Find Out What’s Working and Multiply Your Weekly New Patients!

You are probably engaged in a variety of marketing strategies for your clinic.

Before COVID-19, you probably felt fairly good about it because in most places there were more patients than the supply of clinicians could serve. So you were busy and didn't require to be a good at marketing.

As the lockdowns start to end, some people will probably be a little reluctant to jump back in to a normal routine. And that includes coming in to your clinic. Some will continue to prefer Telehealth and video treatment sessions. But either way, your demand will be much less than it was before, at least for a while until the unemployment rates rebounds. 

And if some of your marketing wasn’t working too well before, if you keep pouring money into it once you re-open, you may suffer losses too great to recover from after such a long dry spell.

What Marketing Are You Using?

Chiropractors, physiotherapists, dentists, massage clinics, and other healthcare businesses can use a broad array of strategies, including:

• Website marketing and SEO
• Doctor marketing for referrals
• Live community events
• Email marketing
• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads
• Social Media 
• Webinars 
• Workshops
• Print ads
• Radio
• Newspapers
• Postcards and other direct mail

Check out this video and learn the 2 marketing basics if you want more new patients:

You can use all of these healthcare marketing strategies and probably many more. But the question is – which ones are working for you, and which ones are wasting your money and time?

You need to start ramping up your game and get really good at some specific strategies, each of which depend on having good data.

In this new normal, you need to be really good at 4 things or you will be dead in the water because the demand is not going to be the same with the unemployment rates in this country

1. Getting patients to commit to their full care plan
2. Generating a continuous flow of new patient leads through your marketing
3. Increasing conversion rates for inbound phone calls
4. Increasing conversion rates for outbound phone calls like follow-ups, winbacks, reactivations, and self-discharges

Here’s a guide to growing your revenue and improving staff and patient morale through specific healthcare marketing strategies

Healthcare Marketing Strategies You Can Use Now

How many new patients you get each week depends most on four measurable data points. Those are: phone calls, answer rates, booking rates and conversion rates for each team member answering calls or doing outbound followup calls. 

Here’s how you can utilize your data to achieve the marketing goals listed earlier.

1. Pinpoint Which of Your Marketing Efforts Are Working

Suppose you are running a Google Ads campaign, or are paying for Facebook ads. 

When a potential patient sees that ad, what do they do? What are you asking them to do?

Some may click through to your website and land on whatever page you send them to. From there, they might call you, email you, or fill out your contact form. Others may call the phone number you should be giving them right in the ad and never see your website. 

Using call tracking, you can know which marketing campaigns are producing which callers. Suppose you do a webinar that 100 people attend, but only two people call your clinic afterward. Then, you send out an email to your list of 3500 people, and 15 call you. The email campaign generated more phone calls for you and you know this because you are tracking who is calling, and from which marketing activity. 

You want to know exactly how many new patients are booked from all your marketing activity including Website, Emails, Google, Facebook, Webinars, Community Events, and Doctor Marketing​

This will help you decide what marketing efforts you should spend more time and money on.

Watch this 30 min training video on how CallHero can help measure your how many new patients are booked from doctor marketing, emails, google, facebook, webinars, community events, and website.  

2. Monitor and Increase Inbound and Outbound Conversion Rates

For each call your clinic receives, your goal is to book them for an appointment. Your booking success rate is dependent on the conversion rate for each person answering the phone. 

By tracking your conversion data and using call recording, you might find that one staff member books a higher percentage of callers than another. That tells you the second person needs more training and coaching. The best coaching tool to improve conversions is a phone script, and you can have scripts for a variety of inbound and outbound situations.

In addition to new leads, the inbound situations include cancellations, self-discharges, and active patients calling for additional help. 

Using call recording, you can listen to the calls of each team member and see how well they are using their scripts in each situation. If you have no phone scripts, you’ll probably figure out who is just naturally better on the phone. But with scripts in conjunction with call recording, you can train up everyone and vastly improve your inbound and outbound conversion rates.

Watch video of this clinic owner using call recording and scripts to track data and improve staff training across his 21 locations in Toronto.

Your efforts with these tools and strategies will pay off with big increases in patient bookings and revenue, even if you change nothing in your existing marketing. 

3. Use Outbound Phone Calls to Winback Missed Callers, Lost Patients, and Past Patients

The other conversion rate you should be tracking comes from winbacks, which are outbound calling situations. But before you can track your winbacks, you have to start making the calls. What’s a winback? There are a couple types.

Some people call your clinic and no one answers, but they don’t leave a voicemail. Most clinics aren’t even aware of this source of new patients and revenue, or if they are, they do nothing to pursue it.

When you call those people back, you are trying to ‘win back’ their business. You can assign winbacks to your team, train them with phone scripts, record the calls, and see how each person performs. Each winback is a huge win for your clinic, because it represents someone who probably never would have called you again.

Another form of winback involves patients who call and speak to your team, but who do not book an appointment. You can listen to these calls too, and then call them back and make a second attempt to book an appointment.

Watch video of a Karen in a small town in Saskatchewan who made $17,000 in one quarter just from winbacks, AND improved staff morale

The 3rd type of winback is making outbound calls to your active and past patients.  You want to "Check In" with them and to help your patient relieve their pain over the phone for free and then convert them to a telehealth session afterwards

If you don't convert the 1st time, followup 2 weeks later and "Check In" with them.

One the keys to doing winbacks more effectively is to focus first on the relationship, not on the transaction. 

CARE. 

This is very important! Treat people like humans, not like numbers. Explain how the visit can help them, and what you can do for them. Ask about their pain and other problems. Listen. Seek first to understand. Most people appreciate being called personally. It shows you care. Few people feel much when you just send them an email. Phone is far more effective.

The Power of Marketing Metrics

The power of tracking metrics like conversion rates and winbacks using call recording and call tracking simply cannot be overstated. You can learn so much. For instance, you may learn that one form of marketing activity doesn’t seem to produce as many high quality patients. 

Suppose you spend $500 per month each on Google and Facebook ads. And because you are using call tracking, you know who is calling from each set of ads. Suppose you get 50 booked new patients from the Google Ads, but only 25 booked new patients from the Facebook ads. 

If you measure how much it cost you to get a new patient with the below formula, it will help you decide where you should spend more money and double down on your marketing efforts

Cost Per New Patient  = Cost of Advertisement ÷ New Patients

For example, Google it would be $500/50 = $10 cost per new patient 

For example, Facebook it would be $500/25 = $20 cost per new patient 

So one response to this data would be to increase your Facebook budget and decrease your Google budget. It’s also possible you just need better ad copy.

Or maybe you can measure whether doctor marketing on your referral pads are getting you a lower cost per new patient.

The point is – with this data, you can now adjust your marketing, spend your dollars more efficiently, and win more patients.

Watch video of a Teresa in Alberta making more money and missing fewer callers by tracking their data

Can You Improve Your Healthcare Marketing Funnels?

The Google and Facebook example is just one type of marketing funnel you can put in place for your clinic. You should also have a telehealth funnel for people you can treat over the phone, or with video treatments – especially as long as COVID-19 sticks around. Some funnels will be strengthened with email follow-ups, phone calls, postcards, or combinations of these and other strategies. 

But ALL of this begins with having the right data. Without the data, you are guessing. You’re grasping at leaves blowing in a windstorm. 

How can you acquire all this data? 

CallHero Marketing was created for exactly this purpose. 

We implement all the systems you need to collect the four types of data listed earlier. We use call tracking to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns at generating leads. We measure your answer rates and booking rates, and we use call recording to help you improve your conversion rates, for all forms of calls including winbacks.

You can learn more about CallHero Marketing by clicking the button below. 

ABOUT RICK LAU

Has built three 10 million dollar healthcare businesses over the past 15 years including a network of 127 clinics with over 1400 employees. He is one of the most sought-after mentors for clinic owners (advises to 195+ community clinics) in Canada and USA where he helps owners double, triple, and even quadruple their revenue while having more freedom than they ever thought possible.

Follow @thericklau