6 Growth Strategies for Your Healthcare Business

Why do you need growth strategies for your healthcare practice?

Two reasons.

1. The healthcare sector is fraught with competition.

Why so?

With the COVID-19 pandemic looming, consumer focus has shifted to healthcare. Heightened consumer demand is driving healthcare technology and innovation.

As a result, patients have more healthcare options than ever (online consultation, apps, brick-and-mortar clinics, etc.). A healthcare business that doesn’t innovate and scale can’t possibly ride the wave.

      2. Patient demands from healthcare businesses are at an all-time high. Anything from a lousy waiting room experience to a slow-loading website can trigger patients to shift their loyalty to a competitor’s company.

In short, if you want to thrive in this hyper-competitive industry, your healthcare business needs proven growth strategies.

What Are the Best Growth Strategies for Your Healthcare Business?

Whether you operate a standalone clinic or a multi-disciplinary hospital, there are some growth strategies that you need to adopt for efficient patient acquisition and retention.

Here are six of the most effective ones that you can try.

1. Build a Responsive Website

Building a website tops the list when it comes to growth strategies for a healthcare business.

Gone are when patients walked into the nearest clinic to seek treatment or advice. Modern patients expect healthcare businesses to have mobile-friendly websites where they can find details on amenities and practitioners, seek deals, and submit reviews.

For 35% of patients, online visibility matters a lot. When potential patients find a healthcare business online, they tend to verify the business’ credentials and services from multiple channels, including the website, review sites, Google, and others.

So, if you don’t have a proper website, you can lose ground to more web-savvy competitors.

If you plan to build a website for your healthcare business, you should make it responsive.

Why?

Because a mobile-friendly website allows patients to access your healthcare business anywhere, anytime. They can connect with practitioners, schedule appointments, and seek medical help, even while moving.

2. Focus on Your Website’s SEO

The GMR report on patient behavior cited earlier says that 79% of patients start their doctor search on Google. They use search terms like “orthodontist near me,” “best eye hospital,” etc. to find a healthcare business for their medical needs.

If you want to rank well for these search terms (keywords) and attract new patients, you need to focus on SEO in your digital growth strategies.

You’d think incorporating these keywords in your content 100 times would do the trick, but that’s not true. It would be best to optimize the keyword, but don’t make the content spammy. Also, it takes a lot more to earn search visibility.

Such as?

Tons of authoritative content, links from reputable sites, and keyword-optimized website schema are just some factors that govern your search rankings.

SEO can be too technical, especially if you’re not into healthcare IT. You can always hire professional SEO services to handle it for you. They will find keyword gaps in your website and pinpoint the exact keywords your target audience uses.

3. Optimize the Online Patient Experience

A keyword-optimized website that doesn’t provide a stellar patient experience is a failure. People will bounce off your website, damaging your brand reputation.

A slow-loading site with complex architecture and poor support can harm your healthcare business more than good.

There are some things that you can do to boost your site’s patient experience:

Reduce Your Site’s Loading Speed

Investigate your page load speed by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights test. You will understand how your healthcare business site stacks up against competitors in terms of speed.

Image Source

If your speed score is unsatisfactory, implement the speed improvement suggestions provided in the test report.

Simplify Your Site Architecture

One way to do that is to limit your menu items to six and give them contextual names (e.g., Doctors, Services, Ambulance, First Aid).

Provide Online Support

You can use live chat and chatbots to provide round-the-clock online support and improve your customer experience. These can help patients book/reschedule/cancel appointments, find practitioners, and submit service feedback without switching windows.

When you delight your patients with a standout online experience, they will keep returning to your healthcare business repeatedly, which is what growth strategies are all about.

4. Seek Patient Reviews

Now, we come to one of the most underrated growth strategies in the healthcare business — seeking patient reviews.

Typically, patients feel motivated to leave reviews when they either have an above-average experience or an extremely poor one. But, it’s not within the scope of the front-office staff to request patients to submit feedback as they walk out the door.

At the same time, a healthcare business must share positive reviews on its website, Google My Business listing, and social media.

Why so?

Positive reviews give confidence to prospective patients and foster brand loyalty in existing patients, which are hallmarks of successful growth strategies.

So, how can you collect patient reviews in a non-invasive manner?

You can create automated email workflows to request patients to submit reviews when they first avail of your service. A gentle reminder can be sent after a small period of no response from a patient. A thank-you workflow kicks in automatically once they do leave a review.

Like most growth strategies, soliciting patient reviews is not a one-time deal. Do it regularly, and you should see a marked improvement in your patient satisfaction rate.

5. Leverage Social Media Advertising

As growth strategies go, social media advertising is not the first choice for most healthcare businesses.

The reason?

It’s more costly than organic social media marketing, which just involves posting service-related posts, team pictures, and patient shoutouts.

But, let’s face it, how many of you would be keen to reshare these types of posts unless you have a stake in the healthcare business or are deeply engaged with it?

Not many, I’m afraid.

That’s why you need a more targeted approach to social media marketing in which you reach your prospective patients with relevant content. Advertising on social media networks is one way to do that.

You can retarget people who checked out your website but never booked an appointment. Offering them an attractive discount can get them into the fold. Likewise, an ad with compelling offers can help you upsell services to potential patients.

Need a pro tip?

Use automated social media tools like Buffer or MavSocial to automate your advertising. This will allow you to track ad performance and retarget more purposefully.

6. Have a Solid Doctor/Patient Referral System

Building referral traffic is one of the best growth strategies for your healthcare business.

Why?

38% of patients prefer to engage with a healthcare business that is referred by a medical practitioner or friend, according to the previously cited report. It’s like a vote of confidence for your healthcare business.

Like reviews, referrals must be sought strategically. Being too upfront about asking for referrals can make you sound needy or creepy.

Then how can you do that?

Look out for strategic moments and then harness them to earn referrals.

For example, a patient who just had a successful medical procedure at your healthcare business is ripe for giving referrals. Similarly, a patient who has given repeated business might be amenable to recommending your practice to friends who might need your services.

It’s wise to use a referral management solution like ReferralMD to track patient journeys and identify high-potential referrers.

One more thing.

You can incentivize your patients with discounts, freebies, premium service, etc. to get more referrals. This will keep your relationship harmonious and mutually beneficial.

That brings us to the end of healthcare growth strategies.

Need More Growth Strategies for Your Healthcare Business?

Numerous growth strategies can skyrocket your healthcare business. But, not all of them give quick and assured returns. If you want fail-proof growth strategies, the ones I’ve explained above are your best bet since they are data-driven and proven to deliver results.

So, what are you waiting for?

Start using these healthcare marketing hacks and strategies to grow your practice. All the best!