There is hardly a practitioner in Canada (or anywhere) that does not wish to increase the number of new patients into their practice. Unfortunately, patients do pass on, move on, and so on. Therefore there is a certain rate of attrition in any practice that necessitates having more new patients coming in than are leaving.
Like most practitioners, you probably love having word of mouth referrals the most, right? So … how can you increase that?
Word of Mouth Successful Actions
There are many, many actions that inspire your clientele to refer to you. Here are a few:
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Perfect service.
This means how you and your team come across to the patient or client. Patients generally do not know if you are technically a good doctor or not (they BELIEVE that you are). But they do know if you are genuinely glad to see them, how do you sound on the phone with the person, how do you greet them when they arrive in the practice? Are you bored sounding or coming across as polite but no affection? Do you really have the purpose to give this person perfect service and make it a memorable visit? Do you follow up with them a few hours later or the next day if they had a major treatment from you?
There are a million more ways to improve the care and love of your patients or clients. Keep in mind that if you asked the person if they feel they deserve perfect service, so-so service or no service, they always feel that they are paying their hard earned money to you for perfect service. Makes sense, right?
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Google reviews and RateMDs
Ask all your good patients to go to Google reviews and RateMDs and put something up there to help build your practice. Most will be willing to do so if they are even semi-literate on the internet. You could print a little instruction sheet or card with the steps. It’s fairly easy to do.
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Survey your patients
You have a whole bunch of vehicles to use to make your practice known and well thought of, such as fliers, Facebook pages, websites, ads in papers and on the internet, etc. The trick is to make the use of those venues as productive as possible. You need to find out exactly what your patients or clients love about your practice. Then use those words or descriptions in the above promotional vehicles and you will attract more new patients like those.
Here is a magic tool to help you: Use a program online called Survey Monkey. It is free and you post 2 or 3 questions on it and send it to every patient or client that you have an email address for.
Sample questions:
- What do you like most about our practice?
- What would you tell your friends, family, neighbours, and co-workers about our practice?
When you get the answers back, you will now have the wordings that you need for effective marketing. The responses may say things like: the friendly staff, you get us in and out very efficiently, no waiting to be seen, run on time, knowledgeable staff and doctor, etc. Turn those around into statements: “We take care to get our patients (or clients) in and out in an efficient, caring manner.” “Running on time is a passion in our practice. Come and see it to believe it!” “Our patients say we are the friendliest practice they’ve ever been to.” And so on.
This is using your own patients’ “word of mouth” in your promo and attracts the kind of patients you like treating!
Have fun with this!
