How Healthcare Providers Can Convert Digital Leads Into Loyal Patients

Ajay Prasad is the CEO of GMR Web Team, a full-service healthcare digital marketing agency focused on patient acquisition and retention.

Congratulations on developing an effective digital marketing strategy that generates more leads for your medical practice! Your strategy is totally in line with most consumers’ tendency to use the internet when seeking health or medical information.

However, to grow your practice’s revenue with digital marketing, you must be able to turn most of your phone inquiries or leads captured through online forms into patients. For this, you need an effective sales process that ensures every potential patient’s touch point is positive and is quickly converted into an actual appointment.

Here are some tips for converting leads into loyal patients for your medical practice:

Don’t keep your prospective patients waiting.

You should get in touch with your leads (including picking up their call) as soon as practically possible after they’ve contacted your practice or left their contact information. Doing this increases your chances of converting leads into patients instead of losing them to your competitors. Once a prospective patient has discovered your medical practice’s website via a search engine or physician review site, they can also find your local competitor in minutes if you’re unavailable.

Train your front desk team.

The personnel receiving prospective patients’ phone calls should have proper training on how to provide appropriate responses. Create an effective script and have your staff rehearse and master it so they can smoothly handle caller inquiries, including objections. Also, provide clear guidelines on what your front desk team should say if asked about sensitive issues like treatment costs. You need them to say the right things to persuade leads to schedule their first appointment.

Handle the phones with professionalism.

Professionalism on the phone is one of the most emphasized tips for healthcare practices to convert digital leads into patients. Make sure your phone handlers understand the importance of being respectful and compassionate throughout phone conversations with prospective patients. They should avoid behavior that can put off potential leads, such as interrupting the caller or hanging up first. Remember, there is always an alternative local provider a phone call away, so avoid putting patients on hold and make sure to be polite.

If possible, offer appointment incentives.

When looking into how to convert digital leads into loyal patients, you can’t ignore the potential effect of incentives. If applicable to your specialty, make sure that the people contacting or responding to leads (including call handlers) share the latest service discounts. Free consultations or new patient specials are some of the incentives medical practices can leverage to help get more patients through the door. If you can’t offer incentives, see if you can offer same-day appointments.

Track your online medical leads.

Tracking digital leads from the point of capture to conversion can help you optimize your online marketing budget and personalize the prospect’s experience. With digital technology, you can track the origin of prospective patients’ calls. Another way is for call handlers to ask first-time callers how they found the practice, be it Google or a referral. You should be collecting the prospective patient’s name, phone number, health plan and email address to manage the conversion process better.

Train your medical providers.

Even with adequate training, front desk staff cannot always offer callers certain assurances they might require to accept treatment. As such, doctors or caregivers who meet with patients during initial or follow-up appointments have a vital role to play, which might require training. Not only are they in a better position to give treatment specifics, but they’re also responsible for establishing a strong foundation for a lasting relationship with patients.

Leverage a patient relationship management system.

Before a digital lead becomes a patient, you may need to constantly nurture it with a series of consecutive emails that address their specific medical need. Following up with multiple calls may be necessary before conversion in certain cases. This constant communication should not end once the lead has converted. To acquire and retain loyal patients that become a consistent source of revenue for your practice, you must maintain a close relationship with them. This can include email newsletters, feedback and personalized engagements like sending them birthday messages or cards.

Final Thoughts

Mastering how to effectively convert digital leads into patients enables healthcare practices to maximize revenue generation with online marketing campaigns. Training front desk and medical staff on key aspects of the medical leads-to-sales process is a vital part of these efforts. Practices should also have a customer retention plan that incorporates patient relationship management.

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