8 of the Best Patient Lead Generation Strategies for Clinics

Have you been growing your clinic's business through word of mouth from existing patients and practitioners? Maybe your team has joined a few events and tried to spread the word about your clinic.

Did you know, doctor referrals to PTs dropped 50% between 2003-2014? In this digital day and age, word of mouth is simply not enough to run a thriving clinic — but that's what you want, don't you?

So what patient lead generation strategies should you be using? There are thousands of lead generation tools and marketing strategies, but you want to leverage the patient lead generation strategies that are best suited to your clinic. After all, that is why you're here, right?

Focusing in on lead generation means that you need to connect with potential patients on all four parts of your sales funnel (Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action). Most clinics fail to see through the entire lead generation process, or throw a 'net' to capture new leads that is too narrow. Now is the time to step up and create that finely tuned patient lead generation strategy.

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Patient Lead Generation Strategies

We've done the research to give you the 8 Best Patient Lead Generation Strategies for Clinics — time to put your business hat on!

1. Social Networks
2. 'Google My Business' Profile
3. Facebook, Instagram & Google Ads
4. Content
5. Email Marketing & Email Lists
6. Online Reviews
7. Events
8. Website Landing Pages

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1. Social Networks

Instagram and Facebook are two of the best social networks to focus your time on when it comes to an inbound lead generation strategy with social media, and the stats don't lie.

Interesting Facebook Stats

• Facebook.com is the worlds' third most visited website
• 66% of monthly users are daily
• The average engagement rate for a post is 3.91%
• The number of ad impressions increased by 21% in 2018

Interesting Instagram Stats

• 75% of users discover products on Instagram
• Instagram has a 2.2% interaction rate, much higher than Facebook's 0.22%
• 50% of Instagrammers follow brands, making them the social networkers that are most likely to do so

Each platform lets you connect to thousands of potential patients by showcasing your clinic's facility, clinic team, treatment procedures, patient stories, and your team's day-to-day. Just don't forget to reach out directly to potential patients and make each post personable!

Facebook Quick Tips

• Focus on conversations and interactions on your clinic's page
• Try start discussions with content and posts
• Content goes viral when people share your posts on their own timelines or stories
• Create content that tells a compelling story (e.g. A patient's successful treatment)
• Update your contact information
• Add a Call-To-Action to your clinic's phone number or to your appointment booking URL
• Act local, tag local, connect local

Instagram Quick Tips

• Post pictures of rehab techniques and insights into your clinic's therapy
• Use hashtags (#) to reach your audience using a location (city), discipline (physiotherapy, chiro, massage therapy), or common injuries & conditions (broken ankle, back pain, anterior pelvic tilt)
• Don't abuse hashtags, anywhere from 4-10 hashtags can get the job done
• Drive potential patients to your website or appointment booking by attaching the URL in your Instagram bio
• Give the audience a reason to seek more information from your posted content
• Your posts are your brand — keep similar styling and content
• Act local, tag local, connect local

Remember, on both Facebook and Instagram, place a link back to your appointment bookings page or direct contact information such as a clinic phone number so that patients can easily book appointments.

Facebook and Instagram serve as some of the ultimate branding tools for your clinic. They are personable and they connect you directly to a targeted audience. Don't forget that persistence and knowledge of the tools within both platforms allow your clinic to extend its lead generation funnel.

But don't forget organic posts have a limited reach. If you're serious about growing your clinic, why not invest in a few Facebook or Instagram ads? There's more on that later, keep following along!

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2. 'Google My Business' Profile

'Google My Business' is a key component to being found online and again, the stats don't lie.

Interesting Google My Business Stats

• 86% of consumers read an online review for local business (2017) with 12% looking for a local business online daily
• 82% of mobile users use a search engine when looking for a local business
• 28.88% of consumers who search for a type of local business on a mobile device make a call or go to that business within 24 hours
• Over the last two years comparable searches without 'near me' have grown by 150%

Start to attract new customers with a free Google My Business profile. When potential patients search for your clinic on a search engine such as Google (the #1 used search engine), they want to see more than just a link to your website and a boring write up. So how do you stand out?

Stand out from your competition by creating a full Googe My Business profile that encompasses:

• Google Ads
• Google Reviews
• Information about your clinic
• Google Virtual Tours
• Customer photos
• Information about services
• Clinic hours
• Insights and analytics
• Information about practitioners

After creating the ultimate clinic profile you might be wondering, what does Google's algorithm take into play when potential patients search for relevant clinics?

• Relevance – How well your local listing matches what someone is looking for
• Distance – How far the searcher is from the location term used in searching
• Prominence – How well-known a business is, the more positive reviews and information on the web, the better

Leverage Google My Business to be found when potential patients are looking for services nearby. It's easy to set up, easy to monitor, and easy to gain insights into your potential patients!

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3. Facebook, Instagram & Google Ads

Organically growing your social media following is a long term play, but to supercharge your clinic's follower base look into paid advertisements.

The internet is increasingly becoming a pay-to-play space, which means that your clinic should invest in ads if you want to see an influx of new patients from the internet.

Paid advertisements help you stand out from the organic clutter, be it at the top of a Google Search, on the side of a Facebook Feed, or an Instagram Post from a company that you don't follow.

The most common method of paid online advertising is PPC (pay per click). This advertising is seen in Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) and allows businesses to pay only when the ad receives a click. It also allows your clinic to potentially appear on the first page of Google!

While many practice owners may have dabbled with ads before because they thought "Wow, this platform is user friendly and it's easy to create an ad!" a vast majority of them tend to see a low initial return-on-investment (ROI). It's important that practice owners such as yourself, leverage experts to help with a digital ad strategy to maximize the effectiveness of ads and your return on ad spend.

If you truly want to unlock the potential of digital marketing and online lead generation through ads, you're going to want to talk to the experts. Leveraging the knowledge and specialties of a marketing partner can get you a larger ROI when it comes time to spend on digital ads. Focus on your patients and let the experts focus on driving in leads through a professional ad strategy.

Learn more about how to get your clinic ads up and running

• Facebook Ads
• Instagram Ads
• Google Ads

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4. Content

You're reading content and we know that with some research and intuition you could create your own clinic branded content on your clinic's website that patients would love to read. You're personable, you're an expert, so why not?

Great content connects and builds trust with your audience. Feature articles like 'Patient Success Stories' or 'Specific Injuries Paired With Treatment'. Connect success stories or insights to the reader. Your clinic and practitioners need to 'fit' the lifestyle of the potential patient before they trust you with their diagnosis, treatment, and business.

Post on a scheduled basis. You might have heard this before but consistency really is key. Consistent, high-quality content establishes credibility and brand awareness to patient leads that view your portfolio of content on your website.

Use compelling content to establish yourself and clinic team as experts, after all, it's been shown that when it comes to treatment, patients trust those with more expertise. Don't forget to leverage rapport, relatability, and trust into the content by including quotes from patients.

Don't forget that while you're trying to educate your readers, it's always nice to add flairs of personal touch and entertainment. Again, use patient success stories, images, videos, and white space to capture the readers' attention and keep them locked into your content.

Quick Clinic Blog Content Tips

• Connect past patient success stories to the audience
• Use thought leadership and brand awareness
• Create useful content — not just a 'read along'
• Share content across multiple platforms with links back to your website
• Write blog content that will optimize for SEO
• Break up long blog posts with images and videos
• Link to other relevant pages on your website
• Post blog articles on a scheduled basis

Just as an added bonus, we thought that you would appreciate some keywords for clinics. If you don't know what SEO or keywords are, don't worry!

"Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about. SEO uses keywords and keyword phrases that searches enter into search engines to optimize the results."

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Keywords for Clinics

• Physiotherapist, Chiropractor, Massage Therapist
• Physiotherapy, Chiropractic Therapy, Massage Therapy
• Long-tail keywords – "XXXX services in Location"
• City/Town (Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto etc.)
• Soreness or pain (Shoulder soreness, Hip pain etc.)

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5. Email Marketing & Email Lists

Did you know that a repeat customer is 60%-70% more likely to buy from you? Therefore email marketing is an essential tool for rebooking patients and generating referrals!

Patient lead generation through email marketing success depends heavily on how your message is written.

Subject Line Tips

• Keep it simple
• Use a personality
• Needs to stand out from other emails in the inbox folder
• Don't sound like an online 'Bot'
• Mix it up and add emojis

Email Opening

• Capture the reader's attention right away
• No more than two sentences should make up the opening paragraph

Email Body

Provide relevant information for the reader. Cut to the chase and provide the reader with relevant information. If your clinic is running a promotion or hosting an event nearby, be sure to include the details in the body.

Call To Action

Close your email with a call-to-action that leads the reader directly to where you want them to go, whether it's your clinic's 'Book an Appointment' page or 'Program Sign-Up' page.

To successfully use email marketing you'll want your clinic management software to provide you with a list of all patients with an email address, segmented patient lists, and lists of new patients (Hey, doesn't Juvonno do that?). Leverage those email lists to stay in front of existing patients and capture new patient referrals.

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6. Online Reviews

Want to rank higher in the organic search ranking? Online Reviews, period.

Online reviews allow potential patients searching for a practitioner or clinic to see how others perceive the services, facility, treatment and overall experience of your clinic. Having positive reviews is a great way to leverage social proof, and shows that other patients have trust in your clinic and practitioners, as positive reviews are just as important as recommendations by friends and family.

Encourage your existing patient base to share their reviews through Google or Facebook (that's where potential patients are going to find you). Use a follow-up email after the patient has used your clinics' services thanking them for visiting and if they would be kind enough to rate your services online. Or put a link in your email signature so that patients can directly rate your clinic.

Does your clinic have positive reviews with comments? Why not reach out to the patient and ask if you can highlight their review directly on your website. Doing so will improve lead generation and strengthen the trust for potential patients.

Feedback whether good or bad is valuable. It lets your clinic team know what people appreciate and what could be changed for a better patient experience, after all, you want to be #1 don't you?

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7. Events

Events are a great way for your clinic team to meet potential patients, and there's no better interaction than a face-to-face meeting.

Events can offer your clinic's team the chance to not only interact with potential patients, but also the chance to showcase your expertise and treatment methods.

To stand out with event-based marketing you will want to incorporate digital and physical marketing.

Digital Event Marketing

Events can be integrated by posting pre-event, live event, and post-event content through Instagram stories, or Facebook Live.

Try holding a contest or giveaway at the event that has potential patients fill out a form that allows you to capture their information for email marketing purposes or follow you and post about your event and clinic to spread the word directly to their social networks.

Don't forget to let your team and potential patients know which hashtags to use before and during the event! This allows you to search and connect with anyone that has used the hashtag while creating a post.

Physical Event Marketing

Be sure to come prepared with business cards, pamphlets, and clinic branded clothing to events on site. Leaving potential patients something physical to hold on to and remember your clinic by is a way to keep them in your sales funnel.

Event Marketing Locations

• Sports: Local athletic tournaments, marathons and community runs
• Seminars: Healthy living community seminars
• Workplaces: Host a seminar or educational class for local companies
• Webinar: Host an online seminar about a select injury or treatment

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8. Website Landing Pages

So you've put on your marketing hat and looked through your clinic's website insights on Google Analytics. It seems that there are numerous visits, but your goal of appointment bookings has not had the greatest conversion rate. Why are visitors not booking appointments online?

Maybe it's time to look at creating customized landing pages for appointment bookings. Customers like to be guided through a funnelled process, along with having a customized direct message depending on how they found the landing page.

Let's say that you work with a local community sports team to provide a 10% discount on therapy for all of their teams. It would be best if through their own team's website they linked directly to a 'Book An Appointment' landing page that outlined their discount with team branding instead of linking directly to your website and getting lost before their booked an appointment.

Further yet, link the landing page directly to your Juvonno portal where it shows services and appointment openings. The number one reason why patients come to a website is to find if the clinic has an appointment slot available, meaning that online booking is essential when it comes time to building a landing page for booking appointments.

Whether it's appointment bookings, programs classes sign up, promotions, referrals and more, clinic lead generation landing pages have a specific goal that should easily be acted upon by the visitor.

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How do I start lead generation for my clinic?

Patient lead generation success is not something that happens over night. It's something that takes patience and a strong focus throughout the lead generation PDSA cycle (Plan, Do, Study, Act) with an emphasis on the 'Do'.

Generating high-quality patient leads that will take the steps to connect with your clinic and use your services is key.

Your sales funnel will not convert all leads so be sure to 'study' by analyzing information on your patient lead generation funnel and then 'act' to tweak your lead generation funnel. The more active you are in the PDSA cycle of your patient lead generation, the more leads you can look forward to.

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Work with an expert

If you're tried and failed to want to talk with the experts, connect with the customer service team at Juvonno to see how you can leverage your data and reports within your Juvonno Clinic Management Software.