Free marketing activities in medicine. Where to look for savings? Part I -11 Examples – MEDICAL MARKETING, HEALTHCARE MARKETING
- Blog
- Google Maps
- Graphics in Canva
- Guest posts, articles, interviews
- Newsletter
- Conferences, events
- Webinars
- Youtube
Google Maps business card for medical clinic – MEDICAL MARKETING, HEALTHCARE MARKETING
A business card on Google Maps is a mandatory part of medical marketing. The tool provided by Google has many options to know about and use.
- Address of the medical institution
The primary function of the business card in Google Maps is the address of the medical institution. This will help patients find us faster in general Google search, as well as directly on Google Maps. Make sure that the address is correctly entered and always up-to-date.
- Name of medical institution
In addition to the name of the facility, I recommend that you enter keywords describing our activities, e.g. surgical clinic, physiotherapy services. This will allow us to reach your target audience faster and, above all, increase our visibility on Google (SEO).
- Photos
It is worth taking care of professional photos of the interior of our clinic and photos of the building to make it easier for patients to reach the facility. It is also recommended that you publish your team photos.
- Link to website
Another option is to add a link to our website so that the patient can quickly go to our website and find more detailed information about our activities.
- Contact: e-mail address, phone
The more opportunities to contact a medical facility, the better. The patient should be able to find basic forms of contact as soon as possible, such as by phone or e-mail.
- Comments
Patients usually choose a medical facility using friend commands or comments read on the Internet. Therefore, it is necessary to take care of them as best as possible to make them positive. I recommend replying to any comment with thanks, I also encourage you to respond culturally to negative comments.
- Opening hours
The basic information to be included in the Google Maps business card is, of course, information about the opening hours of the medical institution. Make sure that your current opening hours are always published.
- Q&A
Google Maps also allows patients to ask questions and provide answers through a medical facility. It’s always a good idea to answer your questions and always control the appearance of new questions.
- Updates
Updates give us the opportunity to inform patients, for example, about holidays or other important temporary situations or changes.
Newsletter for patients – is it worth it? – MEDICAL MARKETING, HEALTHCARE MARKETING
The newsletter is one of the widely available marketing tools. However, in the medical industry quite infrequestly used. It is a pity, because the newsletter gives us more opportunities to reach the patient. Below I present the most important advantages and disadvantagesofthismarketing tool.
Advantages:
– the ability to reach a specific target group with important information
– free tool / low cost
– the possibility of building a closer relationship with patients
– long-term effectiveness
– possibility to personalize the newsletter
– the ability to automate the newsletter
Disadvantages:
– collecting the mailing database takes quite a long time
– newsletter takes time and patience
– difficulties in preserving the protection of personal data
– difficulties related to legal restrictions in medical marketing.
Medical visit reminder system – advantages, disadvantages – MEDICAL MARKETING, HEALTHCARE MARKETING
More and more medical clinics are choosing to introduce a system of reminders of appointments. In today’s busy world, where everyone has a lot of responsibilities, such a system seems to be a great solution, because with many responsibilities it is very easy to forget about the date of an appointment. Many medical appointment reminder systems have additional features to offer, e.g. prompt cancellation of a visitvia SMS , which is also an interesting solution in situations where patients have trouble calling the clinic, which is a common reason for not notifying the clinic of the inability to arrive foran appointment. Keep this in mind!
Advantages:
- Make your medical facility’s offer more attractive
- Minimising losses by being able to arrange new patients in place of denied appointments
- Additional features of medical reminder programs, e.g. cancellation of visits via SMS
- Automate marketing and organizational activities
- Offload phone lines
- Great marketing tool
- Minimizing the number of irrevoced medical visits
Disadvantages:
- costs associated with running an IT system
- the need for training in the operation of the new programme
- possibility of technical problems
5 Marketing Activities in Medicine worth investing in – MEDICAL MARKETING, HEALTHCARE MARKETING
- SEO
One of the key aspects is to take care of our searchability on the Internet, e.g. on Google Search. Patients seeking medical help by entering individual terms in an internet search engine, e.g. cardiologist warsaw. It is worth being aware of this and make it easier for a potential patient to find us on the Internet. The sooner a patient finds us online, the better the chances that they will benefit from our health services. There are many ways to increase our visibility on the Internet, e.g.buying a Google ad, runningablog, commissioning a professional company task.
- Website
The website is now an integral part of medical marketing. It is important that the website contains important information, e.g. contact, address, opening hours, services. It should also be noted that the website is aesthetic, modern and adapted to the nature of the services offered.
- Online registration
You might also want to consider allowing online enrolling in medical services. This relieves the telephone lines of the medical clinic and enhances our offer. Thanks to this solution, we automate some of our tasks, which means that we gain a lot of time. More and more people are signing up for a visit via the registration form on the website, as it is more convenient and faster and available at any time of the day or night.
- Visit reminder system
Many clinics complain about patients cancelling doctor’s appointments at the last minute or not coming to appointments without notifying the clinic. The way to do this is to implement an automated system of reminders of medical visits. Such a system will minimize the number of suddenly cancelled medical appointments and make our offer more attractive in the eyes of the patient. The visit reminder system can be based on automatic sending of e-mails and/or sms messages. There are many ready-made solutions available on the market at reasonable prices.
- Profile on doctors’ portals/search engines
The last action in this article, which is worth implementing in your medical institution is a profile/account on the portal/search engine of doctors/medical professions. On such portals are included the most important information about the doctor and very valuable opinions of patients, thanks to which the patient with greater probability will choose our clinic. Patients are very often guided by opinions found on the Internet, especially on portals dedicated to the medical industry. It is worth taking care of a friendly profile on such portals and the opinions of our patients.
Online patient registration – is it worth it? – MEDICAL MARKETING – HEALTHCARE MARKETING
There are several ways to register patients. You can make an appointment by phone, a personal appointment at a clinic, or you can register for an online appointment. The following article will describe the possibility of an appointment for an online visit.
Making an appointment online is a great help for patients and for doctors and medical clinics. Online registration is one way to automate certain aspects of the functioning of a medical facility. Online registration enhances the offer of the medical institution, as well as relieves employees who can devote this time to other tasks.
Patients are not always convinced to register online and choose the traditional method, i.e. a phone call or a personal visit to the facility to schedule a visit. This is often due to problems due to poor organization and functioning of online registration.
Errors and shortcomingsin the functioning of online registration:
– no confirmation of an appointment for an online visit e.g. by e-mail
– manual acceptance of the appointment online by employees
– no appointment reminders set for patients
– inability of the patient to make changes (e.g. reschedule, cancellation of the visit).
Disadvantages:
– additional cost
– difficulty in choosing a specific IT solution for online registration
– the required ability to operate an IT program for online registration.
Advantages:
– automation of the functioning of certain aspects in the medical clinic
– caring for the offer of a medical clinic
– convenience for the patient
– time saving
– the image of a modern medical clinic
– saving money
– minimising last-minute doctor’s appointments cancelled.
In my opinion, it is worth offering your patients the opportunity to make an appointment for a doctor’s appointment online. It is worth preparing well for this, so that online registration automates our activities, and the patient is happy to use this method and can do it intuitively.