When first starting your wellness business, it can be challenging to build up your clientele. You may have met your first few clients through word-of-mouth or referrals from your network, but as your practice grows, you’ll need to continue to find new channels to attract potential clients. To help you build your clientele, we’re sharing a few healthcare  marketing strategies for private practices that focus on building relationships, retaining your current clients, and attracting new clients.

Offer a lead magnet

When marketing for a medical practice, it is a good idea to offer a lead magnet. A lead magnet is free premium content you offer people who visit your website in exchange for their email address. In most cases, the lead magnet is sent directly to their inbox when they enter their email address—which you can later use in your healthcare marketing plan. It’s a risk free way for them to get valuable content, so most people are willing to opt in. Examples of a lead magnet can be an ebook, whitepaper, collection of recipes, infographic, or even a mini challenge you think your prospective clients will find useful. Whatever you decide on, make sure it’s of value to your ideal client. You may want to take a poll of your audience before starting your private practice marketing strategy to see what they would find most useful.

Email marketing: start a newsletter

One powerful marketing strategy for medical practices   to utilize in your wellness business is a regular newsletter. Your newsletter may be a fun monthly (or seasonal) update about your practice, but it can also be an effective way to attract new clients, as well as keep old clients engaged. This may sound like a lofty venture, but really, it’s much faster than you might think. Get started by signing up for a mail-service, like MailChimp or look into newsletter services that may be provided by your website developer. Compile a list of email addresses, whether they be from past clients or anyone who has expressed interest in your practice via email. Newsletters are great to keep clients feeling in the loop and remind them of their experience with your practice.

Content marketing

The last thing you need to consider with physician practice marketing is content marketing and coming up with engaging content. It can be hard to find the time to consistently create new newsletters and/or blog content — it’s especially difficult if you are building your private practice while working another job. Here’s how to get new content out consistently, even if you’re short on time:

• Block off a solid amount of time each week or month to work on your newsletter. You’ll need at least 2-3 hours in a sitting to get the ball rolling and make progress on your content. Decide if you want to block off time each week, or choose 1 weekend a month to dedicate to your content creation.
• Create content smartly that can be repurposed across multiple channels. If you write 2-3 blog articles, that content can be used in your newsletter and broken down into smaller content to use across your social channels.
• Have a healthcare content marketing calendar. That’s right — have a calendar for each day/week and write out topics that you’d like to blog about or share on social media. It will allow you to see an overview of your content, looking at several days/weeks at a time.

{{pp-newsletter-signup}}

Search engine optimization

Today, having a website isn’t always enough to connect you with new potential clients – especially when yours is only getting lost in the pages of search results. How can this be turned around? The short answer is SEO – Search Engine Optimization. Search engine results are  a key factor in healthcare marketing strategies and are determined by two factors: 

1. Your website’s content and 
2. Your off-site internet presence 
   

Search engines are not out to sabotage your business, so let’s focus on what they can do to best benefit your efforts in marketing your private practice. Your on-site presence is largely dictated by keywords. Include all the essentials. Using keywords in article or page names, title tags, title attributes, and meta descriptions will help make your website more findable on the internet. Keywords can range from “Physical Therapy” to “Lactation Consultant in Trenton, New Jersey” – the more specific you get the more likely the right kind of person looking for a private practice like yours will find you online. Implementing keywords can seem a little tricky – page titles are the easiest overall way to use keywords for SEO, but far from the only option.

Community marketing

There is not just one strategy when marketing for a medical practice . While we often discuss social media marketing or even Facebook advertising, there is more to marketing than what you can create online. Community marketing focuses on the tangible, physical ways you can promote your practice within your community. 

Though in-person events are one of the most powerful marketing strategies for healthcare organizations,  this year, most events will likely take place online for the health and safety of the participants. Presenting during a community event gives you the chance to excite, connect, and engage with potential clients. During your event, you’ll be able to prove your services have value and convert those potential leads into paying clients. For the most success, choose events and speaking opportunities that are relevant to your ideal client. This year, your options for speaking engagements are endless, due to the likelihood that most events will be held online and you can participate no matter your location. Think about topics your ideal client may be interested in, and start from there. 

For community marketing for a medical practice, creating a brochure will help with every next step along the way to spread the word about your practice across your community. It is an easy item to take from a farmer’s market stand or hand out at a gym and could even help your referral partners to have an on-hand tri-fold with all of the essential information they would like to know about your practice.

Build your referral network

Obtaining new client leads is the top benefit of extending your referral network. In a relationship with other providers, it is more likely that they will value your services and speak highly of you to others, and in return, help you establish a more steady flow of clients for your practice. Being referred by a mutual contact is one of the strongest marketing strategies for medical practices and one of the best ways to obtain a client base. Chances are, a majority of your clients are referred to you by a mutual friend or acquaintance.

By building a client referral network, you can connect with other wellness professionals, and start to receive a steady referral of clients. Even having as few as one or two wellness professionals referring clients to you on a regular basis contributes to your healthcare marketing plan, and to keeping your client-load full. Spending the time to build, grow, and nurture your client referral network is well worth the payoff. Read our best practices for building a referral network here. 

Download our healthcare marketing ebook here for a comprehensive breakdown of how to develop your wellness business’ marketing strategy.