Better Patient and Practice Marketing Needs to Be Engaging to Be Effective and to Attract More Patients
After working with doctors, wellness and weight loss practitioners for the past 15 years, I’ve learned that most medical professionals are terrible at marketing to new and existing patients. And I’m qualified to say this because I practiced law for quite some time and now realize that only lawyers are worse at marketing than doctors. Why is that?
We recently held a very popular webinar about some of the very basic concepts around better patient and practice marketing by leveraging your website and the knowledge you already have.
Watch this video and then let’s unwrap what might be effective and engaging about this marketing message:
To effectively reach more clients, customers, patients, your message has to be engaging and it needs to engage patients on their level, where they are. As professionals, we often get this wrong because we’re too smart (or think we are) for our own good. So we talk to clients and patients about what we think they should want (way over their head) without regard to what they really want OR we speak down to them as if we need to bridge a gap between our knowledge and their knowledge.
Stop. You’ve been a client of a service outside of your expertise. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best (and smartest) doctor in the country. Even if that were true, there are things you need to buy that you’re not an expert in and the provider needs to engage you. Picture how you want that service provider to speak to you. You want to learn how the service being offered can change your life for the better.
Most doctors’ websites primarily highlight all of services that they offer along side lists and lists of accomplishments and curriculum vitae. This is all very important practice information that patients should see. But before you can expect patients to compare your offering and bio and experience to the practice down the street, you need to first engage the patient about what THEY care about. And its not your extensive list of publications or educational resume. At least not at first. So you only have a few seconds to grab their attention and like it or not, you need a leading message, a hook.
What is your leading message? Does it speak to the patient’s need? Does it cast a vision for how you’re going to change the patient’s life or does it just tell them what you do?
“We Offer Weight Management Programs” is far less effective than “How Would You Like to Look and Feel Better?” The first message tells patients about a service but doesn’t really speak to the change or result you’re offering. When you list a service feature only, the first reaction is usually, “how much will that cost.” On the other hand, listing a result tends to evoke thoughts of how much value that would bring, and the value to the patient is probably 10 times what you’re charging. So start there.
The video featured above is offered as part of the services built into the BodySite Wellness platform. We help hundreds of doctors, medical and wellness professionals and weight loss providers to provide better care to their patients through our unique platform and being able to use that as a marketing tool is what makes the entire offering so compelling.
Watch for a follow up to this article where we’ll address patient retention through patient education rather than simply pushing promotions to your patients using your CRM. Patients are busy, and smarter than you think. Treat them accordingly and you’ll have more of them, longer.
To use BodySite’s unique patient education and marketing solution, click here for information about a free demo and free trial about our platform.