Table of Contents
Step One: Attract Patients Through Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Listings Management & More
Step Two: Convert; Turn Visitors Into Patients Securely & Effortlessly
Step Three: Inform Patients Through EMR Integrations, Patient Texting & More
Step Four: Engage with Potential Patients Through Social Media
Step Five: Activate Your Success by Building & Managing Your Online Reputation
Step Six: Collaborate with Other Healthcare Professionals
Final Thoughts for Having Success During the Patient Journey
There are 6 steps for improving your online presence to rank higher on Google search results. We call these six stages the Digital Patient Journey. The Digital Patient Journey explains attracting new patients, converting them into recurring patients, informing and communicating with patients, engaging with patients through social media, and collaborating with other healthcare professionals. You can use these stages to your advantage when growing your medical practice. By utilizing the strategies that PracticeBeat recommends in this article, you can gain a better understanding of how to stand out as a competitor among other practices.
PracticeBeat is an all-in-one practice growth platform that can implement a variety of tactics on your behalf to ensure that your practice grows in both patient volume and name recognition. The strategies outlined in this article include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social media best practices, innovative tools to streamline communication, scheduling, and tracking, ways to improve your online reputation, and patient referral services. It is important to make sure that your practice addresses each aspect of the patient journey in order to continuously acquire new patients and offer swift, exceptional care.
Maintaining your online presence and being easily accessible makes a world of difference to independent practices seeing regional shifts in market share. PracticeBeat has a team of experts that utilize all aspects of the Digital Patient Journey to optimize the online presence of your medical practice.
How Can Patients Find You?
In the past, accessing medical care has been difficult for patients, with issues ranging from limited availability to choosing which provider is best for them. As a medical practice, it’s important to make sure your patients can get the care that they need without the hassle. In order to ensure that new patients look to you for quality care, your practice should be easy to find and communicate with. With the right tools and strategy, the patient journey that was once complicated can now become a swift process at the fingertips of the patient.
The creators of PracticeBeat, an all-in-one practice growth platform, have outlined the six steps of the patient journey and how you can utilize them to grow your practice.
Step One: Attract Patients Through Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Listings Management & More
The “attract” stage of the patient journey is all about how patients will find you. In this day and age, if someone is feeling an ailment or seeking a healthcare provider, the first thing they will do is use a search engine to find a provider near them. In fact, in 2013, 80% of patients use internet searches to find a medical provider and 70% of them start from Google.
If you want your practice to be the one that they find, then you need a strategy to set yourself apart from the competition. A strategy that will include things like;
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Listings Management
- Social Media & Advertisement
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Ranking #1 on Google Search Results
Search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%. Using SEO tools and best practices helps to put your practice on the map and get you noticed by more potential patients. A well-performing website with keyword-optimized content will continue to make you stand out and bring in new patients. In fact, 72% of marketers say that blog posts, videos, and journal articles are the most effective SEO tactic.
Listings Management – The Importance of MAP & NAP Consistency
With listing management, information such as your address, hours, and more are accurate and up to date. Living in a technology-dominated age, nearly half of all Google searches consist of users seeking local information. Additionally, reviews make up 15% of how Google ranks a business in search results, which alone makes the local listing management process of utmost importance as it improves the visibility of a business, helps create a unique customer experience, and ultimately drives sales. Did you know that Google integrates with dozens of fact checkers to verify your information consistency online? PracticeBeat integrates with them, too.
Social Media – Get Ahead of Your Competitors Through Different Channels
Finally, social media makes you a competitor among other practices. Now more than ever, every practice is using social media to its advantage, which has made social media presence a bare minimum requirement. It is important to go further than just posting and have an effective strategy that is created for your target audience. Advertising and engaging with your target audience on multiple social media platforms can increase your potential for patient acquisition.
Make your practice stand out by ensuring that you rank highly on search engines. The team at PracticeBeat can optimize your website for search, manage your listings effectively, and create social media and advertising content that sets you apart from competitors.
Step Two: Convert; Turn Visitors Into Patients Securely and Effortlessly
The “convert” stage is where you can take your well-designed, optimized site a step further. Even if you have a high-performing website that is ranking highly in search, you need to seal the deal by getting your patients to schedule appointments. 45% of patients prefer to use digital methods to request an appointment online. You can achieve this by utilizing HIPAA-compliant tools such as scheduling, reminders, chat, call tracking, and record-keeping. Check out PracticeBeat’s comprehensive patient acquisition platform and learn about all the different tools you should be using to convert users to new patients.
With a universal scheduling tool, your patients could make appointments with ease, making the process simple for both of you. Your patients will be able to schedule an appointment 24/7, and you will be able to fill cancellations easier than ever before. After they have scheduled, confirmations and automatic reminders can help to ensure your patients actually make it to their appointment and get the care they need.
Call tracking tools can help you keep track of your call metrics better understand the workings behind your patient acquisition process. You most likely keep track of your patient's records and use them to prepare for their appointments. The process of securely keeping and moving patient records can be made simple by integrating our system into your existing EHR. Having these tools in your pocket will reduce in-house staff’s workload while giving your patients a quick and easy scheduling process.
Increase your efficiency and turn first-time visitors into recurring patients. PracticeBeat automates your workflow and provides intuitive tools that make patient acquisition, scheduling, and tracking an effortless process.
Step Three: Inform Patients Through EMR Integrations, Patient Texting & More
The “inform” stage is where your communication becomes more effective and efficient. Over 50% of patients from all age groups through 54 years old preferred digital tools over the phone for appointment reminders and post-care communications. However, keeping your patients informed in real-time can be difficult when you are running a practice. If your patients don’t hear back from you, they may be less inclined to stay with you as their provider. To keep communication open while still having time to run your practice and provide care, consider utilizing digital tools like mobile patient intake and check-ins, patient texting, and digital faxing.
With mobile patient intake, you can accept new patients, no matter where you are or what time it is, all from your phone. Your patients can fill out their required forms from their phone before even arriving, cutting down wait time and allowing you both to have a hassle-free experience. Mobile check-in not only speeds up the process, but it keeps your staff and your patients safe as it is a zero contact check-in.
With patient texting, you can communicate directly with your patient without posing a threat to security. Using a HIPAA-secured chat, you can ask and answer any questions, submit documents, and refer to other doctors in your network. Finally, with digital faxing, you can securely fax important patient information with the tap of a finger. Streamlining your communication process and ensuring your patients are informed will strengthen your patient-provider relationship and keep them coming back to your practice.
Streamline your communication process to keep patients informed. PracticeBeat creates digital tools that simplify patient intake and create a hassle-free experience for both the patient and provider.
Step Four: Engage with Potential Patients Through Social Media
Engaging more consistently and effectively with all of your patients through social media can capture the attention of potential patients even before they visit your site. Your online presence should make patients feel like they will be supported if they become a patient, or strengthen the loyalty of existing patients. This is where social media comes in to help you continue engaging with your patients. With outreach strategies like social media engagement, text and email broadcasts, and automated email campaigns, your practice will reach potential patients while maintaining unique patient-provider relationships.
By engaging with your audiences on social media, you can increase your practice’s reputation. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. are attention-grabbing and are a great way to attract new patients and cultivate a sense of community.
With automated email campaigns, you can put your practice-specific news, offers, and expertise right in your patient’s inbox. Scheduling recurring email campaigns for both new and existing patients can keep your patients informed without requiring any work from either of you.
Maintaining a strong social media presence and keeping engagement high through email and text marketing, it’s necessary to continuously bring in new patients and fortify your relationship with existing ones.
Maintain positive patient-provider relationships with current patients and cultivate new ones by engaging with your audience through social media. PracticeBeat can assist you in creating outreach campaigns, managing your social media platforms, and more.
Step Five: Activate Your Success by Building & Managing Your Online Reputation
The “activate” stage is where you take your practice growth to the next level. After you’ve established a good reputation and strong online presence, you still need to keep track of your patients and your progress. With your patients sharing their experiences at your practice, you will be able to consistently bring in new ones. In fact, 94% of healthcare patients use online reviews to evaluate providers. It’s so important to monitor your online reputation, SEO optimization, and most importantly, turn your patients into advocates for your practice.
Managing your online reputation is vital to your practice’s success. By utilizing a reputation management tool for patient surveys, analytics, and patient referrals, etc., you’ll be able to watch as your patients become advocates and participants in your marketing strategy. When you monitor your online reputation, you can make it easy for patients to leave reviews on their experiences and boost your practice ratings on Google. Not only can patients leave star reviews, but with patient surveys, you can customize surveys for your patients and receive the specific feedback you need to make your practice the best it can be.
By utilizing online reputation management reporting and analytic tools, you can see in real-time how these efforts are helping your practice’s growth. By monitoring your progress and making it easy for patients to share their satisfaction, you can show new patients the impact you have made as a provider. A system like PracticeBeat even allows you to integrate the most current and recent patient reviews directly into your site location, provider and appointment pages.
Boost your online credibility by making it easy for patients to leave feedback. PracticeBeat can help you to create patient surveys, post reviews, and monitor your online reputation.
Step Six: Collaborate with Other Healthcare Professionals and Specialist Physicians
As you run your business, you are most likely collaborating with other physicians. Effectively referring specialists and making connections with providers can allow your patients to receive more swift and efficient care. The “collaborate” stage goes beyond your practice into the healthcare network as a whole. To offer patients a streamlined path to the best possible care, you should take advantage of various referral network tools to collaborate effectively with physicians in your region.
Your referral network is integral to your growth as a practice. When you become a part of a growing network of providers, you have greater success in referring your patients to other physicians or receiving referrals from primary care providers. By establishing an effective way to connect with providers in both your referral and professional networks, you can be sure that no patient’s concern will go unnoticed.
Help your patients get the care they need by collaborating easily with other providers. PracticeBeat can help you make important connections and effectively refer specialists so you can offer your patients quick and efficient care.
Final Thoughts for Having Success During the Patient Journey
To grow your practice and offer exceptional care to your patients, you will need to keep the list of tools and strategies we discussed above on hand. By keeping your high-performing site optimized and easy to find, you set yourself up to rank higher on search engines. Simplifying scheduling, keeping your patients informed, and maintaining an open line of communication with patients and other providers through various platforms will allow you to grow your practice and continue to offer the best care possible.
If you are ready to attract and acquire new patients, boost engagement and communication, and enhance your overall care, PracticeBeat helps digitize the patient care journey and helps practices grow by providing the tools and expertise necessary to outperform the competition. By delivering an effective, convenient care experience for patients, PracticeBeat helps your practice reach its full growth potential.