With the emergence of social media, many healthcare professionals have now their own page on social media, dedicated to their practice in order to attract new patients. However the management of the practice’s visibility on the web might be hard and need a lot of energy and time. As a practice owner and an healthcare professional, managing a Facebook page may not be one of your top priority.
Encourage « Word of mouth » to get new patients
Here is an alternative way that can be implemented to get loyalty from patients and also attract new patients. « Word of mouth » is the oldest communication mean and also still the most used!
Use it!
Indeed, the best way to get new patients is to get referred by your current ones. Happy of their « patient-experience » when coming to your clinic? Encourage your patients to talk about you!
Ideas to implement into your clinic to « boost » your references :
Internal
- Get some engagement from your employees and motivate them to ask your patients to talk about you around them
- Share with your team successful results regarding the increased number of your patients
- Have all staff who are on the phone to always « smile on the phone »
With your patients
- Send birthday cards
- Send « Thank-you » card to every patient who refered you
- Put a new patients « Welcoming » board in the reception room
- Confirm appointements the day before
- Post the « Patient of the month »
- Take pictures of happy patients and place them on the bulletin board
Communication tools
- Send out a quaterly newsletter that educates patients
- Put up educational posters in all treatment rooms or areas to educate patients about the healthcar you deliver
- Put business cards anywhere in your pracrtice that is appropriate
- Write a cloumn for a local newspaper or other publication addressing issues within your profession
This alternative way to social media is free, easy to implement to your daily tasks and can bring you quickly a lot of new patients.
We would like to add that it is also essential to be aware of the e-reputation of your medical practice. Discover our advices, easily implemented, to learn how to manage your online reputation.
