Running a healthcare business can sometimes seem like a never-ending spending cycle. Whether it’s on bills, wages, rent, or expenses – it can be hard to consider spending more money on something like marketing, particularly when it’s hard to quantify the impact directly.
The difference with spending money on marketing, though, is that (when done effectively) it can bring more patients (and revenue!) into your practice.
Whether you’re personally in charge of your practice’s marketing strategy or if this rests with one of your team members, implementing any of the top 10 tactics in this article will help your practice gets its name out to the public without breaking the bank!
Planning and preparing yourself to get your practice known and well regarded
1. AHPRA guidelines
Before dipping your toe into marketing, it’s essential to know that Australian healthcare practices are subject to different requirements when it comes to marketing and promotion than other industries. This includes following specific guidelines and protecting your patients' and team members' privacy.
This is all in accordance with AHPRA’s guidelines for advertising a regulated health service, developed under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law, to help practitioners and other advertisers understand their obligations when advertising their businesses and services.
For example, under the advertising guidelines, actions such as posting testimonials describing clinical outcomes to your website and social media would be considered a violation. Specific terminology to describe a practitioner’s qualifications and service offerings is also potentially a breach, so we suggest pencilling in time to review the guidelines thoroughly.
2. Branding
It may not be at the forefront of your mind, however, branding plays a fundamental role in not only marketing your practice but also growing your business and developing a solid reputation with your community.
When considering your brand and what you want to communicate, identifying core details such as your vision and mission statements can help to get the ball rolling. Ask yourself:
“What are the values that our practice stands for?”
“Who are our ideal patients/clients? How do we make them feel? And what makes them trust us?”
“How do we set ourselves apart from our competitors?”
“What’s our story?”
“Does our existing name, colour scheme, logo etc, represent the above?”
Defining your brand can help to inspire a welcoming environment, bring new patients to trust you, and help them to feel confident about choosing your practice.
For more ideas on creating a strong and reliable brand for your practice, check out our article, “Getting Your Practice Out There - The Power of Branding”.
And for more assistance in identifying how to distinguish your practice from your competitors, you can visit our article, “Differentiating Your Practice”.
Let’s get digital, digital!
3. Optimise your website
A great website enables your patients to access information about your services and clinicians, plus their areas of interest. You may want to create the capacity for patients to access forms and information about their appointments, online bookings, FAQs, the best parking places, etc. To support all this, your website needs to be well-designed, accessible, mobile friendly, and to harness search engine optimisation - SEO! Something to remember when generating accessible format and language is optimising the content for elderly patients or those with disability.
There’s no need to pay thousands of dollars to a web designer or professional coder when creating your website. Platforms such as Wix, Squarespace and Weebly provide tools and templates to create your content and design. Although each platform provides more functionality when you pay for a higher-level subscription, each one’s minimum package is still affordable.
You might begin with your basic contact details and information, a page for each service, promotional photos inside the practice, and a photo/bio of each clinician and admin team member. As an option, you can also find great plug-ins to enable appointment bookings, complex form features and broader patient portal functionality.
4. Claim or create your local listings
Have you searched your practice through a search engine to see whether third-party websites have set up a listing with your content that you’re not aware of? It can be a bit of a surprise to find a listing of your practice that you didn’t upload, but you can still take control of it! Many third-party directories allow business owners to claim the listing, edit the information, or remove it from their system.
The main directories you’ll want to build profiles for are Google and Bing, as these two search engines are the most used in Australia. You can create your Google profile via Google Business and a profile for Bing via Bing Places.
Other popular health directories to ensure you’re signed up for include HealthShare, HealthEngine, Healthdirect, Australian Health Directory, and associations or directories specific to your specialty!
5. Social media
The golden age of digital media provides us with an abundance of options for showcasing businesses – with social media being one of the strongest contenders! Whether you’ve been a pioneer in the adoption of social media or still struggle to understand its fundamentals, two major (and free) platforms to begin with are:
Facebook – supporting your ability to reach your audience with immediate updates about your practice. You can share information, tailor your services and products list, and connect with followers through comments and private messaging.
LinkedIn – sometimes referred to as “Facebook for professionals”, it’s an essential platform for businesspeople. LinkedIn is a great way to network with other practices and clinicians in your area (and beyond) to share knowledge, promote referrals, and exhibit your expertise within the healthcare community.
Great content to share via social media includes updates about your practice, health tips from your clinicians, news from the industry etc. Although these two platforms are free, you also have the option to ‘boost’ posts as ads. You can also dive into the world of YouTube, set up posts through Google Business, and engage in Instagram or other platforms – it depends on your audience and the best ways to communicate with them.
6. Newsletter
A frequent and timely newsletter is also valuable for updating your patients and peers. Mailchimp is one of several useful e-mail campaign platforms. You can create newsletters from templates, monitor subscribers and their interactions, and view statistics/analytics from each issue sent. Like the website packages, Mailchimp provides more features, tools and freedom as you pay for higher packages. However, their starting one is free!
When your patients provide their e-mail addresses, you can also request that your patients sign up to receive updates from your practice via newsletters, plus include a sign-up link on your website. If you’re stuck on content ideas for your newsletters, maybe you can update subscribers on practice news/accomplishments, health/product tips from clinicians, and other content from your social media posts.
Connect with the locals
7. Get involved with your community
Showing interest in the groups within your area can inspire a strong connection with your target market. Options to consider include :
Visiting the management of local aged care/residential disability facilities/retirement villages and asking to put flyers about your practice on their noticeboards.
Providing real estate agents with content about your practice for the welcome packs they give to new homeowners/tenants.
Contacting local businesses regarding your services and offering assistance with employee injuries/illnesses/wellness programs.
Sponsoring a local sports team.
Volunteering for a not-for-profit or presenting health information sessions in the community.
8. Within your practice
Consider supporting your community in your own practice space. Hosting and publicising a drop-in clinic can identify your practice to people and demonstrate to them the value you place on preventative healthcare. The form and content will depend on your practice, but it could be something like a free diabetes or blood pressure health check clinic.
Potential patients aren’t the only aspect you can focus on. You could also present a seminar or workshop with your colleagues and peers - at your practice, via Zoom or in a hired conference room. Building relationships with local clinicians has the potential to improve referrals and recommendations, as well as extend your professional development opportunities.
Expertise sharing might include topical discussions about recent interest/specialty innovations and personal areas of interest and experience, or you could work together to address health issues in your area.
To further grow and solidify your referrer relationships, check out our article, “Boost Your Referrals!”.
9. Schools, TAFEs & Universities
Would you be able to hold information sessions in local education establishments? Depending on your areas of expertise and the programs they’re delivering, you could cover topics such as the benefits of healthy eating and physical activity, mental health awareness, skin and sun protection, how the human body works etc. Some secondary schools also hold professional development and career programs for their senior students that your practice could get involved in.
If you choose to host discussions/seminars at TAFEs or Universities, you could ask to place flyers on their noticeboards to help to promote your practice.
10. Media
The local media always looks for new stories to present to their audience. Have you recently opened a new practice? Do you have an innovative new service previously unavailable in the area? Is there a current health issue with which you can provide assistance?
You can start by researching and contacting the following media platforms:
Your local radio station – maybe you can interview with a presenter?
Your local newspaper for an article or editorial about your practice/item.
Your community television station to produce an information piece.
The fees for each of these methods are dependent on the platform. However, there’s no harm in enquiring and shopping around!
At the end of the day, you and your team do an incredible job looking after your patients – so if you’re not already, it’s time to put some love into making your practice known and helping patients to find you!
We hope we’ve inspired you to get your practice’s name out there in a low-cost way. For more ideas to get your marketing and promotion activities in place, visit our other Marketing & Promotion articles.
The Augmentum team provides a broad range of consultancy and management services, supporting healthcare business owners and decision-makers in many key areas, such as strategy development and action planning, building effective foundations and teams, keeping your finger on the pulse, and driving growth and success.
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