14 Best Strategies to Market Your Medical Practice

In today’s world, where every patient is a demanding consumer, simply opening your private practice isn’t enough to get a stable flow of patients. If you want your practice to be trusted, you must learn how to market it and make yourself known as a physician. 

Let’s review 14 digital marketing tips for healthcare providers to effectively advertise their practice. For your convenience, we’ve split them into three steps:

Step 1. Boost your online presence

Your strong online presence is the basis of all your marketing efforts. As the internet is the number one place patients go to find a physician and read reviews about practices, you must ensure your web identity appeals to your target audience. 

Tip #1 Design a professional website

A website is a convenient place for patients seeking information about healthcare providers. With the help of a website, you can:

• educate patients
• share news related to your services
• answer the most common healthcare questions
• let patients book an appointment with a healthcare provider right away
• and more

Tip: Check out this guide to learn what your perfect medical website should look like from a patient’s point of view.

Here are seven recommendations on how to build a website that converts:

1. Find a reliable hosting provider and purchase a unique, short, and simple domain name that aligns with your medical practice. Your website’s URL is the first thing patients see. 
2. Share your contact information on your home page. It would be a plus to add a separate contact page and incorporate extra features like a contact form or a map with your location to let patients easily find you.
3. Create compelling website content, including engaging top-quality images and videos that showcase the advantages and value of your services.
4. Keep your website updated to give it a modern look and feel and make it a place where patients can get insights and receive knowledge. 
5. Create a perfect website structure — showcase your healthcare services (especially any that are unique), your professional background, and your career achievements; add photos of yourself; share YouTube videos; etc.
6. Run a blog to boost your SEO, drive organic traffic, and attract more patients.
7. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly and optimized for different screen sizes.

Tip #2 Use social media

Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are effective marketing tools that help healthcare providers:

• stay in touch with existing patients
• gain new followers
• advertise their practice
• share content
• answer patients’ questions

Using social media accounts, physicians can build a strong online presence, demonstrate their expertise, showcase patients’ reviews and testimonials, outline their unique selling proposition (USP), and share information about upcoming events, webinars, and healthcare seminars to engage more patients. 

Tip #3 Do guest blogging 

Guest blogging is a practical marketing strategy for physicians to increase their search engine rankings and boost their online presence. By posting on authoritative and reputable websites, doctors can not only gain backlinks to their own website but also spread the word about their private medical practice. 

To get the most out of your guest blogging, follow these strategies: 

1. When exploring guest posting options, don’t choose a website simply because your article is accepted. Try to post your content on authoritative websites that Google ranks high to get quality backlinks. 

2. Join niche-specific online communities to find more guest blogging opportunities and attract more patients with precise targeting. 

Tip #4 Claim your profile in online directories for physicians 

Claim your profile on the most popular online directories for physicians that match your specialty. 

The success of your listing in a directory depends on multiple factors, such as your profile description. You should design your page in a directory with the same quality and accuracy as your website’s home page. Consider including the following in your profile description:

• A professional introduction
• Your specialty and the types of patients you treat
• Your mission
• A compelling message to your target audience
• Methods you use in your practice
• A link to your booking page 

Tip #5 Use paid advertising campaigns

As opposed to traditional advertising tactics, paid campaigns on platforms such as Google Ads can demonstrate immediate results that can directly influence your medical practice’s growth. This is great for those looking for a cost-effective, reliable, and simple way to increase their private practice’s visibility in the healthcare market, drive traffic to their website, and improve ROI.

Check out some tangible benefits of paid search advertising for medical practices:

1) With PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, you can show ads only to your target audience. That means you can specify to whom your ads will be shown. 

2) Your ads will be shown at the top of search results, ensuring rapid improvement in your online performance. 

3) You’ll gain more flexibility in managing PPC campaigns. You can adjust your budget and change campaign settings according to performance results. 

4) You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, meaning they land on your website. 

Tip #6 Host your own podcast

Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular among specialists in different fields, and creating your own podcast is an effective way to showcase your expertise and talk about important health-related topics in an engaging, simple, and accessible manner. People can listen to a podcast while driving, walking, cleaning the house, shopping, or doing many other activities.

Some medical journals and institutions are now creating and running their own podcasts, including:

• Anesthesiology Journal
• Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Journal
• Mayo Clinic
• Society of Critical Care Medicine
• Johns Hopkins Medicine

Step 2. Create the right patient experience

These tips will help you nurture trustworthy relationships with your patients and create a seamless patient experience. 

Tip #7 Embrace email marketing 

Here are some options for how you can use email marketing to advertise your practice and gain more patients:

1. Send automated emails to remind patients of upcoming appointments and confirm their attendance.
2. Share healthcare tips and educational content relevant to your patients’ needs and requests. 
3. Send newsletters to keep patients informed about what's going on in your practice.
4. Create and send special offers, promotions, and discounts.
5. Ask your patients for feedback to gather your testimonials.
6. Maintain follow-up communication to track patient progress and offer additional support.

Make sure that you follow best practices in email marketing. These include:

• using personalized messaging
• including a booking link in your emails 
• keeping your emails short and to the point
• writing an eye-catching subject line
• making your emails HIPAA compliant

Pro tip: Use email marketing systems like Mailchimp to simplify and automate the sending of emails to your target patients.

Tip #8 Send automated appointment reminders

Manually sending reminders can eat into your time and make you less productive. Consider all-in-one medical practice management software like ExpertBox that can automate this process. ExpertBox allows your patients to choose how they want to get notified about upcoming appointments, such as with push notifications, email, or SMS, so you no longer need to disturb them with phone calls. Moreover, you can adjust the text in your reminders and maximize satisfaction with your healthcare services.

Tip #9 Let patients easily book appointments

Create a booking page and share it with your clients through the most convenient channel. This allows your patients to self-book and choose an available time slot that fits them best. 

With ExpertBox, you can create your custom booking page in a few clicks and let patients easily schedule from your website or through sharing a booking link in your emails or on social networks.

A custom booking page is a great way to gain prospects and convert them into future patients. 

Tip #10 Adopt electronic health records

Electronic health records (EHRs) offer numerous advantages to healthcare providers in terms of enhanced productivity, automation, higher quality of care, and fewer manual errors. These are other benefits of electronic health records that can make patients more satisfied with your healthcare services:

1. Improved patient communication. The EHR system accelerates physician–patient communication through a patient portal. It allows doctors to stay in touch with patients between appointments, provide patients with educational information, and keep patients involved in their own care. 
2. Enhanced data security. Electronic health records ensure the privacy of patient data due to encryption, making it hard to disclose or lose confidential data.

Tip: Choose HIPAA-compliant EHR software to meet data security requirements and protect sensitive data from unauthorized access.



3. Increased efficiency. EHR systems enable physicians to remotely access and share patient records and collaborate with other healthcare professionals involved in patient care. 
4. Automated workflows. EHR systems can automate many time-consuming administrative duties such as data entry, appointment scheduling, and billing, allowing doctors to devote more of their time to patient care.

Tip #11 Develop a referral program

With all the digital ads patients see, it can take time to decide which medical services are better than others. The alternative is to hear advice from close friends or peers who have already visited a particular physician. Introducing a referral marketing program is a great way to gain loyal patients.

Referral marketing can be of different types:

1. Patient reviews. Physicians may offer their patients to leave feedback on relevant websites or portals.
2. Email campaigns. Email is convenient for physicians to reach out to both potential and existing patients. Through emails, physicians can share their offers, promotions, discounts, and referral opportunities.
3. Social media. Physicians can take advantage of social media in order to get more referrals, such as by collaborating with social media influencers to promote their services.

Step 3. Invest in professional branding

Branding is more than just your logo. It is about the values your messages convey and how your wording and design align and reflect your personality. Look at some tips on how to improve your personal brand. 

Tip #12 Be active in your community

If you want to increase your brand recognition and reach a larger audience, try to engage with patients beyond your practice to demonstrate your commitment. These are some ways to be active in your community:

• Participate in community programs and initiatives that contribute to public health and promote a healthy lifestyle.
• Offer your expertise for free at medical clinics, to health organizations, and at community events.
• Speak in public on topics you’re an expert in to educate the community.
• Host seminars and workshops on various medical topics. 

Tip #13 Build a network

Connecting with other healthcare professionals and thought leaders in your niche can help you boost your personal brand and reputation and increase your authority. You can engage with others and build your network by:

• attending conferences
• joining professional organizations
• participating in online forums, seminars, workshops, and so on 

Tip #14 Define your unique value proposition

Healthcare is a highly competitive industry, with many physicians offering similar services. In order to stand out from other medical specialists, you must differentiate yourself and create a unique value proposition that communicates your values and mission to patients.

Your UVP should be written in a professional tone and include a compelling message that resonates with your audience and shows your patients how you can help them achieve desired health results.

You can use the template below to effectively communicate your UVP on your website, business cards, and social media accounts:

Wrapping up

Effective marketing is vital since it helps physicians to increase patient reach, enhance brand awareness, and gain trust and credibility, creating a seamless patient experience. Digital marketing methods such as social media, SEO, email campaigns, podcasts, and many others can let you easily convert visitors into loyal patients.