- Existing patients
- Social Media
- Offline Branding
Existing Patients
First and foremost, a business’ branding is largely determined by their existing patients. This is why it is important to pay attention to what occurs in your office. The dynamic between you, your staff, and the patients play the largest role in whether or not you will receive referrals and positive reviews.
A good in-office experience creates happy patients, and happy patients are going to increase repeat business.
Social Media vs. Offline Branding
In a world constantly growing digitally, offline branding is not necessary for a practice to expand and be successful. Instead, the majority of your branding should come from social media and other online avenues
Accessibility
Social media branding is far superior to offline branding because of the accessibility of the internet. Networking sites like Facebook and Instagram provide high rates of exposure, so utilizing them is a tremendous growth opportunity.
With social media, your information is constantly available, so viewers are able to seek out content when it is relevant to them. With offline media, you’re pushing content at potential patients and hoping it finds them at the right place and the right time.
By increasing the quality of access to your information, you dramatically increase your ability to engage with customers through the written word.
Reviews, comments, and online content create a much better opportunity for branding. They allow you to start developing a communication-based relationship with your customer even before they become a lead.
Cost
Another upside to using online media versus offline media is the cost difference. Offline media is expensive for the return on your investment, especially since it’s drawing in fewer and fewer people. Social media is essentially free.
While you can choose to go above and beyond in this avenue, such as hiring out content creators and companies to streamline your campaigns, posting on social media is free and easy to do. This provides a tremendous amount of opportunity for your business.
Time
Additionally, people just don’t spend as much time looking at print media anymore. Over the past five to six years, phone tracking has shown that offline media is not providing a significant impact on patient acquisition.
To understand this, think about what consumers are doing when they’re in your office. Are they looking through magazines, are they reading printed branding you’ve set out?
No. More often they’re on their phones. Smartphones provide ease of access to almost anything a client would desire that outweighs the printed media surrounding them.
Calls coming in from offline are next to nothing in today’s market. These results have been replicated all around the U.S.—from New York to Texas, from small towns to major metropolitan areas, offline branding is providing minimal to no impact on patient acquisition.
