to increase. This means many of your patients will extremely likely recommend your practice to other people. Patient leads work in synergy with digital leads for your overall healthcare marketing tactics.
In this blog, we will discuss the top lead generation tactics and strategies. Healthcare marketers use these to boost brand awareness, build a healthcare provider’s practice, and increase patient census and ratings over time.
Five Lead Generation Tactics and Strategies for Marketing Your Practice
#1 Optimize your website
Optimizing your website will lead to great user experience. But first, address its functionality and performance:
- When the patient clicks on your links, do the pages load fast?
Digital technology, unfortunately, gave birth to impatience. We all want everything to happen at the click of a mouse. So if your website is slower than the standard norm, you’ll lag in capturing your target market.
- When they use their mobile devices, do your pages appear readable and attractive?
If they could barely read your fonts, you’d lose your presbyopic audience.
- Is your website secure?
Many people are wary of phishers and scammers. Hence seeing a warning about an unsecured site can deter quality leads.
#2 Make sure you have all the content of a great website
By answering the 5 Ws, your website will have all the information to generate more leads.
Who are you?
Tell your readers about your skills, knowledge, experience, and your attitude towards your work. In this digital era, providers can start building a trusting relationship with their patients on the web.
If you have a team, introduce them as well. Have professional-looking photos on your website with short write-ups and profiles of you and your team.
What are your specialties and the products and services you provide?
Give highlighted details about the kind of services you give, which makes you stand out from the other health care providers. Describe the conditions you treat and their corresponding therapy options. If you sell any products online, indicate the ingredients, the instructions for use, and the cost.
Where are you located?
Make sure you appear in Google searches, especially Google maps. Have photos of your facility. If your clinic is hard to find, describe useful landmarks. Write down directions.
When are you open?
Your office hours should be on the website. Having an online scheduling platform can make it easy for your patients to choose the date and time. Indicate if you accept walk-ins and emergency calls.
Why should your target audience choose your services and products?
Highlight your strengths with testimonials from current patients. Create content that educates and not just informs. Blogs, podcasts, and vlogs are great lead generators.
Then, post the content on your social media platforms with a link to your site to generate website visitors. Position your ‘calls to action’ effectively on your social media platforms and web pages. As it turns out, content marketing remains the top strategy to generate more leads and increase conversion rates.
Finally, apart from the 5 Ws, include the HOWS:
- How to book for a consult, how to register, or how you conduct your consultation. An ophthalmologist would show a video of what a patient should expect during cataract surgery. Familiarizing the patients with the preparation for the procedure can ease their anxiety.
- How do patients pay? Do you accept only those with insurance or is paying in cash an option?
#3 Tailor your lead magnet to your social media platforms
Social media is an excellent source of leads, but only when you use the right lead magnets.
- When targeting B2B leads, LinkedIn may be the best platform for your eBooks and white papers.
- For your B2C healthcare marketing strategy, posting blog summaries on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter with a link to your website may be more effective.
Email marketing is also extremely useful in generating leads. You can test which type of newsletter would have high open rates and click-throughs.
For example, if you’re a health and wellness facility, try sending out 500-word tips or blogs on how to lower cholesterol levels to your mailing list with call-to-action links for online recipes. Or send long-form teasers or short videos with downloadable PDFs. Afterwards, you can analyze your data for these digital marketing efforts.
#4 Employ SEO strategies in lead generation
Maximize your email marketing with SEO-optimized subject lines. Read our Top 3 Best SEO Practices for your healthcare marketing.
It will show you:
- How to make your website authoritative
- How to build your local search engine optimization
- Why you should stick to white hat SEO practices
#5 Be the Lead Magnet
Being a magnet facility or magnet provider means being on top of safety, quality, and performance improvement practices.
Lead generation tactics and strategies are mere tools for you to draw patients to your care. But it’s not the end-all be-all for your practice. Instead, it should support your mission and vision of being the best health care provider in your area of expertise.
Simple gestures can be useful lead generators:
- Look your patient in the eye
- Smile and shake their hands warmly
- Listen to their main concerns
- Address their health care issues
- Get to know them well
- Acknowledge their challenges
It’s easy for them to follow you on social media, read your blog posts, and comment on your videos when they trust you.
A word on videos and other ways to promote lead generation
In your waiting room, you can play short educational videos, and at the end of every segment, highlight your website with a readable link. Make it visible and clear.
Videos may also include your community involvement and how your practice provides free services to the underserved population. This forms part of your branding that makes consumers patronize and support your services.
When a patient calls your facility, and you need to put them on hold, be creative with your audio. Have some educational tips on self-care and promote your website for more in-depth information. It’s a simple lead generator that can issue an immediate call to action.
We Can Help You with Lead Generation Tactics
There are many ways to get qualified leads. Start by having an SEO-optimized website with valuable content so that your lead generation efforts will result in lead conversion.
Or, just contact the experts here at Content First Marketing. Set up a FREE review here with us to see how we can help you find more qualified patients to grow your practice.
References
Arnott J. Content First Marketing: The Ultimate Guide to Building Authority, Establishing Trust, and Creating Lifetime Customers. Performance Publishing Group, McKinney, TX. 2014.
