The way to define your patient journey is to take control of every facet of the patient journey. There is a phrase in business that applies here, and that phrase is “control equals income”.
Many of us think of control as something harsh. Control does not have to be harsh, good positive control is helpful. The way to control the patient journey is to move your potential patients through a course of action that they are comfortable with that leads to your goal of acquiring that new patient. Providing information that provides a solution to the patients problem is paramount. We must always remember that potential patients find your practice because they are seeking a solution to a an issue that chiropractic care will properly address.
What are the steps to the patient journey?
- The first thing is always to get your practice introduced to the potential new patient. This is typically done with your website or online ads, social media etc.
- The next step is to urge the potential patient to call and schedule an appointment. Between 1 and 5% will schedule as a result of the first “touch”.
- The remaining 95 to 99% are encouraged to trade their contact info for an interesting piece of content - these are known as lead magnets.
- Those that opt to offer their contact info are educated, nurtured, and enticed to become a patient with text messaging, emailing and voice messaging over a defined period of time. This is what is most often referred to as a marketing funnel. There are up to several hundred marketing messages in the funnel. Not everyone receives every message. They are structured based upon the behavior of the potential patient to make sure that we present messages based on the interest of that particular individual. Statistically, it takes 9 touches to experience maximum ROI on your marketing investment.
- Those that do not share their contact info are re-marketed to or re-targeted with marketing on Google, Facebook and Bing. This is done to entice the potential patient back to your website and into your funnel.
Controlling the patient journey will increase the number of new patients that your practice acquires.
There are other aspects to the patient journey.
The journey does not end when someone becomes a patient. The funnel is used to maximize the lifetime value of each patient.
Ongoing patient journey includes:
- Recovering missed appointments
- Keeping patients informed and engaged with the practice on an ongoing basis
- Encouraging patients to return for additional treatments and services
- Collecting referrals
- Educating current and past patients.
- Nurturing patients that need to “think about” a procedure before deciding
- More
Schedule your 15 or 30 min planning session with one of our patient journey specialists.
You will walk away with at least 5 ideas to control your patient journey
Call us at (727) 777-7266 or fill out this form and we'll contact you.