Marketing a concierge medical practice is probably the toughest amongst all other specialties. It requires a strategic approach to attract and retain patients who value personalized, high-quality healthcare. These individuals are potentially seeking your care. However, you must get your name out there for them.
Before we discuss the various ways to market your concierge medical practice, let’s understand who the target patient demographic is. For this post, we will consider an Internal Medicine doctor seeking to market his concierge practice. In this case, we can broadly assign his potential patients into two buckets.
1. Patient with chronic conditions: Patient that seeks a resolution to their seemingly complex health concerns, and is tired of visiting doctors and specialists without a concrete plan to regain their health. They are in need of a doctor that would listen to them and have the time to devote to their care. This patient is potentially a great match for your practice considering you will take the time to deep dive into his symptoms and take a more holistic approach in treating him.
2. The Executive seeking personalized medicine: The executive who has perhaps discretionary income and values his or her time as a precious commodity. This patient seeks immediate appointments, direct access to their doctor, no wait visits, and a doctor who can help him or her stay in the best health of their lives. They look for the leading edge of medicine and seek a doctor that will manage almost anything that is needed for their medical fitness. This is the second group of patients that would potentially be a great match for your practice.
Considering these two very distinct target demographics of patients, it is necessary to approach each with a marketing plan individualized for them. Last thing we want to do is advertise, “We will have you in and out of here in no time” to the 1st group of patients. Messaging and targeting the right populations is key in this regard.
What are the best ways to market your concierge medical practice:
Now that we understand the target demographics, let’s look at some of the means we use to garner these patients for our MD clients at ConsultingMDs.
Website that attracts concierge patients: Imagine talking to a patient about all the wonderful things we can do for them, and handing them your card. It would be a fair assumption for the patient to make that your website would reflect the same compassion and expertise that you reflected in person. In order for us to get a patient that is just super excited to join our practice, we must educate them on the reasons why this practice is so awesome and our website is the perfect place to get that message across.
A website is the biggest asset for a medical practice. It is a tool that moves a visitor from inquiry to contacting your office. A well laid out website excites the patient about meeting the doctor, answers most of the pre-qualifying questions for the patients, and they are ready to speak with the doctor or join the practice at that point. Great content, technical and local SEO, and clearly laid out progress markers for patients are some of the things we look for in a website that helps a practice grow quickly. As an asset, a website is never “finished”, and is ever evolving. The cost to make and maintain a website is miniscule as compared to the amount of patients it can bring you over the years.
As a concierge doctor’s website, we emphasize even more clarity in defining your expertise, credentials and accolades. A concierge website must stand above the competitor’s website in SEO, content, speed, ease of use, just like your practice stands above its competition in your expertise, compassion and availability. A concierge practice’s website should be fast loading that is able to portray an amazing picture about you and your practice.
There are never doctors who cannot find more patients.
There are always doctors that patients cannot find.Sunil Modi
Reviews: As per recent statistics, 92% patients consider reviews before visiting a doctor. Garnering great reviews about your practice is a great idea. However, reviews alone are certainly not enough to capture the interest of the patient, especially in concierge practice. The quality of the reviews, more so than the quantity of the reviews, matters more. Most patients read a few reviews to ascertain the general sentiment of the patients. A few great heart-felt reviews go a long way in helping your cause rather than a bunch of one-line reviews.
Business listings (Google business, Yelp, Apple, others): You can use the listings to your advantage and stand out from the competition. The context, information, and updates are all useful in helping your practice reach that elusive concierge patient population.
Digital Advertising: Anyone will tell you to use google and facebook ads for your practice. And they are not wrong. However, how do you target these ads for the population that is seeking a concierge doctor vs those that are not? How can we word our ads to appeal to that particular demographic? and not waste our budget targeting patients that are not a good fit. The two buckets of patients defined earlier come into play in advertising, as the messaging to each bucket will be distinctly different and so should be the accompanying landing pages on your website. For a great Concierge Practice Marketing Team, they should be able to target the particular concierge demographic and bring in leads that are actually seeking a concierge doctor, rather than just a doctor. The team must approach each patient bucket with messaging that is appropriate for them so as to bring in great ROI and remain within budget.
Done correctly, digital advertising yields immediate results and is a rather inexpensive ROI as compared to other methods. We have always included digital advertising in all our marketing for concierge practices and have always witnessed great results with it.
Networking: Network with specialists and physicians upstream to your practice for referrals. An OB/GYN is a great referral source for a concierge Pediatrician office. A concierge pediatrician office is a great source of referrals for concierge internal medicine doctors.
Getting to meet with the specialists is a great way to build a network that would be useful to you for referring patients to in the future, as well as them for referring patients over to you.
Relationship with ERs: Networking with ER docs certainly helps in this regard as well as they often get asked for doctors who would be accessible to patients.
Offer Meet-n-Greets: Offering complementary meet-n-greets with your prospective patients is a great way to attract concierge patients. Joining a concierge practice is a commitment and it is only fair that they would like to meet with the doctor to gain that comfort level. It is also a great way to bring them in and gives you a chance to make that sale.
Social Media: Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram are great sources for spreading information. Certainly use them to post once in a while to generate awareness. In my years of experience helping concierge practices, I do not recommend social media as a major source for marketing to patients. I recommend a very light presence, just enough so it helps your SEO, but not so much that it starts to take up your time from other priorities.
The Secret Sauce: The tools of marketing a concierge medical practice are more or less the same as those for any other medical practice. The secret sauce lies in how a concierge marketing agency deploys these tools to bring in patients for a concierge medical practice. Therein lies the art-form of marketing. Choose a marketing agency that can help you gain patients at a healthy pace for your concierge medical practice. As a guide, most practices should gain about 2-4 patients a month with concierge marketing done right.
As always, practice on your own terms!
