Huyen: You have run social media or google ads and you’ve seen a good flow of leads coming in, but you don’t know why many of them haven’t booked in a consultation or come in to the practice?
In this podcast, we are going to talk about how to improve touch points to convert more leads into becoming new patients.
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Podcast intro
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Steve: Hello and welcome to another episode of Online Marketing For Doctors podcast. If you are new to this podcast channel, this channel is all about providing strategies and tactics that you can use to grow your practice fast. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast by hitting that little bell button (Ding Sound), so you never miss out on a future episode.
Huyen: When you get a lead, you goal is to convert them into a patient. This is actually harder than it sounds. Because, with interactive marketing channels such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube ads, we’re interrupting their social media use, and so a lot of them won’t follow-up and don’t come in after they sign up for that entry level or foot in the door offers as the ad and signing up could be quickly escaping their attention span.
Steve: In our guest podcast interview #33, we had a very interesting discussion with Dr Nwobi from Vascular Health Center about Direct Response Marketing, and how to convert more social medial leads into actual patients.
He initially didn’t have much success with his new patient conversion rate, which was at a low 5%. But he managed to move it all the way up to 25% by using a patient touch point strategy and follow-up system; and we’re going to show you how you can do it too.
Huyen: In order to convert prospects into new patients, these are our recommended touch points that you’ll need to generate to make sure that you’re best maximizing your chances for converting leads into new patient conversions.
Okay…so you’ve had someone sign-up for an offer on your website, maybe it is to book in a free consultation. The first touch point, is the confirmation email and SMS, which can be automatically generated after a prospect signs up for the offers. If your sign-up offer requires manual intervention to generate a booking, please handle this within the first 10 mins after the leads signs-up. A dedicated staff member or call centre staff should call the prospect immediately to book them in, leads start getting cold very quickly.
Steve: After the 3rd and 7th day, if they haven’t arranged their booking yet, they should receive 2 follow ups, a call or voice drop message. Again, this can all be automated as well. These will be used to help remind the prospect of their previous desire to claim this special offer.
Following that, you’ll still need another 2 touch points if they haven’t booked in yet to your special offer, and these can be via text and email to remind prospects of the final call before your special offer’s expiry date.
Huyen: In general, you usually need to generate at least 4 touch points (call, voice drop, email, text) for inspiring prospects to take action and make that booking. And as you can see in our proposed follow up system, it takes 8 touch points to close a lead.
But… before we continue, lets take a quick break for a word from our sponsor.
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Webinar Promo
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Steven: Ha… I knew you were going to do that. Let’s get back to the podcast shall we?
Huyen: For those prospects who still haven’t booked in for your special offer, we need to retarget them and keep contacting them via different methods as mentioned previously, sometime as much as up to 10 touch points before we close the lead.
And once they finally take you up and claim that special offer, we need to send them a thank you message for the visit, and send them all relevant information that may have come out of the special offer, like a treatment plan or a reminder for the next appointment.
Steve: Please keep in mind to always try to book in the next appointment with any prospect after the first consultation or visit, while they are still in the current appointment. That is one of the effective tips that we featured in our podcast #23 7 Tips to Make Sure Leads Become Actual Patients – the link to that podcast is in our show notes below for you to check that out.
So in summary, you need to generate 4 touch points every week, using multi touch points up to 10 points to convert a lead to a patient.
We may wish it was just one thing in isolation but in reality it is a lot of different ways continuously in combination that are needed in order to convert a lead into a new patient.
Follow up – Follow up – and Follow-up. Keep retargeting your message to them to stay front of mind is the key in obtaining future conversions.
Huyen: Some of you may be feeling overwhelmed and wondering how can we do all these tasks effectively? Thankfully, there is software out there that can help to automate your follow-up emails, sms and even voice drop. Check out the software called Go High Level. It is a powerful tool that can handle all of these tough points for you automatically. Just set it once, and forget it. It’s our favourite type of system! We offer a special rate for this software package, so if you are thinking about signing up for this software, please let us know.
If you are using Keap or Active Campaign, you can send automated follow-up emails and texts with the add-on extensions or credit. We’ll leave the links to these affordable and functional software in our show notes below, so you can check them out for yourself and see how they can benefit your practice.
Steve: But that isn’t the only option…how about a call centre? Hiring a local call centre company can be an effective means of having ongoing communication with leads. You provide the call centre with the script and campaign brief with instructions, and they can handle the follow-up with those leads who signed up for the offers but haven’t booked in yet, or even those who have booked in but need reminders to make sure that they actually show up for the appointments.
If you run your promotion on a large scale, your internal staff probably won’t have time and or their full attention to take care of this tedious task, so automating or call centre are great resources for getting the same functionality without the cost of additional staff.
Huyen: Well, we have come to the end of today’s podcast. Unfortunately, we have to say goodbye for now. But I’m curious and would like to hear from you too…what is your key takeaway from today’s episode that you would like to take some time over the next few days to start implementing? Or have you tried a different approach to convert more leads to actual patients and has it worked well for you? Our healthcare professional community would love and appreciate your input. Add your comments below, or send us an email with your thoughts.
Steve: Be sure to keep in touch with us so we can continue to bring you the best marketing strategies and tactics to grow and scale your practice. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast channel, so you never miss another one! We’ve got more great content planned for future shows so you won’t want to miss them.
We look forward to seeing you next time!
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Show note:
Podcast #33: How to Use Direct Response Marketing to Grow Your Practice With Dr Obinna Nwobi from Vascular Health Center https://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/podcast/how-to-use-direct-response-marketing/
Podcast #23: 7 Tips to Make Sure Leads Become Actual Patients https://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/podcast/tips-to-make-sure-leads-become-actual-patients/
Webinar Marketing System https://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/webinar-marketing-system/
20 Ideas for Foot In The Door Offers: https://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/fitd-offers/
Email Marketing + Voice Drop + SMS: High Level
Email Marketing Software: https://sendgrid.com/pricing/
SMS Marketing Software: https://www.clicksend.com/au/
Email Marketing + SMS Software – Active Campaign: https://www.activecampaign.com/pricing/
https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/218789977-SMS-Pricing
Email Marketing + SMS Software: Drip https://www.drip.com/blog/news/drip-textiful-sms-marketing
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