For your practice to grow exponentially you need to sustain your existing patients and acquire new ones. Respectful communication, satisfying service, and effective marketing together encourage patient loyalty. This means, your existing customer decides to stay with you without hopping to other practitioners.
Patient loyalty is very powerful. It is necessary to restrict your patients from changing practice. Patient satisfaction will create a better experience. Loyalty encourages word-of-mouth marketing. So, you get more referrals and increased revenue.
You need to go an extra mile to offer excellent patient experience. This will incline them to return to your practice and recommend your practice to their near and dear ones. Here are some ways to grow patient loyalty.
- Increase engagement: For patient loyalty, it is necessary to build a bond with your patients. For this, you need to engage with your patients. You can make use of social media platforms to interact with your target audiences. Inform them of deals and developments, healthy diet and habits, etc. In this era of digitization, you have ample ways to engage with patients via digital marketing techniques. You should make use of email marketing. So, send newsletters to engage with your patients. Your emails should update patients about what new is happing at your practice and in the healthcare industry. You can spread awareness about a disease in general or create focused campaigns on basis of gender, age, etc. This will act as a gesture of concern for your patients’ well-being. Emails are a great medium for conducting patient surveys. Such an engagement activity will help you identify the satisfaction level of your patients and their experience.
- Brand: To build brand loyalty you need to have a presence on social media platforms. More than 80% of people prefer practices where doctors have an active social media presence. Patients on your social media account act as your practice brand ambassadors. To humanize your brand and grow trust of your patients in your practice, you should reply all your patients in a personal tone and share health news and information. To grow brand loyalty, you should reply with a discount or complimentary service. Your patients are sure to share such a surprise that will attract your potential patients. This attitude of caring about patients will raise your level from your competitors.
- Technology: Another great way to build patient loyalty is to bring in technology that provides ease your patients. So, you need to have patient portals and automated patient surveys. This will help you identify patients’ satisfaction. Patient portal allows them to save time lost on scheduling appointments over phone calls or doing follow-ups for test reports. Mobile apps are also one such initiative. This makes you available to your patients even after practice hours. Such a support will make patients loyal to your practice. These apps have all the features of a patient portal and much more. This unique experience will help them build trust and help you win over patients engaged with your competitors.
- Service: Last but the most important step towards building patient loyalty is providing satisfactory treatment to your patients. Your service is who you are for your patients. Be specific about the treatment and explain your patients everything related to his ailment. Crystal clear information will grow your value in eyes of patients. All your campaigns are worthless if you are unable to deliver that level of services. You need to continue serving your best services to build a long-term relationship with your patients.