By Kelli Hulea

As technology advances and greater transparency empowers individuals to make more informed choices, medical practices need to put their best feet forward to reach potential leads, convert those leads to patients and grow existing patient relationships.

Marketing is most effective when executed through a variety of channels, including face-to-face communication, word-of-mouth referrals and digital platforms.

Here are three common questions we receive from our medical practice clients and our suggestions for implementing the best marketing practices across different channels.

1. How Can We Most Effectively Establish Relationships with Referral Sources?

Many practices rely on receiving patient referrals from other physicians. They may already engage in some door-to-door marketing by visiting physician offices or hosting lunch-and-learns with physicians and staff.

While these are effective tactics, here are some others that support the one-door-at-a-time efforts:

2. How Do We Encourage Patients to Share Their Stories with Others?

Word-of-mouth marketing can be very effective, especially in the medical field. People are more likely to choose one practice over another if their friends or family recommend it.

We’ll even take it a step further to say that some people are likely to base their decision on a complete stranger’s testimony. If we know of someone or can relate to another person’s story, we’re more likely to trust that the solution works.

Here are ways to encourage patients to share their success stories:

• Develop a patient testimonial process that starts with identifying individuals who had a positive experience and interviewing them. Many satisfied patients will welcome opportunities to share how and why they used your services and relate the outcome of their treatment.
• Use email to reach current and prospective patients with tips, patient testimonial stories, blog articles and news. This content can provide value to patients and might motivate some to want to share their own stories.
• Invite patients to follow your practice on social media so they can stay up to date on current news and other resources and enjoy stories about favorable outcomes. Ask followers to share their stories on posts or through the Reviews sections.
• Use video to showcase highlights of the treatment process and spotlight patient success stories.

3. How Can We Improve Our Digital Presence and Online Reviews?

As more and more people turn to Google, Yelp and social media platforms to leave reviews or to research products and services, it’s critical that healthcare practices review and manage their online reputations. And if your organization isn’t showing up in the first few pages of search results, then how do you expect anyone to find you?

Improving an organization’s digital presence and managing a positive reputation online are essential tactics for building trust, sustaining strong relationships and developing new ones with prospective patients.

Here are some activities that enable a medical practice to improve its digital presence:

• Search Engine Optimization strategies are too numerous to count, but a good place to start is to search for keywords that a patient might use to find your services in a search engine such as Google. If your organization isn’t showing up prominently in searches for those terms, you may need to consider adding more keywords to your website. Here are other SEO tactics to check out.
• Google, Yelp and other review platforms may not only make or break your online reputation, but can also impact how your website ranks in the search results. A poor overall rating in Google will hurt an organization’s SEO ranking, too. One way to encourage patients to share their experiences online is to hand out a postcard with quick and easy steps on how to leave a review. Also, be sure to respond to negative reviews and apologize to the patient’s satisfaction. 
• Social media makes it easy to engage with a variety of key audiences. Identify who those audiences are and determine which social media are most effective channels at targeting those people. Stay consistent with posts by maintaining a social content calendar and plan out posts in advance. Share blogs, articles, news, patient success stories, employee spotlights, behind-the-scenes photos and more, to keep your audiences engaged and informed. And be sure to respond to comments, questions and reviews in a timely fashion.

The key to building and maintaining strong relationships with referral sources, patients and online audiences is to provide them with valuable information or services, and that can be done through face-to-face interactions, word-of-mouth testimonies and online conversations. Using a variety of communications channels makes it easier to be informative, transparent, trustworthy and responsive.

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Kelli Hulea is a project manager at Pecchia Communications and helps medical practices communicate their brands effectively and sustain relationships.