Marketing Tips for Your Private Practice

Whether you're a dentist, therapist, or some other medical specialist, running your private practice undoubtedly comes with no shortage of challenges. Building your brand from the ground up, establishing your patient base, creating a digital presence, and finding an effective marketing strategy are just a few of the hurdles you have to overcome. In this article, we'll cover essential marketing tips tailored for private practices that will help you leverage digital and traditional tactics to bring in new patients. Continue reading to learn how to build a loyal client base and grow your private practice.

The Challenges Private Practices Face

As a private practice, your company is likely operating on a limited budget in comparison to larger healthcare organizations. Resources are limited, so you have to strategize about how to spend every dollar. If you find yourself unable to afford an integrated marketing strategy that maximizes your company's potential, it’s important to find the most cost-effective way to reach your audience.

Finding the right audience to market to is another challenge often faced by private practices. You'll need to define the patient demographics who are most interested in your services, otherwise, you'll risk wasting resources on uninterested parties. Once you have a defined audience, you also need to figure out the best way to reach them, whether it's via digital platforms or through some other marketing vehicle. This should also affect the type of content you create, as you'll want to optimize your online presence to improve your chances of being seen by potential patients.

Building Community Presence for Your Private Practice

Another hurdle that private practices have to overcome is client trust because some people tend to be wary of medical services. Patients must trust the expertise of the practitioner to feel comfortable receiving services from them. You’ll have to demonstrate your expertise not only through your practice, but through your marketing as well. Here are some ways that you can affirm your expertise to your audience and build a community around your private practice:

• Community Events and Health Workshops: Host free workshops, health talks, or wellness seminars to answer questions and provide education about your field of expertise.
• Collaboration with Local Businesses and Schools: Partner with nearby businesses, schools, or gyms to reach potential clients. Offer discounts to the employees, members, or students of these locations.
• Volunteering and Sponsorships: Participate in or sponsor community events, such as charity runs, sports events, or local festivals to enhance visibility and showcase your practice's commitment to the community.
• Publishing Localized Content: Share articles, health tips, or event announcements specific to the community on social media and in local publications to help establish the practice as a trusted resource.
• Offering Free Initial Consultations or Screenings: Offer free initial consultations on basic health screenings such as blood pressure checks or dental evaluations. This encourages individuals to engage with the practice without financial commitment.

Content Marketing and SEO for Your Private Practice

When you have an established target audience, you'll want to focus on creating content that addresses their needs. On your website's blog, your social media profiles, podcasts, or anywhere else you publish content, you'll want to focus on addressing the most common questions and concerns of your prospective patients. For example, a pediatric dentist whose target audience is parents may want to write some content about cavity prevention for children. Not only will this bring more website visitors, but it will showcase your expertise and build trust in those who read it.

Private practices rely primarily on a local patient base, so it's important to leverage Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as part of your overall marketing strategy. Your Google Business Profile will appear in search results that are related to your brand or industry, so you need to fill it out with accurate information on your location, services, hours, and contact details. You should also encourage satisfied patients to leave reviews on Google, as more user engagement with your business will signal to the algorithm that your practice is established and successful. You can also try using location-specific keywords in content and meta descriptions to enhance search visibility for location-based searches such as "pediatric dentist in San Francisco."

Social Media Marketing for Your Private Practice

Utilize social media as an integrated part of your digital presence. You can share and repurpose content from your blog, podcasts, or other publications on social media platforms to get the most mileage out of your marketing. On social media, you can engage and interact with followers, answer questions in real-time, and build further rapport with your community. Be sure to post about ongoing promotions, service availability, and any other relevant news to keep your followers informed.

You may not have an abundance of time to spend engaging on every social media platform, so it’s important to know which platforms will best meet your needs in the least amount of time. In general, Facebook and Instagram are the most ideal for private practices, because they allow for visual content and interaction. The user base for Facebook trends older, so it may be better to focus on that platform if you have a similar age demographic. Instagram makes video and photo sharing incredibly streamlined, so it's perfect for sharing both announcements and educational content. Either way, if you have limited time and resources, these platforms are the ones to start with.

Direct Mail Marketing

As mentioned earlier, private practices must rely on a local patient base for business. Direct mail is a marketing method that can be geographically targeted within a set distance of your physical office. This allows you to reach local individuals with a physical marketing message, giving them something they can see and hold in their hands when they check the mail. You can use it to inform your local community about who you are and what services you provide. Narrow down your mailing list demographically to ensure that your message is received by those who more closely resemble your established audience.

Direct mail is a great marketing option for running promotions, as you can include a coupon within the mailer to incentivize the recipient to hold on to it, elongating the period of brand exposure. Likewise, you can include a QR code that will link them directly to your website, so that they can sign up for a free consultation or book a first appointment right away. Either way, keep in mind that among direct mailer types, postcards tend to be the most effective method for marketing because they are not concealed by an envelope, so recipients will see the branding and message as soon as they open their mail.

Online Advertising for Your Private Practice

You can use Google Ads as another location-specific marketing method because the platform allows you to target search engine users by geographic location. Paid search ads also allow you to target specific keywords that may be used in queries that are relevant to your practice's specialty or location, such as "family dentist in San Francisco,” etc. You can even utilize negative keywords to filter out irrelevant traffic such as "orthodontist" if your practice doesn't offer any orthodontic services. Google Ads also offers an adjustable daily ad spending limit so that you won't have to worry about going over budget.

When implementing targeted search ads, it's important to ensure that your landing page is functional and relevant to the user's search intent. Ideally, you should have a dedicated landing page for each ad that is customized to the ad's message. For example, an ad targeting dental cleanings should lead to a page specifically about that service. Be sure that your pages load fast and that they have a clear Call-To-Action that informs the user on what you want them to do next. A well-optimized landing page improves ad quality scores, which can reduce costs and improve ad placements.

How to Budget for Marketing as a Private Practice

Established practices should generally allocate 5-10% of annual revenue to marketing. If your practice is newer and has yet to build brand awareness, you may need to invest closer to 10-15%. When starting, be sure to prioritize website functionality and development of content. Your website should provide a smooth user experience to avoid deterring organic visitors. Adding new content to your website regularly will signal to search engines that your website is active which will improve organic search rankings.

Be sure to monitor and adjust your marketing budget every month. Your marketing situation may change over time or you may see more success in some seasons than in others. Determining your budget allocation for the upcoming month will help you avoid wasted ad spend and see a greater return from your marketing investments. Keep track of the best-performing channels for each month of the year so you know where to scale up and where to cut back.

How to Measure the Success of Your Private Practice Marketing Strategy

Tracking the success of your marketing campaigns can help you determine how much budget you should allocate toward certain marketing channels in the future. To do this, you need to track the response rate of each of your marketing campaigns. The response rate can be measured by determining the total number of ad responses and dividing it by the total number of recipients. "Recipient" can change in definition depending on the media. For example, direct mailers would go out to literal "recipients," but a digital marketing campaign would be measured by total impressions or users who saw your ad.

Your first few campaigns for each channel will help you establish a baseline for success. You should seek to improve response rates in each campaign channel by making subtle changes to your strategy and seeing how it affects the response rate. You can see if different messaging, imagery, or promotional offers cause your audience to be more receptive to your advertising. This will help you find the marketing strategies that are right for your practice.

Conclusion

There's a lot to consider when it comes to private practice marketing strategies, and without the backing of a major health company, your duties will extend far beyond marketing. If you're limited on time and resources, you may want to consider utilizing an experienced marketing company as you run your first few campaigns. Cactus Mailing has 22 years of postcard marketing experience and has completed more than 50,000 campaigns. We can handle the entire campaign process from mailing list selection to postcard design to printing and mailing–giving you time to handle running your practice.

Your new patients are out there, so get in contact with one of our direct mail specialists today!