Attracting new patients online is a challenge for most Doctors, but your practice’s long-term success depends on more than just getting new patients through the door.
It all boils down to your ability to retain your patients. These 5 proven steps will show you how to increase patient loyalty and patient retention at your medical practice.
Building trust and loyalty with your existing Patients are going to be an ongoing effort. If you are consistently improving your patient's experience, I guarantee that your patients will keep choosing YOU and keep coming back to YOUR Practice.
When you care about someone, you invest time in building and nurturing that relationship. Right?
You call or text them to let them know that you are thinking about them. Patient retention works the same way.
Building loyal relationships with your patients are more than just making sure you put on a friendly face every time they visit your practice for an appointment. It requires a consistent investment of time and effort throughout using strategic communication techniques.
Factors that Influence your Patient's Loyalty
Patient Loyalty Tip #1: Give your Patients Personalized Attention
Every patient expects a personalized experience, they want to connect with you and feel important to you. Imagine visiting a Doctor who barely makes eye contact with you, never asks how you're doing, and doesn't even think to ask about the problem that you're experiencing? I'm pretty sure you'd never visit them again. The experience that you give your patients at your practice and even online really determines whether or not they will return to do business with you again.
Patient Loyalty Tip #2: Stay Connected with Communication
Communication is Key! A lack of consistent, valuable, and transparent conversations ends up frustrating Patients. Patients come to you for expert advice and want to feel well informed once they leave your practice. Simple actions like scheduling appointments in advance, addressing their concerns, and reaching out for over-due visits not only help speed up the process, but it increases patient loyalty to your practice.
Patient Loyalty Tip #3: Don't Neglect your Patient's Digital Experience
Your Patient values your knowledge and expertise, but It’s imperative to ensure that your practice is actively engaging with your patients online so that they can find you and get a clear understanding of the services that you offer. The majority of internet users use social media to choose their physician, so it is critical that you enhance your online presence to stay ahead in this competitive digital arena. Here are 5 Proven Steps on How to Increase Patient Loyalty at your Practice:
1. Enhance your Brand Strategy
Branding is not just about interior Décor, logos, or brochures. It is all about what people think about when they see your practice or your providers.
Your medical brand is defined by your patient’s overall perception of your practice.
A medical brand is an idea or visual image that patients have in mind when thinking about your practice, both in a practical (e.g. “their services are affordable”) and emotional way (e.g. “their treatments make me feel confident”).
It's not just the physical features that create an impactful medical brand but also the emotion that patients develop towards your practice itself.
This combination of physical and emotional cues is triggered when we're exposed to your name, logo, visual identity, your brand's story, or even message communicated online.
Your medical brand is the 1st impression of your practice and it is defined by your patient’s overall perception of your practice. Create a medical brand that is effective and consistent in communication and experience across all your Practice’s medical marketing platforms.
2. Increase Patient Loyalty with Medical Video Content
We understand how time-consuming medical video production, video editing, and video planning can be, especially when you have an entire practice to manage.
Most doctors and medical practices struggle with finding the time to plan, film, and edit medical video content that is both effective and engaging.
However, medical video production is essential for practice growth! Patients are moving away from traditional channels and over to visual platforms like social media and email.
If you're running low on ideas to keep your patients engaged and retained with your practice, check out this video for medical video marketing ideas that you can actively start using today.
As our digital-driven world continues to grow, so will the demand for more medical video content.
3. Retain your Patients with Loyalty Emails
Medical email marketing can help your practice reach more patients and increase patient loyalty at your practice by sending email newsletters, automation, and strategic loyalty campaigns.
By sending relevant and visually engaging emails you can directly attract more patients to your practice and retain them. Medical email marketing outperforms less visually engaging channels like google ads and is absolutely essential for every medical marketing strategy.
Reward your Loyal Patients
Your biggest fan and greatest promoter is a satisfied and happy patient. So make sure to create email campaigns that will keep your current patients coming back for more by rewarding them for achieving specific milestones.
Reactivate Inactive Patients
Every practice has patients who go absent for a while. Keep an open line with your patients through frequent communication on your latest updates, discounts, or loyalty specials to encourage them to think about visiting your practice again or even recommend you to a friend.
4. Keep your Patients Engaged on Social Media
Patient loyalty is earned through consistent communication and social media is the perfect medical marketing channel for Doctors to stay connect with their patients online.
There are about 3 billion social media users online every day; in fact, most patients are influenced by social media when selecting a physician; and prefer to book appointments with Practices that have active social media profiles, -- Consider using these 5 smart social media marketing tips.
Show Your Patients What You Can Do
The benefit of most medical procedures isn’t always obvious. It’s beneficial to use social media to demonstrate, how your practice can help meet your patient's needs. It’s also important to use social media as a way to communicate with your patients and drive online engagement. Make sure you clearly state the call to action so that potential patients know how to reach you.
Educate Your Patients on Complex Procedures
Use social media as a place to answer frequently asked questions. Create content that patients can use to help them make informed decisions with your practice. Your patients should trust you beyond the 'in-store experience,' build trust with them online as well. Patients want you to show them all of the available treatment options, service benefits and understand what they need to do next. Share your expertise and valuable knowledge on important health-related topics that your patients can use to improve their quality of life.
Encourage Audience Interaction with “User Generated Content”
Encourage patient engagement with User Generated Content (ask your followers to participate in your content). For example, ask your Patients to take part in a giveaway contest, repost a photo using your custom hashtag or share their experience with your medical practice online. By taking these steps, you are helping to facilitate community and increase engagement among patients, which will ultimately help you increase patient loyalty at your medical practice.
5. Use Professional & Authentic Photos
Medical Photography is absolutely vital for every medical practice; it allows you to connect with your patients with images that are real, relatable, and authentic.
Check out this blog post where we explain the importance of using authentic photos over stock photos because of the significant negative impact that stock images can have on your medical brand.
Patients can instantly tell which practice spent more than five minutes uploading random stock photos versus practices that sought out relevant and professional photos that complement their medical brand online.
Think about your patient’s overall experience with your digital brand and how they may perceive your practice online. Patients should see custom photos of your people and your practice so that when they walk through your practice doors they instantly know who you are and what you do.
Ps. Patients absolutely love to see you before and after photos where you showcase your best work. Grab our free guide on how to take better before and after photos at your medical practice.
Looking Ahead.
Building patient loyalty at your practice is gonna take some work, but if you take advantage of these free medical marketing strategies then you're definitely moving in the right direction. The goal is to develop trust and build strong relationships between your patients and your practice.
Do you need help putting these tips into action?
Our team of content strategists, content creators, and creative marketers would love to help. Book your free virtual consultation with us at any time.