5 Free Marketing Tools to Increase Patient Flow

Feb 7, 2019 | Marketing

You don’t always have to invest thousands of dollars in ad spend or other marketing fees to create impactful marketing strategies for your practice. These five marketing strategies only take an investment in time to increase your practice’s patient flow.

 

1. Google My Business Listing

There are many business listings sites out there, including Yelp, Bing, Hearing Tracker, and even Facebook, but if you have to choose and start with one, you need to go with your Google business listing. With Google holding over 70% of the search market share, claiming and optimizing your Google listing will create the biggest impact for your practice. Once you have claimed your Google listing, make sure you completely fill out your listing so it is as optimized and robust as possible.

  • Enter all your info — name, address, hours, phone number, website URL, highlights, business description
  • Add photos or videos of your practice and team members
  • Use the Posts feature to add upcoming events or specials, or just to highlight anything important happening in your practice
  • Populate your listing with your own Q&A

Googly My Business Listing Posts

  • Bonus Tip: You can create Google business listings for individual audiologists or physicians within your practice.

 

2. Get More “Positive” Online Reviews

There are two significant ways online reviews can help your practice increase patient flow.

  1. They help improve your local search rankings. A recent survey conducted by Moz and industry-leading local-SEO experts discovered that 15.44% of your local search ranking is determined by online review signals.
  2. Consumers overwhelmingly trust and are influenced by online reviews. Online reviews are trusted as much as personal recommendations by 84% of people, and 94% say an online review has convinced them to avoid a business. (Online Review Trackers)

  Tips for Getting More Online Reviews:

  • Claim your listings on review sites like Google, Yelp, and Facebook.
  • Create a page on your website with links to your review site pages.
  • Send an email to your patients asking for an online review after they have had a positive experience at your business.
  • Give your patients multiple options for where they can post an online review.
  • Always respond to both positive and negative reviews.

Where to Focus for Getting Online Reviews 63.6% of consumers say they are likely to check online reviews on Google before visiting a business — more than any other review site. (Online Review Trackers) There are many sites where you can build online reviews, but to focus on building and managing online reviews, we recommend having a solid presence on Google, Yelp, and Facebook. These are the top three visited sites that provide business reviews. To manage and respond to reviews on these sites, you need to have claimed or created a business page. Get a complete online-review strategy, including how to respond to negative reviews

 

3. Create Educational and Informational Videos

According to a Forbes study, 90% of customers say video helps them make buying decisions, and 64% of customers say that seeing a video makes them more likely to buy. You don’t have to spend a ton of money, or really any money on fancy cameras or video editing software to create and promote effective informational and educational videos that showcase the services and products you offer. Tips for Shooting Your Video:

  • There are some instances where moving around with the camera makes sense (like giving a tour of your practice), but for a lot of educational videos, having a steady camera is best. Use a tripod or some other device that can ensure your camera is steady while filming.
  • Write out a script beforehand. Having a good plan before you start filming can save you a lot of time in the end.
  • Create videos based around common questions your patients and prospects are asking you on the phone or during appointments.
  • If you don’t have an external microphone, make sure the camera is close enough to you so that your voice is clearly picked up. Remember your audience.

Promoting and Sharing Your Videos:

  • Create a YouTube channel for your practice and upload all your educational and informational videos to your channel. One in 3 boomers say they use YouTube to learn about a product or service. Make sure to optimize your videos for search as YouTube is the second most popular search engine, and your videos can show up in Google search results as well.
  • Embed them on your website. If you have a blog, embedding your videos on a blog-post page is another great opportunity to share your videos.
  • Promote via social media, whether it is Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or another.

 

4. Utilize Social Media the Right Way

social media sharing ideas for audiology practices

From Facebook and Twitter to LinkedIn, Instagram and other platforms, social media offers creative ways to help your practice reach, engage, and bring in new patients, so why not use it to its full advantage? Here are tips to help make your social media efforts a success.

  • Use images when you can — modify stock images to make them unique to your practice, and keep images relevant to your practice or target audience. Facebook posts with images see 2.3 times more engagement, according to Buzzsumo.
  • Use your page insights to see when your followers are most active on Facebook, allowing you to adjust posting times based on actual followers rather than averages.
  • Make at least two to three posts per week, but avoid making more than three in 24 hours.
  • Save time by scheduling posts in advance, so you don’t have to remember to post if you get busy.
  • Make sure content is useful, relevant, and ties back to your practice or industry in some way.
  • Share community events and other information — even if your practice isn’t directly involved.
  • Ensure only 20% of your posts are self-promotional.
  • Spotlight your practice’s employees to humanize your social media presence.
  • Pay attention to the rise of video, which more and more businesses on social media are turning to for visual content that’s easier to digest by consumers online.
  • Create a content calendar to help you and your team stay organized and ensure you are posting consistently.

 

5. Make Your Website Faster and More Mobile Friendly

mobile website

No longer can you skate by with a website that is not mobile friendly, even with an older demographic. Mobile-usage rates increase every year, and providing your audience with a quality user experience is critical. Search engines will even dock you if your site is not mobile friendly. Did you know 50% of visitors to your website will leave if the page takes longer than three seconds to load? Here are four tips to help improve your website:

  1. Make It Easy to Navigate: Keep your content clear and easy to read. Avoid pages full of heavy paragraphs. Make your content quickly scannable for viewers.
  2. Optimize Your Forms: Ensure it is easy for your visitors to find your contact forms and that they are easy to fill out, with optimized fields and buttons.
  3. Increase Page Speed: Ensure your website has clean code, reduce the file size of your images, or eliminate unnecessary images that slow down page speed.
  4. Clickable Contact: Ensure your phone number has the click-to-call function so your visitors can contact you without frustration.

These tools are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to marketing for your practice. If you have any questions about how to get these or other marketing strategies started, don’t hesitate to reach out to the Audigy team today.