How do I get more patients? Where I find the time? How can I afford to advertise my practice?
You love podiatry and you love your patients, but you're having a hard time growing your practice. You have the passion and the skills to make an impact in podiatry, but where do you start?
Growing your podiatry practice is possible through effective marketing and ensuring that you deliver on your promises to help people with their foot health. Marketing is a wide subject with many facets, but growth is delivered by being targeted and having an effective strategy that is implemented. The main areas to focus on are:
- Google AdWords
- SEO Strategy
- Keyword research and web analytics
- Blogging
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Segmented Feedback
Google AdWords
Google AdWords is the most cost-effective way to get new patients. You can target people based on location, demographics and search times. You set a budget and control how much you spend each day. You can track your ROI (return on investment). It's also easy to use Google Analytics to measure your performance.
SEO Strategy
SEO strategy is one of the most important aspects of any business. In fact, it's a game changer that can help your practice generate higher leads and revenue.
SEO stands for search engine optimisation, which means getting your website to rank higher in search engines like Google and Bing. The idea is simple: you want people to find your website when they're looking for something specific on Google and Bing. When they do this (and click through), you get a conversion - either an email enquiry or an appointment request. The more traffic you get, the more conversions you'll receive.
Whichever SEO services provider you decide to work with should be able to provide these key services:
- Content creation (blog posts)
- Keyword research (researching what people are typing into search engines)
Keyword research and web analytics
Keyword research is a strategy that helps you identify the best keywords or phrases for your website and marketing efforts. You can use it to improve your website, sales, and overall marketing strategy.
The first step in the keyword research process is to define what a keyword is. A keyword is simply a word or phrase that describes what you do. For example: 'podiatrist near me' would be a main keyword because it tells people where practice is located as well as what kind of services are provided.
You can find out which words are frequently used by research Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool or another online tool which will show you how many searches those terms get per month so you know how much traffic they'll bring in once they're ranked highly on search engines like Google or Yahoo!
Blogging
Blogging is a great ways to build your reputation and establish yourself as an authority in your field. People trust other podiatrists more than they trust big corporations, so if you blog about topics that are relevant to your target audience, it's likely that they will read what you have to say.
Here are some tips on how to make sure your blog looks professional:
- Make sure there is good grammer and spelling throughout the whole article
- Use paragraphs instead of one giant block of text - this makes it easier for people to read!
- Always proofread before publishing - nothing is more embarrassing than publishing an article full of typos or errors! You might can find free tools online that can help you with this.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a simple, effective way to engage with your patients. You can use it to keep in touch with your patients, get referrals and stay up-to-date on the latest podiatry news.
It's an easy way for you to add value for your patients. For example, if you have an event or webinar coming up that will help them improve their health or business, why wouldn't you want them to know about it?
You'll also be able to stay top-of-mind with people who haven't been under your care recently (or ever), which means they're more likely to remember when they need help next time around.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is a great way to reach potential new patients for your podiatry practice. You can use the following platforms to promote you practice and services:
- YouTube
Segmented Feedback
Hopefully you're in the habit of recording your conversions with potential patients and existing customers, you can use a tool like Google Analytics to get more specific insights into their behaviour.
For example, if a lead comes to your website via Facebook but never converts into a patient, you might want to look at what they serched for on Google before arriving at your page. If all of them have visited patients about bunions or hammer toes, then perhaps those are the kinds of services you should be offering as part of your practice.
Similarly, if all of them come from LinkedIn but never converted into patients, perhaps it's time for you to start building relationships on this platform so that more people will be aware of what kind of care is available from your practice.
Conclusion
It's easy to get overwhelmed with the idea of making your podiatry practice successful. It's important to remember that you can't do everything on this list at once. You should pick one or two things and focus on that until it becomes easier, then move onto the next thing on your list.
When it comes down to growing your podiatry practice, focus on what matters most: growing earnings per patient visit (EPV) and increasing patient satisfaction scores (PSS). These two things are critical beacuse they continue coming back again and again - which in turn helps grow your practice over time.
There are many ways to grow your podiatry practice, but only a few of them will give you the ROI you're looking for.