3 Insights on Getting New Chiropractic Patients
You became a chiropractor out of a desire to help others. But to do that well, you need to invest significant time in the administrative elements of running your practice. If you do not take care of the foundation of the business, such as marketing and customer acquisition, you can quickly lose ground.
In today’s competitive world, you are always under pressure to keep bringing in new revenue, and it goes beyond practicing chiropractic medicine. You must also consider employees who are depending on you for their livelihoods.
Modern technology is making it easier by providing new tools to assist with patient acquisition. These tools assist with patient communication and online scheduling and link directly to EHR systems through simple integrations. This helps practices run more smoothly, deepening patient relationships that can quickly feed off each other.
Here are three key areas to focus on as you seek to recruit and engage with new chiropractic patients.
1. Build a Bigger, Better Online Reputation
Clients can afford to be picky because the information environment is now in their favor with the internet. For example, if a person needs a new car or is looking for a new doctor, they will ask their friends and family for referrals and then use the web to find out everything that they can before starting their journey.
Depending on which research firm you ask, as much as 90% of buyers do some level of research before ever interacting with a potential vendor. The same thing happens in the service profession.
In addition to personal referrals, many people explore review sites, where current patients can write of their experiences with a provider. Review sites enable patients to describe their experiences through online reviews.
In the past, you just had to hope that a patient would take the time to leave a review. But the right practice management platform can make a substantial difference.
New systems enable more targeted communication, where you can ask for reviews more easily and patients can leave reviews through a simple mobile or online interface. This is important because the data shows that 68% of clients will leave reviews—as long as they are asked.
You can also improve your online visibility and profile by adding content to your site, such as a blog. Keyword optimized content can help you appear sooner in search queries relying on targeted keyword research. Sending pre-appointment content to patients also helps grow and expand your reputation.
2. Break through the Noise
Today, we live in the information age, which is often inundated with offline and online communication channels. With so much noise, it’s hard for any business, much less a small medical practice, to break through to reach target audiences.
Digital and social media channels hold a great deal of promise and offer new opportunities to connect, but privacy regulations and algorithms make for an up-and-down journey.
One way to get new chiropractic patients is to reach clients where they are. For example, texting for business reasons through direct messaging has exploded: more than 2.7 trillion B2C texts were sent in 2019.
The advantage of text messaging is that you know that you are reaching your target. The statistics show that the read rates of those texts are quite high. A message read is better than one ignored in the noise.
Investing in tools that can give you access to your target audience and building campaigns to reach those audiences have been shown to have incredible effectiveness. It is a proven method for getting new chiropractic patients.
3. Put Patients in Control
The fundamental relationship between buyers and sellers has been transformed in every industry, and healthcare is no different.
Patients want to be in control of the terms of how, when, and where they engage in the mechanics of their care, such as setting up appointments. The system must be on their terms. Online scheduling is a way to free up staff to handle tasks beyond answering phones and negotiating with patients on dates and times for appointments.
The whole goal is to create a frictionless experience. The more difficult that you make it for the customer to get what they need or want, the greater the chance that they go somewhere else.
Developing a reputation as a patient-friendly practice is an investment that pays off in other ways. That reputation gets communicated through online patient reviews, which helps attract interest from prospective patients.
Growing Your Practice with Zingit Solutions
Zingit is a patient engagement software platform that streamlines key elements of the digital marketing of your practice to produce greater visibility with patients, leading to greater loyalty and repeat business.
A key element of Zingit is the use of message-based communications, which increases read rates and opens new opportunities for two-way conversations with patients. Text-based messaging enables you to reach patients directly to ask for reviews, which serve as referral sources.
Even better, Zingit text-based communication can make an impact in patient care by providing a channel for patient education. The platform enables you to make and send “meet the doctor” videos that can further improve links with you and your patients.
With Zingit’s EHR integration, patient messaging portal, web chat to text, online scheduling through a patient portal, etc., your practice can run more efficiently.
You will be able to improve your patient relationships, which will help grow your practice. Patients will see that you have a great reputation, and they’ll be more likely to recommend you to their friends and family.