How To Market Your Medical or Healthcare Practice

Your mission: helping people live the lives they dream of.

In an independent, self-sustaining practice—built on your own terms.

Why is it so hard to get new patients?

Practices underestimate budget & scope of effort to market against in-network providers &/or to market out-of-network services
Attracting qualified leads depends on clear communication of pricing/payment options (in/out-of-network, HSA/FSA, cash/self-pay, concierge practice, letters of protection, etc.)
High-dollar services require financing options & milestone-based payment schedules (ex: CareCredit for each phase of dental implant)
Sub-optimizing Google Ads and Google Business Profile features (ex: business description, carrier lists, program details, etc.)
Lack of website info on treatment philosophy, first visit/patient experience, price/payment info = unresolved questions & anxieties that stall sales

Specialist advertising knowledge required due to FTC, state-specific, Google, Facebook & Instagram medical advertising rules (ex: healthcare, addiction treatment, pain management, psychotherapy, weight loss, etc.)
Lack of familiarity with how licensed providers can safely share HIPAA-compliant content & photos
Medical marketing agencies often provide superficial/"me-too" copy for ads, profiles, websites
Focus on easy/cheap but ineffective marketing (ex: social posts, keyword stuffing)
Limits on creative self-pay pricing structures imposed by some health insurance provider contracts
Balancing desire to help those in need with the need to build a self-sustaining business

What's the best way to get more patients?

The Local Marketing Triangle^©
for Health & Wellness

To get more customers, you've got to get your business in front of people who don't know about you yet and are actively looking to buy services like yours.

The Local Marketing Triangle achieves both goals:

Google Ads promotes your business to people actively looking to buy services like yours
Your Google Business Profile earns your visibility in local 3-pack, next best thing to an ad
Your website does the heavy lifting: anticipating what prospects typically wonder and worry about

More about the Local Marketing Triangle >

"But...what about backlinks? Directory citations? E-books? Facebook? TV? Radio? Postcards? Etc."

Backlinks and directory citations? Important years ago. Today, no longer relevant for local search. You can safely forget about them.

TV, radio, newspapers & direct mail? They target everyone in a region, so you pay to show your ad to lots of people who will never care about what you sell. That makes it an expensive way to get prospects. Worth a look as a secondary strategy, but not as your primary marketing tool.

Facebook Ads? At least you can target people interested in a broad category, like fitness or yoga. But unlike Google, it doesn't show ads based on purchase intent. And it significantly restricts what health and wellness ads can say or show. Worth a look once you've got Google Ads, your business profile and your site dialed in—but it shouldn't be your primary advertising tool.

Facebook business page posts? At least they're free. But they only show up in newsfeeds of people who already know about you. You need awareness among people who don't know about you. Better for staying connected to customers you already have.

E-books or PDFs? Potentially useful lead magnets—once folks are in your sales funnel! But they don't help people discover your brick-and-mortar wellness business in the first place.

"Research shows that more than 90% of qualified leads for local health and wellness businesses come from Google Ads, your Google Business Profile, and your website, so that's what deserves your time and budget."
~Don Muchow, Radial's Chief Content Officer