Do you want to attract more patients to your healthcare practice? You’ve come to the right place. The online world has never presented more competition or more opportunity. Sometimes, attracting new patients can seem difficult, and the importance of retaining existing patients can be overlooked. Below, we define the lifetime value of a patient and offer 5 practical ways to attract more healthcare patients to your practice.
What is the Lifetime Value of a Patient?
Before considering new patient offers or marketing strategies, it is important to understand the lifetime value of your patients. The lifetime value of a patient, known as LTV, is the estimate of the profit or revenue a new patient will create within your practice.
It depends on the cost per visit (C), the quantity of the visits every year (N), and the years a patient stays with the practice (T). Multiplying all these factors gives the true value of LTV.
Why is a Patient’s Lifetime Value Important?
It’s difficult to grow your practice without finding new patients. Before you begin marketing with Pay-Per-Click ads or renewing your site with local search engine optimization, it is essential to know how much a new patient is worth to your practice.
When you realise the lifetime value of the patients, you can choose or calculate the amount you need to spend to attract new patients. A proven method to measure the value of new patients is by calculating the return on investment an expected new patient can return.
Tips to Attract More Patients to Your Practice
1. Know Your Target Audience
Before you connect with potential new patients, you must understand your current patients. Investigate your practice’s records and look at the gender, profession, location and average age of your current patients. This information will assist you in finding the best marketing strategies to promote your practice and attract new patients.
Related Link: Crafting a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy for Physiotherapy Practices
2. Follow Up with Existing Patients
Many healthcare practices spend around 90% of their resources to attract new patients, but they often forget about their existing client base. Retaining the existing patients is one of the least demanding, as well as cost-effective approaches to growing your practice. Likewise, nurturing relationships with the existing patients will increase your word of mouth referrals and warm leads in the wider community.
3. Request Referrals and Reviews
Reviews are one of the most proficient ways for attracting new patients and growing your practice. Encourage your patients to share their feedback in an online review – these will particularly help your local SEO campaign when posted to your Google My Business Profile.
To execute this, try sending a follow-up email to your patient that thanks them for visiting and requests that they leave a review online. A direct link to your Google Business Profile makes this process easier for them and increases the chance they will take the time to leave feedback.
It is important in healthcare advertising not to incentivize your reviews, by offering discounts or free services for your clients in exchange for a review as it is against APHRA’s regulations.
4. Deliver Quality Service
It is extremely unlikely your patients will refer you to other people if they aren’t pleased with your service or practice. You always need to show genuine enthusiasm for your patients. Your manners and the look and feel of your clinic are critical in creating the overall impression.
Communicate clearly with your patients and strive to make their experience with your business positive. If you deliver a high quality, personalised service, your patients are more likely to talk about your business and refer their friends and family.
5. Reconnect with Past Patients
Form a framework for monitoring the appointments of your patients and sending reminders to the individuals who haven’t been for an appointment during a specific period. Regardless of when their last visit was, a reminder or reconnection may prompt the patient to reengage with your services.
These simple approaches are easy to implement and can help to attract more patients to your practice. To learn more about growing your practice or to discuss your digital marketing strategy, contact practiceedge.
