Marketing Your Practice, Knowing Your Return

Elective Surgery physicians are often daunted with the task of competing for new patients. Because elective surgery works on an “opt-in” basis, physicians find themselves having to aggressively market to their target audience. Whether it is done through television, radio, newspaper or online, physicians must actively compete for business in an age where the Internet has made choosing a doctor as simple as online shopping. When a doctor’s marketing tactics pay off in the form of a lead, it is up to the doctor and the staff to close the loop on converting the lead into a new patient. 

The moment you receive a new lead, the clock starts ticking! It’s time to take swift, strategic action to convert the lead into a consultation. A study published by lead management and tracking group MyMedLeads (MML) drew data from thousands of physicians and concluded that 70% of all leads a doctor’s office receives ends up lost. In their research, MML found the main cause of low lead conversion rates to be poor follow-up. According to the study, leads that receive follow-up within 12 minutes have a 65% higher conversion rate. Contradictory to this information, it takes the average medical practice about nine hours to respond to inquiries. The practice that fails to consider the essence of time when it comes to lead nurturing is unknowingly bowing out of the race for more patients. 

Nextech partners with MyMedLeads to offer practices the tools they need to manage their leads such as call and email tracking, follow-up reminders and lead sourcing. These tools enable a practice to get the ball rolling with new patients but also help the doctor evaluate where the leads are coming from to calculate the practices return on investment (ROI). Shooting in the dark is a sure way to spend unnecessary money when it comes to marketing a practice. MML has helped physicians save up to 30% of their budget by identifying which marketing tactics are actually producing leads. 

Just for the sake of comparison, let’s look at a lead as if it were a new car. When someone buys a car, its value depreciates as soon as the car leaves the sales lot. With time, the value of that car continues to depreciate. The same goes for a new lead. From the moment the lead is received, its value is decreasing with time. The longer it takes to follow up, the less valuable that lead is to the practice. The partnership between Nextech and MML works to put physicians in the best position to grow their practice with new patients. 

Visit MyMedLeads.com for more information.