We are experiencing an unprecedented time in healthcare. The unfolding drama around the coronavirus has the potential to significantly impact practices who aren’t prepared and proactive around what to expect over the next coming weeks/months. This also provides a great opportunity for you to connect with new patients through a few, easy-to-do activities.
This is absolutely not the time to pull back on advertising. Instead, this is the time to take advantage of this unique situation. Here’s why:
Fear will drive less-experienced practices to stop advertising. Advertising costs should drop as fewer practices are competing to get their message out. Also, they’ll have a harder time starting back up once everything has returned to normal.
Internet usage will increase over the coming weeks as people spend less time in public. The number of viewers on Facebook and Google will increase, providing a great opportunity to get in touch with more prospective patients in your community.
Health is front and center in people’s minds right now. There is no better time to gain people’s attention and get them engaged in being as healthy as they can be.
Now is the perfect time to build the practice’s brand through digital campaigns.
As you are running ads, here are a couple of things to be mindful of:
If seminars / workshops are a big part of your new patient activities and you want to continue running them for the next several weeks, expect show rates to be lower, as more people stay home and avoid public settings.
If your practice utilizes seminars / workshops frequently, consider switching to direct to office consultations for a period of time.
Show rates are traditionally higher for direct consultations and it also avoids the concerns about public gatherings that many prospective patients may have currently.
Video content is king, especially now. Consider putting together a video about the practice that we can run and/or videos educating the community on coronavirus, achieving better overall health, or other health-related topics. Here is an excellent video as an example of someone doing it well: https://www.facebook.com/pkvitality/posts/2587660941511887
New patients will be particularly attentive to cleanliness of the practice. Here’s a checklist you can use to make sure that your office is providing the right vibe to new patients: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FqegU1lqkJM5EKAarY74yAFZyCU_qbx3
We are yet to see how the current health concern plays out, but there is absolutely a great opportunity to build the practice’s presence in the community and give new patients peace of mind that your office is being proactive about their health through the steps above.
If you have any additional questions or would like to discuss any of the topics above, please reach out to your account manager or directly to me.
Yours In Health,
Scott Alexander
President, iVelocity Marketing
