Without realising it, most clinics limit their potential to reach more high-value patients. It’s easy to be confused and misguided about how best to go about it. After all, there are so many different ways to choose from. But by choosing just two simple acquisition approaches, clinics can be more effective and save time and money, says Daniel Coulton Shaw, co-founder of a clinic which has grown from a single dentist and nurse to a €5.8M revenue per year business.
No matter what “marketing agencies” and “business growth consultants” want you to believe, there are only two ways to get your clinic more new or high-value patients, and that would be to:
- Do Marketing
Nothing new here, apart from the fact that there are just six sources of new patient inquiries for you to focus on. These are so easy to do, and just 1.5 of those strategies cost real money.
Or:
- Optimise The New Patient Journey
Most clinics overlook this, but it is even easier to get more patients this way, and I’ll show you there are only five things to look at.
Ideally, you’re doing both. But whether you have 10, 100, or 1,000 patients per week in your clinic, I’d recommend you start with method one: The 5 Step Patient Journey:
Why new patient journey first?
Because it’s fully under your control (unlike regular marketing), costs you nothing but a little time, and will bring immediate results with the patients who are contacting you right now.
Just look at the conversion percentages between those five stages. Think about what you can do to improve them and you’ll get more new patients instantly.
Taking those same example new patient numbers and applying our ‘Clinic Boost Method’ to them increases your new patient numbers without doing more marketing, hiring more people, or working more.
Can you see the benefit of this? It might seem small, but this has more than doubled your revenue.
So many potential patients are lost along the way. Ask yourself, is it because those patients decided not to have treatment at all? Maybe. But in the majority of cases, those potential patients will choose another clinic instead.
Like in medicine, often you need to restore before you improve and move on to method two: The 6 Patient Acquisition Sources.
The 6 Patient Acquisition Sources.
First look at the new patient numbers from patient referrals (Source 1), and only when you have full confidence that each strategy is working well for you then move on to:
- Source 2 – follow-ups
- Source 3 – partnerships
- Source 4- online visibility
- Source 5 – offline visibility
- Source 6 – paid ads
Taking those same example new patient numbers and applying the Clinic Boost Method to them:
Can you see the benefit of this? Maybe you won’t even need to look at patient acquisition sources 3-6 because 1 and 2 are working so well for you. Could you imagine, not needing a marketing budget?
The two methods together, our Clinic Boost Method, give you the “what needs to be looked at” to improve your new patient numbers right now, and the “how” to improve those numbers.
About the author: Daniel Coulton Shaw started with a single dentist and nurse and scaled his clinic to €5.8M revenue per year. Over 13 years, including the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, he has advised more than 126 small and large clinics across 26 countries to increase their revenue, reputation and results collectively by over 31%. He is co-founder of the Clinic Boost Method.
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