The Challenge of Acquiring Surgery Patients for Your Practice
Navigating the trenches of patient acquisition is a major challenge for most medical practices today, including surgery centers. In the digital age, having a strong online presence is crucial. With so many options available, it’s tough for a practice to stand out above their competition. Patients often go online to find the ‘best physician’, and if your practice isn’t optimized for search engines or you’re not running ads, you might miss out on potential patients.
And while phone calls are still important, they now share the stage with online chats or messaging. How can you decide which method to use, and if using all of them, how do you know which method of acquisition is most effective?
Then, of course, you still have to worry about referrals and reviews. These are as valuable as gold, but they demand a great reputation and a stream of patients who are not only happy but willing to spread the word. With a population that is increasingly plugged into technology, you might have to rely more on reviews than simply word-of-mouth referrals. So, how in the world can you get more positive reviews for your practice?
Acquiring new patients is certainly a combination of having a practice in the right location at the right time, making it accessible, and having a strong online brand with a growing presence – one that overshadows your competition, makes it easy for patients to book appointments, and helps educate your demographic about what services your practice provides.
At Today’s Business, we have a dedicated team for medical practices, such as orthopedics, clinics, and other types of specialized practitioners. With a history of building optimized websites that integrate with commonly-used CRMs in the medical field, SEO strategists that understand location-based businesses, and highly trained PPC experts, we can help you elevate your practice to the next level, and help you find patients, keep track of what works, and optimize your digital marketing money into true profit. And because we understand the implications of ethics and accessibility when it comes to working with healthcare systems, you’ll know you’re in the right hands when it comes to the integrity of your practice.
The Importance of SEO for Growing Surgical Practices
In the world of medical practice marketing, maintaining an attractive website that allows patients to access appointment forms, download paperwork, view insurance information, and pay bills online is commonplace. For a surgical practice, this same holds true, and the website is also often a good place to provide answers to commonly asked questions, introduce doctors, and cover specialty procedures. A website that is optimized for search can make it easier for patients to find your practice and feel assured that they are making the right decisions about using your center for their procedure. Combined with directory listings, such as Healthgrades and Google Business Profiles, ensuring your facility comes up first in local searches is the starting point to growing your practice.
These are the fundamentals of SEO, or search engine optimization, which is unique for health systems and differs from lead generation websites, affiliate blogs, or e-commerce websites. SEO produces long-lasting results, increasing traffic to your website, calls for appointments, and ultimately, more patients coming in the front door.
Paid Advertising Channels in Medical Marketing
Running medical ads has some nuances from non-medical advertising. Ads, sometimes called PPC or simply paid advertising, are commonly run on Google and Facebook, with the following factors to consider:
-Regulatory Compliance: Medical ads must adhere to strict regulations from authorities like the FTC and FDA and ensure they are not misleading. Patient privacy must always be a priority.
-Sensitive Content: The content in medical ads, including practices like surgery centers, is often sensitive and requires careful language and imagery to avoid offending or alarming potential patients, a concern less prevalent in general advertising.
-Target Audience Specificity: Medical advertising targets specific audiences, such as individuals with certain medical conditions, resulting in more focused, careful targeting strategies.
– Insinuation: Medical ads are held to higher ethical standards, especially by search engines like Google. The ads must be truthful, non-deceptive, respectful, and non-manipulative, making no false or misleading claims.
Social Media and YouTube for Doctors and Providers
Email marketing, newsletters, and social media are additional ways for doctors to connect with patients. For surgery centers in particular, or specialized practices that intake surgical patients such as orthopedic clinics, utilizing social media can be a great opportunity to connect with potential patients.
Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok can reach different demographics and help your practice educate patients, establish trust, instill a feeling of safety, and humanize an otherwise sterile process, like surgery or post-surgical procedures, like physical therapy. Regular interaction with your audience, the sharing of patient stories, and branded educational content will speak louder than your website in some cases, and supplement your SEO and paid efforts.
At Today’s Business, we have an award-winning social media team that can help you not only craft your brand voice but be your authentic self. We can help you utilize the best platforms for outreach, manage a posting schedule, and leverage social media in ways that is simply not available via any other marketing outreach.
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, by employing the correct combination of digital marketing practices for your surgery center or clinic, you will naturally start gaining more patients, growing your brand, and organically start outranking your competitors. People can find your business easier, potentially leading to more reviews and calls to your practice, more referrals, and a lot less headache for you.
Today’s Business has helped grow countless medical practices, from single locations to nationwide, multi-location practices. We provide regular reporting, both executive summaries and deep, monthly analysis, goal-setting, and education so that our clients can learn and understand the process as they grow their practice. If you’re ready to learn more about how you can grow your surgery center or other similar medical practice, feel free to reach out via our contact form and help us get to know you today.