5 Ways to Gain and Retain Patients Online
Digitalization is crucial to gaining more patients at your practice. There is increased competition today, and most practices are dealing with a decrease in reimbursements from insurers. This makes it more important than ever before to have a steady stream of new patients coming to your practice.
The key is to use technology tools to make your practice more visible and establish an online presence where you can build trust. Take a look at five ways to gain and retain patients online.
1. Develop an Online Presence
There are many ways that an online presence can help you gain and retain patients. You can update your website to create an option for patients to make an appointment online. You can also use tools to create an app for patients where they can set their appointment. Patients prefer this level of convenience and it saves your staff time.
Your website can be optimized using a website optimizer tool similar to the one offered by SO Connect. This helps to ensure that you are getting real data about the performance of your online presence. It can detect and alert you to any bugs or glitches so that you can fix them right away.
This tool can also help you improve your website ranking. It has analytics to make sure that you are using the most profitable keywords and that your backlinks are working for you. You can use an automated SEO tool to help. The tool helps you make sure that your website comes up when people type a search so that they can find you.
2. Make it Easy for Patients to Write Reviews
People put a lot of faith in reviews, and it is often the first thing they check before coming to practice. You can use a Reviews Tool to help collect reviews from all of your current patients. SO Connect offers a reviews tool that helps you get new reviews. It allows you to request them by way of text message, email, or QR code. This can all be tied into your CRM or POS to ensure that you reach all of your customers.
You can also see all of your reviews on one dashboard, and you can respond to them promptly without having to switch to different websites. Responding to reviews, whether good or bad, helps build trust with potential patients.
3. Make Sure That Your Online Information Is up to Date
Another important aspect of gaining and retaining your patients is making sure that your online information is up-to-date. You can use a listings tool similar to the one offered by SO Connect to update and publish information about your practice to more than 50 different platforms at once.
You can make updates with one click, so you won’t have any missing or outdated information. This builds trust with search engines and your patients. This is especially important in the fast-paced world today, where office hours and procedures may change quickly.
4. Stay Current on Your Competition
You can use digital tools to stay on top of what your competition is doing. You need to know how they are performing and what they are doing that is different or new. Patients know that they have a lot of different choices, and they are going to choose practices that prioritize their experiences.
You can use the SO Connect website optimizer to run a competitor analysis, where you can see what they are doing right and how you can improve your presence online.
5. Use Your Website and Social Media to Build Loyalty
It is important to use a website optimizer to build loyalty with your patients. Your website needs to be user friendly and intuitive. Make sure that patients can find the information they need. They should be able to schedule appointments and see your current office policies.
It is also important to connect to social media so that you can engage with patients there. Respond to their questions and react when they share your practice. This makes them feel valued, and they are more likely to return and recommend you to their friends.
Final Thoughts
There are many different ways to gain and retain patients online, but you can use tools such as Reviews, Listings, and Website Optimizer from SO Connect to simplify the journey for your practice.
