3 Proven Strategies to Acquire More Patients and Maximise Your Healthcare Clinic Capacity

In the fast-paced world of healthcare, staying competitive means embracing effective marketing strategies. If you aren’t already prioritising this, you might be missing an opportunity to fill your clinic with quality patients.. Many healthcare clinic owners are overwhelmed with the constant challenge of filling appointment gaps and attracting quality patients, all while focusing on delivering exceptional care. Read on for tips from the team at alphawhale on how to get more reliability in your marketing efforts and ease the burden of attracting quality patients.

Advertising costs and under-utilised clinicians, consult rooms & equipment all pose significant expenses. It’s crucial to not just attract any patient, but the right ones. Here’s how you can leverage modern marketing tools and strategies to grow your clinic efficiently.

1. Integrating Your CRM with Advertising Platforms

Modern marketing thrives on data and integration. By linking your CRM system with advertising platforms like Google Ads and Facebook, you can track patient acquisitions more accurately and limit wasted budget.

• Lead Conversion Tracking: It’s about quality, not just quantity. By focusing on conversions rather than clicks, you can ensure your advertising budget is spent on ads that convert viewers into actual patients.
• Remarketing and Lookalike Audiences: These techniques allow you to reconnect with visitors who didn’t book on their first visit and find new prospects who share characteristics with your best patients, thereby increasing the chances of attracting more qualified, right-fit patients.
• Connecting Ad Spend with Patient Value: Understand which channels bring the highest-value patients by tracking how much they spend over time, not just during their first visit.

Top Tip: Employ call tracking software in your CRM to determine which marketing channels generate calls and whether these calls are from new or existing patients. Checkout our partners at CallRail and aircall.

2. Automating the Patient Journey

Automation isn’t just a tech buzzword; it’s a game-changer for patient management. By automating the patient journey from the first point of contact to treatment completion, you can deliver a consistently high-quality experience.

• Sales Processes and Lead Scoring: Implement structured sales processes and lead scoring to focus your efforts on prospects most likely to convert. ‍
• Email Marketing: Use automated emails to nurture leads through every stage of the buyer’s journey, from making them aware of their issues to introducing your clinic as the solution, ultimately guiding them to book an appointment when they are ready and most likely to convert.

Did you know that 78% of customers buy from the first responder? Responding within 1-5 minutes increases your odds of qualifying a lead by 80% compared to waiting 5-10 minutes.

3. The Power of Analytics and Reporting

Your CRM is a treasure trove of data that can offer deep insights into patient behaviours, marketing effectiveness, and sales performance.

• Optimising Acquisition and Retention: Detailed analytics help you refine your acquisition strategies and enhance patient retention, ensuring you invest in the most effective channels. Far too often we see businesses that haven’t captured the right data to improve their marketing efforts. Similar to healthcare, we wouldn’t prescribe treatment without fully understanding the underlying issues to address.
• Understanding the Perfect Patient Profile: Use data to identify and target the demographic most likely to need your services, optimising both marketing spend and outcomes. The risk of not attracting enough patients is that you will start accepting less than ideal fit patients, either lower value or less relevant. To become sought-after you need to have a clear vision of the reputation you want to have and ensure your patent profile aligns to that. 

When comparing Google Ads vs. Facebook Ads for one of our clients, we had a remarkable discovery. Google Ads had a higher cost per lead ($64) compared to Facebook ($38), but the conversion rate told a different story with Google leads converting at 52% compared to Facebook’s cheaper leads converting at 24%. That led to an overall patient cost of $123 for Google and $158 for Facebook. Even with a higher cost per lead, it demonstrated that Google Ads was 22% more cost-effective for this client. However, we’ve seen the opposite for another client with a different treatment mix.

Bonus Point: Enhancing Patient Retention and Lifetime Value

• Automated Marketing for Retention: Keep your patients engaged with automated email campaigns that deliver personalised health tips, reminders, and updates about new services. This continuous engagement helps maintain your clinic’s relevance and encourages repeat visits and word-of-mouth referrals by staying both top-of-mind and trusted.‍
• Sales Team Engagement: Utilise automated tasks in your CRM to prompt follow-ups with patients nearing the end of their treatment or those who have become inactive. This ensures every patient receives timely attention, enhancing satisfaction and retention.

Adopting these strategies will not only fill your appointment books but also ensure that you attract and retain quality patients. This shift allows clinic owners and managers to focus more on patient care. 

Are you looking to elevate your clinic's patient acquisition and retention strategies? Contact us to explore how you can implement these powerful tools and insights to grow your practice effectively. alphawhale offers a range of audit services to get you quick answers and insights into where you have the most ad wastage.