Does your DPC practice have a marketing strategy?
Establishing and growing a direct primary care (DPC) practice requires letting people know what you have to offer and how you can help them improve their healthcare outcomes. Your DPC practice is essentially a small business and, like any business, needs marketing to sustain its client base, or patient panel in your case. Does your DPC practice have a marketing strategy?
You may already have some marketing elements in place. Your practice website, social media presence, and requests for reviews and referrals are all essential to reaching patients effectively. A marketing strategy gives you a focused plan for how you use those marketing elements to sustain and grow your practice in the near future and long-term.
Elation Health is focused on helping you manage and grow your DPC practice efficiently. Learn more about our DPC All-In-One Solution for your practice.
Why do you need a marketing strategy for your DPC practice? The benefits include:
- Improving your competitive advantage over similar practices in your area
- Increasing your visibility among patients and potential patients
- Developing a solid reputation among patients and potential patients
- Understanding the needs and expectations of your patients
- Understanding your patients’ perceptions of the quality and results of their experience within your practice
- Providing quality, memorable experiences to patients
- Building a strong, effective, dominant brand on the health services market.
Your marketing efforts will play an important role in helping you create value, communicate your practice offerings, and providing that value to your target market. The ultimate goal of your marketing strategy is educating and promoting your practice to potential patients, which will result in relationship building and in creating a high level of patient satisfaction.
Digital content will be a critical piece of your marketing strategy going forward. Patients are increasingly going online to find new healthcare providers and to secure remote care. More than 80% of patients use their smartphones frequently to identify or interact with physicians.
Ensuring that your website content is mobile-friendly, for example, will increase the opportunity for your DPC practice to be found and for potential patients to engage with your site. Posting informative blogs on your website, offering helpful information on social media (while adhering to HIPAA regulations), and keeping all of your information current and accurate are important aspects of your marketing strategy.
When planning a marketing strategy for your DPC practice, consider where your patients will look for you. Approximately four out of five people will search for a healthcare provider online. You will need to distinguish your practice among the many other healthcare practices that your potential patients will find in their search.
Some marketing strategy considerations to keep in mind include:
- Branding your practice and maintaining consistency in your branding across all platforms. Branding helps you establish a unique identity for your practice.
- Making it easy for patients to find your information. Keep your website clean and focused on the user experience.
- Ensuring that your site is mobile-friendly. Your website will be more likely to be ranked higher in search engine results.
- Harnessing the power of social media. Use these platforms to share general health information as well as information about your practice and your team.
- Asking current patients for reviews and testimonials. Your potential patients will also look for your “ratings” online, to see what your patients have to say about their experience at your DPC practice. Social proof has been determined to be one of the biggest drivers of decision-making among potential patients.
Planning your marketing strategy to inform, educate, and persuade potential patients, and to reach them where they will look for you, will help you grow your DPC practice successfully.
