This is the follow-up article to “What Are the 5 Best Sources for New Patients?” If you want to read about the first two sources of getting new patients go here.
Here are the next three:
Source #3: Locally-Attended Events
The third source on my list is any type of event, especially locally-attended community or corporate events where there are booths available.
Some examples are venues such as 3K or 5K walk/run races, local charity fundraisers, community festivals, home & garden shows, and literally hundreds of other boutique or local events.
It is important to pick the events that have your LOCAL demographic, either in QUANTITY—like your city’s fall festival or a lower volume but higher QUALITY event like a corporate health fair.
In the case of a running event, you would prefer a local 3K or 5K race over a marathon, because those are much more likely to be attended by a local demographic rather than attended by runners from around the world.
In the case of corporate events, health fairs are ideal. If you have a healthcare business, this is one of the best and fastest sources of finding qualified, local new patients.
You can find out about these corporate events by simply calling all the corporations in your area that employ over 100 employees and asking them when their next health fair, open enrollment, or benefits fair is.
To do these events successfully, it is essential to be trained in Event Scheduling Skills. In our Marketing Training, we drill clients and their staff on our proven techniques to ensure they reel in every person they come in contact with at their booth.
Event scheduling may seem like a simple task, however there is a TON of strategy behind getting everyone to participate in your booth.
One failure I see FAR TOO OFTEN is the exhibitor/host of a booth at a fair or event sets up BEHIND their table and greets people walking by.
F.A.I.L. Failing always is losing. This is a huge flunk in our book!
We train our clients (or rather our clients’ staff) on how to properly and positively engage with anyone walking by to participate IN the booth. For instance, how to run different types of ‘screenings’ that are interesting or re-branded (think ‘muscle tension test’ rather than sEMG as an example) and how to get the attendees to easily sign up for an introductory service at your office.
You should be able to schedule (as a standard) at least 75% of the people that stop at your booth. There’s amazing opportunity at these corporate events because there is usually a strong concentration of qualified candidates for wellness services.
At RAW PUBLIC events, you might also consider having the any public attending pay for your introductory services. But the BIG problem with that is that now you are selling at an event and that can put a foul taste in the mouth of some prospects.
A way to completely reverse that is by teaming up with a nonprofit or a cause-of-the-week within your booth to help them raise much needed funds. In this way, an attendee of that raw public event gives a $27 or $37 donation towards the nonprofit and, in exchange, you give them an introductory package for your services.
Because that donation also puts more skin in the game at these raw public events, the people are much more likely to come in and you’ll filter out people who are only interested in freebies.
Source #4: Paid Traffic and Social Ads
Paid traffic or paid social ads are amazing ways to tap into your local community.
YouTube ads, Facebook ads, some Google Adwords (the most expensive), as well as Twitter ads can work very well.
But remember one thing, whenever you’re using any type of paid social media traffic, you want to make sure you’re creating a really clear and specific opportunity for them to come in, rather than just an awareness ad.
This opportunity should be the answer and proposed solution to a specific problem or concern, not just a general invitation to your office for a check-up.
It’s even better if you tie your ad offer as a donation to a non-profit or a social cause like we mentioned above.
Paid ads always work but the two most important points are:
(1) You have to monitor your campaign to adjust it, the offer, the images, and even the headline until you have it working. Then you have to revisit it weekly to fine tune it.
(2) In using this medium, you ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY MUST contact the prospect when they ‘opt-in’ to your offer within 30 minutes.
You’ll lose the prospects by leaving it to an hour. They will have likely sought out another source who engaged with them more quickly.
There is a lot more I could talk about in this category, and I wanted to broach the topic as it is an ever increasing source. If you’re interested, we have a done-for-you version of social media marketing called NEW PATIENT MACHINE.
Source #5: Google Maps
At last, we come to number five—Google maps.
A very slick, nearly-proprietary thing we teach at The Business Academy is how to dominate on Google Maps.
Let’s say I’m in Chicago, and I’m hungry for pizza. I’m going to type in “Chicago pizza shop.” It’s going to pull up all the maps to pizza shops in Chicago.
So, if somebody types into Google your city and your service, the Top 3 places in Google Maps to your service in your city pop up in their Google search results.
Over the past several years, there’s been a massive shift from just looking at the search results, because they can be gamed, to now looking at the maps. And guess what? When we look at the maps, we’re also looking at the number of reviews and the star ratings.
There are different ways to maximize your ratings and the number of reviews you have.
Also there are different techniques to actually get your business to show up in the top three—even if your community is saturated with service businesses or healthcare businesses like yours.
You will get the lion’s share of people looking at you for these services if you are in the top of the maps. It’s amazing. Once you’re up there, it doesn’t take much to maintain it. It’s an incredible flow of new traffic into your business.
The first secret to getting in the Top 3 (and keeping it) is regularly getting reviews from your existing clients.
We show you a fantastic way to do this with what we call Google Review Loophole! To get this vital information on the framework for DOMINATING this new patient source click here!
This is our Top 5 sources for maximizing your new patient flows into your business. But don’t restrict yourself to only 5 fishing poles in the water. We have many more poles available that are used by any marketer we train for you. And the marketers that we train for our clients make 5 to 8 times the return on your investment for them.
Good luck!! We hope with these 5 sources you catch way over your limit and are getting into trouble with the New Patient Game Warden. Now go out and DOMINATE YOUR AREA to bring better health to your community!
