Vital Lead Generation Strategies for Healthcare Providers

The issue of health today is a prime concern for most people with the prevalence of unhealthy lifestyles, especially if they have incentives such as pain or loss of bodily functions. With such realities, we all know that healthcare is a lucrative industry with heavy competition. Lead generation for healthcare providers can be challenging. Patients in the industry are quite choosy, as it is their comfort and health that are of concern. 

Today, we are seeing a world saturated with pleasurable consumer goods. The foods easily available are less healthy than we would like. We already equate fast-food chains with unhealthy lifestyles, yet such industries proliferate in our daily lives. With such, people are bound to feel the crunch of the effects of such a lifestyle. Since it is their lives that are experiencing the pain and problems, patients tend to be very choosy, especially when it comes to addressing the issues of their health. 

There is definitely a large market for healthcare providers. The problem is that because it is personal health that is at risk, people tend to pick healthcare providers that are most appealing and it does not help that there exists high competition in this industry. 

With such, you then would need a good strategy for lead generation. Producing high-quality leads is essential for providers in the competitive healthcare industry if you want to increase your patient base, promote growth, and have the biggest possible impact. Healthcare providers must implement efficient lead generation tactics if they want to stay competitive, as the digital age has empowered patients to actively search for and assess their healthcare options. This article explores essential techniques and best practices for lead generation for healthcare providers.

12 Techniques for Lead Generation for Healthcare Providers

1. Make it Easy

Make it easy for your prospective patients to find and interact with you. Offering a variety of ways for potential patients to get in touch with you is the greatest approach to making it simple for them to do so. Offering email, phone, text messaging, and form fill is a part of this. Make sure this contact information is obvious and simple to find on all of your web presences. This includes posting it on your social media profiles, website, landing pages, and so on.

The best way to make things simple is to have a clear call to action (CTA) on your internet platforms. When someone views your advertisement, website, or other promotional material, a CTA is a prompt that urges them to do a particular action. It usually appears as a clickable item from images to texts. It's crucial to have a clear call to action when developing your website or online profiles because the majority of call-to-action language is a request like "schedule an appointment" or "contact us today." This motivates potential patients to take action. It might be both the first and last time a person thinks about your medical practice if there isn't a clear action step that can cater to their intent.

2. Have multiple means to reach your leads 

Having multiple channels to reach your leads is a good way to make sure that you will stay on top of their minds as well as cater to their preference. In pursuing and developing a lead, use a variety of communication channels. This will enable you to communicate with customers through their chosen channel, close more sales, and meet them where they are.

It's crucial to remember that each consumer has a favorite mode of communication. The best course of action is probably to continue communicating with them through whichever medium they react to. In this industry, SMS is quite important as well. According to Omnisend, SMS converts 47.7% more leads into customers. Know that SMS is a commonly used channel of communication in healthcare. 

3. Respond to leads quickly. 

Once a lead has reached you or perhaps filled out a lead capture form such as downloadable content you have created in exchange for their name and email, it is very important that you respond to those actions as soon as possible. A study by Havard Business Review has shown that replying within an hour is 60 times more likely to qualify a lead than those who waited for 24 hrs or more. 

The sooner you respond to prospective patients, the more likely they are to convert. With this, it may be handy if you could add a live chat to your website. Responses can also be automated, so long as you can respond quickly. It gives off the impression to the patients that they are being engaged. 

4. Establish an online presence

The internet today is becoming a go-to stop for any information that we would need. So patients would also go online to check out their symptoms as well as schedule their appointment with a healthcare agency or the doctor's clinic. In fact, as per invoca.com, 60% of customers run a search online before they schedule an appointment. 

Knowing that patients tend to check online first to schedule an appointment it is therefore important to establish your presence online so that patients can find you as well as make your online presence prominent in order to reach out to more and more as patients grow to trust with your service. Showcase your success, awards your company may have had, and anything that would continue to provide value to your company. 

Aside from building a website, you would benefit from making accounts with various social media and not just your common social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but various social media sites that specifically cater to healthcare. There are a couple of healthcare sites that help patients find doctors and services such as Yelp, ZocDoc, NextHealth, PatientPop, etc. Patients tend to use these sites to try to find various services to their ailment so you would want to be in them as well. 

5. Ask for online reviews

One of the best strategies for drawing in new clients and persuading existing ones to pick you or your practice is through patient testimonials. Testimonials are effective in convincing other patients to avail of your service. Patients will listen more to what experiences other patients might have had in a given service. This is quite important as per a study by reputation.com, 3 out of 4 US adult patients read online reviews and ratings when deciding on a physician or a healthcare facility. 

Even if the review is negative, it might help you just make sure you reply to negative reviews. For other prospective patients, seeing that negative reviews are being addressed, also instills trust. Also remember those healthcare sites we talked about in the previous item such as Zocdoc, and Yelp? You can also ask your patients to leave a review on those pages, as patients will probably look into those sites and see your company. It is always good that you will have awesome reviews from your patients. 

6. Use paid ads

Paid ads are incredibly effective, they of course just aren't free. Sponsored ads, for example, on search engines such as Google ads are easily seen by patients who tend to use Google. According to searchengineland.com, google has a 92.63% market share for search engines. Google pretty much has a monopoly when it comes to online searches. 

With Google ads, what actually happens is you will have to find keywords relevant to your service and you bid on that. When patients use Google and type a question with your keywords and provided that you actually won the bid your website will be on top of the search engine result page. 

You can also take advantage of paid ads on social media platforms. This is great as most of them do have the ability to show your ads to people who have similar characteristics to your existing customers, such as Facebook's lookalike. You can also use social media ads to re-target those leads who have clicked your ad before but did not avail of your services, reminding them of their earlier interest.

7. Take advantage of SEO

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a means by which your content, website, and social media accounts appear on the first page of search engine result pages when your specific keywords have been included when people do searches. This is a must when extending your medical practice or service in the online digital sphere. 

What happens here is that search engine sites operate what we call web crawlers. These crawl the internet for related content that is relevant to what is being searched. By making content such as blog articles, and webpages, as well as incurring view traffic on them, your content is likely to be prominent with the crawlers and hence will likely show up on the front page of search results pages. So you will have to keep making relevant and high-quality content that would use keywords relevant to your business keeping traffic on your site and various contents. Combine this with paid ads and you are sure to generate leads upon leads. 

8. Provide a free tool 

If you can offer potential patients a free online tool is a good approach to increase your lead generation. Prospective patients may become more devoted to and likely to use your practice or service if you have, for instance, free tools such as symptom checkers, pricing estimators, and insurance verification.

By providing a free tools such as price estimators and symptom checkers, you provide comfort and ease. It will also feel a bit streamlined for your patients as such free tools help them plan out how they will go about dealing with their healthcare issues. Such ease would not only please your prospective patients but a pleased patient from the get-go would likely refer to your company due to their positive experience.

9. Sponsor local events 

If you can sponsor local events such as local sports leagues, high school events, church activities, etc… That will get your company brand out there in the local public. It will also bring a sense of community work and care, thus further showing goodwill and further trust of the public. It will keep your company at the top of the minds of your local community and if they are to have problems with their health, they are likely to come to you for your service. 

10. Send direct mail to your local area

Healthcare being mostly a local service, it would be good to send direct mail to your local area. It will provide a sense of notable special treatment. This might be just the edge that would set you apart from your local competitors. People enjoy special treatment and if you could provide those more than your competitors the more likely to avail of their patronage. 

You can get real creative here, you can send a small package, a postcard, a brochure, to name a few. Don't forget to add your contact information, the service you provide, and also a call to action. 

11. Employ and nurture with email marketing

Email marketing is a great way to generate leads as well as nurture leads and guide them towards availing of your practice or service. Offering a free download in exchange for an email address can be your approach to your email marketing campaign. From there, you may use email to greet that potential patient. After that, you should continue to nurture them by sending them a series of emails that highlight your medical practice and offerings. The objective is to take these perspectives under your charge and as your customers. 

12. Reach out and network with local stakeholders

In the business of healthcare, because we are dealing with the health of individuals, referrals may carry more weight than usual as compared to other industries. Make connections with influential people in your service region. Hosting luncheons, cocktail gatherings, or other get-togethers with community activists. 

Reach out to local industries and physicians. Create your network with these influential people. Their referral to your practice and service is likely to be heeded by prospective patients. 

Let us say you are running a Home Health Agency. By reaching out to local hospitalist doctors, it is likely that if you made a good impression on them, the moment they discharge patients from the hospital they could refer their patients to your agency.

To conclude, lead generation with healthcare providers is usually ‌contained within the local region. It is vital to foster good relations with your local community as referrals carry a big weight when it comes to the healthcare industry. The expansion and success of healthcare practices are directly impacted by their capacity to draw in and care for prospective patients. 

We've looked at the key ideas and techniques for finding high-quality leads in the healthcare sector. If you apply these techniques, you will see an increase in your lead generation, even just by following some of them. Nurture your leads through email marketing or with other channels if you can such as direct mail. Important to note that in this industry it is really important to foster good relations with physicians, especially hospitalists as once patients get discharged from the hospital they will usually need a follow-up service, the hospitalist physicians will more often than not refer to a service and to that patient that they will most likely avail. Get good with doctors and they will point their patients to you. 

Generating leads may be new to you and can be overwhelming. For instance, SEO is a rather complex process that may be challenging and would require expertise. There are software and tools that you would need in generating leads, from schedule appointment software, and email automation, to CRM software to keep track of your leads. You may end up hiring multiple staff just to fill these functions. You are in luck because we here at XYNC do just that. Contact us and start drawing in leads and converting them to your care.