Among the many questions we are being asked by clients is, “What should I be doing now?” One option, that we don’t recommend would be to simply cut back or stop marketing; no posting on Facebook, quit emailing, stop advertizing and discontinue adding videos to their website. There is no better time to be reaching out to your patients and prospective patients as they are looking to their medical providers for advice and guidance. As most of the workforce is working at home and online. This means that the information you are sharing should be valuable, authentic and educational. Here are a couple ways you can stay in front of prospective and current patients:
Virtual Consultations
Offering free online training and consultations during this time gives you the ability to continue attracting new patients to build trust & rapport with them. You can also promote this to your existing patients. Add the virtual consultation feature to your website, send an email and post to Facebook to try and get in touch with patients who have been considering treatment but are still on the fence. Doing this activity is work, and will take time. Your practice will reward you with new patients and a very speedy recovery once the gates are opened and we all get back to living normal lives. The goal is to have a pool of new patients to schedule into the practice for in-office appointments once normal operation resumes instead of there being a lull in new patient flow.
Videos and Livestreaming
Video is more important than ever. If you’ve embraced video in the past you are already one step ahead of most doctors. If you’ve made video a cornerstone of your marketing efforts you’re no doubt a top producer in your market.
Livestreaming allows you to be visible now and is an opportunity to get in front of new eyes. The video can be casual and shouldn’t require much preparation. Remember to keep it steady by propping up your phone in front of you, but do make sure you have good lighting. The video doesn’t have to be too long either, just enough to give practical and helpful advice.
Based on the message in the video, you can take the information and repurpose it for a blog post, share it on social media, email to your existing patients and even a Google My Business post. The point is that people shouldn’t have to go digging to find your latest information.
These are some of the video topics that our dentists are producing that are getting great results:
- Treating new types of cases
- Looking for the silver lining
- What does (insert procedure) do for my smile
- How to stay in the now
- Here is how we’re going to keep you safe in the future
This time will pass and by keeping up with producing content now and offering virtual consults, you won’t be playing catch up with your marketing when you are able to start seeing patients again.
