Growing your medical practice revenues by reducing claim denials and billing for the RIGHT procedures is an obvious win.
And streamlining your staffing with outsourcing plus letting a practice management firm like Integra take over those duties will also mean more profits.
But actually, growing your practice by attracting more patients is something different.
And the simplest way to accomplish that is through good digital marketing.
We spoke to a Digital Marketing Pro in order to help outline your options. And the ones we’re sharing here are either FREE or almost FREE.
Grow your Dermatology Practice with Marketing | Existing Customers
The first, easiest and cheapest way to add more business to almost any industry is to start with your existing customers/patients.
If you’ve been in practice for any length of time you probably have hundreds or even thousands of people that you’ve treated over time.
And there are 3 ways to leverage that relationship in order to increase your number of procedures:
1: Remind them you’re there with e-mail marketing!
Believe it or not, a patient that came in a few years ago that needs your services now may not be thinking of you.
They may have mentioned getting something done to a friend, who recommend a different practice.
Or they may just start googling for the procedure name and not associate that with you.
Send your patients periodic email reminders like these:
- Just a reminder – we appreciate you as a patient.
- Good news! We have added the following new services…
- Happy birthday or insert holiday of your choice
- Skin care tips
- Etc.
The topics almost don’t matter – it’s just keeping your practice name top of mind.
And email marketing is VERY inexpensive. Most email marketing software is simple to use and costs under $50/month depending on the size of your list.
2: Ask for an honest review
People that don’t get personal referrals look for reviews online.
So when we did a local search for “dermatologist near me” we got the following results
Which one would YOU choose to call?
The one with the best reviews of course!
You can remind your patients how important reviewing your practice is in a few ways:
- Signs in the lobby or on the office
- E-mail reminders
- Direct request while they’re on-site
3: Ask for Referrals – Give them something to pass along
Nothing is more powerful than a referral. One happy patient talking about their experience with you is gold! And giving them a small gift is a great way to cement that feeling.
And it imbues the patient with a level of obligation – it’s called the Principle of Reciprocity.
Of course, you can provide a tchotchke with your practice name on it. Pens, pads, stress balls are all fine ideas.
But offer them something that they can hand to someone else while you’re talking about referring to it ideal. Even if it’s a brochure or a printed skincare guide from your practice.
And of course – you should add a request for referrals in those emails mentioned above.
Grow your Dermatology Practice with Marketing | Getting Found Online
Even without doing anything with your website you can greatly increase your chances of getting found online -for free- in a few key ways.
Google My Business
Google WANTS you to be found. Or more correctly, they want people looking for a dermatologist to find you. Especially if you and the person searching are LOCAL.
So they provide a “service” called Google My Business [link]. That’s where you enter in all your customer-facing business details. And that’s what shows up in Google MAPS.
Go there and claim your listing. Fill in every single piece of information. Upload pictures.
Then use the link they provide in your emails to encourage REVIEWS.
If you searched for something right now, I bet you can tell which businesses are paying attention and which are not!
Bing Places
This is exactly Google My Business copied by Microsoft.
Once you sign up here [Link] you can import what you did for Google. They made it very easy.
And just in case you were going to skip this because no one actually USES Bing – think again. Bing Places is what powers their online Maps, and Microsoft Edge browser. That’s the one that’s the default for every Windows laptop and phone.
Claim Your Business Everywhere
This is the hard one.
If you search for your business online you’ll probably find a lot more references to it than you expected.
Yellow pages, DnB, Yelp, HealthGrades and more.
You should contact all of these and update your information, description and links.
The hard part is that these companies list your business specifically to sell advertising and/or sell YOU a membership.
The good news is you can get a lot done for free. The bad news is that you’re now on a lot of marketing lists that you 100% need to ignore.
