Join us as we collaborate with two industry experts to share top strategies for practice success in 2022. Learn how to improve patient forms, enhance your Google presence, and use effective, low-cost marketing techniques.
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My name is Ryan Schumacher with Satisfied Patient.
I'm excited to be joined by two great people and companies for today's webinar.
We have Caroline Baroosh from the Highland Group and the Forum Team.
And we have Amy Burke from B Marketing Company.
Today, you'll learn how to improve patient forms, dominate Google, avoid negative reviews, and utilize low-cost and high-value marketing strategies.
At the end of today's webinar, we'll have 10 to 15 minutes for questions and answers.
From that, one person will be randomly selected at the end to win a $50 Amazon gift card.
So again, stay on to the end of the webinar.
Be sure to think of your questions.
I will drop those in the chat.
And again, one person will be randomly selected at the end to win that $50 Amazon gift card.
So thank you everyone for attending.
Caroline Baroosh with the Highland Group and the Forum Team is first up.
Caroline, I'll turn it over to you.
Please take it away.
Great, thank you, Ryan.
I hope everybody can see me and hear me.
Um, as Ryan said, my name is Caroline Baroosh, and I'm the owner of the Highland Group.
We've been developing and hosting medical and dental websites for 21 years.
More recently, we've started a new division of our company called the Form Team, where we're helping practices to bring their forms into the digital age.
This is a HIPAA-compliant system that's very patient-friendly and practice-friendly.
That's kind of what I'm going to focus on here today with all of you—the form piece of that.
So, living in the past is kind of nice sometimes, and we all like to do it.
But at some point, we usually figure out it's not particularly healthy or productive.
If you're still asking your patients to print paper copies of your forms and fill them out by hand, or if you're handing them a clipboard when they come into your office, then you are sending them back to the past.
Just to clarify, if your forms are on your website but your patients still have to print them and fill them out by hand, that is not a digital form.
Okay, a digital form has that little submit button down at the bottom where they can actually electronically submit those forms.
So this may not seem like a big deal to you or your doctors, but it is a big deal to your patients.
Patients have a lot of choices these days.
If they're making a mental note of each part of their experience with you, and if they're still filling out paper forms, they're probably not very happy about this particular aspect of your practice.
In today's world, they have a lot of choices.
Some will put up with it.
Some patients love you enough to put up with that.
But again, it is just part of their overall patient experience.
There are a lot of reasons that you've probably thought about over the years about why you're not quite ready to move over to those electronic forms yet.
A lot of them are good reasons.
So I'm just going to take a look with you at some of the reasons that you've probably mentioned to yourself or your staff of why not—we're just going to keep doing it the same way we've always done it.
The first one here is electronic signatures.
Are they really legal? That's kind of a scary thing for people to think about.
So you know, are they legal, and can patients actually sign an electronic form, like on a phone? How does that work? So yeah, they are legal.
They're absolutely legal.
Actually, it's just as easy to sign on a phone as it is on a computer or a tablet.
You can sign with your finger, you can use a stylus, you can use your mouse.
A lot of times, you may have seen those little boxes where you type in your name, and you always kind of go, 'Is that really a signature?' But on a good electronic form, you shouldn't even have to have that.
You are actually legally signing those forms.
Another concern that you might have had is—or maybe not a concern, but a reason—is, 'Well, we still have to collect their insurance card, their driver's license, medication lists, etc., when they come into the office.
So what's the point of having them fill everything out online ahead of time if we're going to have to get all that from them anyway?' Good question.
Luckily, patient forms are now able to accept uploaded items, such as pictures of your insurance card, driver's license, etc.
Any type of document can be attached to a form, and it's actually even easier on a phone because all you do is take a picture and select 'Add'—you know, upload—and boom, it's done.
So a really simple process to be able to do that, and then patients don't even need to take them to their appointment.
Here's a good one.
Here's one we hear a lot.
Excuse me.
Can people actually fill out a form on a phone.
I mean, look how tiny that is and look at that little PDF picture in that phone.
That's what your PDF forms look like on a phone, and no, they can't see that.
They have to enlarge it, scroll all around to find what they need, and it's just way too much of a pain.
I've seen forms like that—even if they're fillable PDFs—it's just a lot of trouble, and I would just say, 'Oh, forget this.'
So, the question is, how do you get around that? Well, those are PDF forms.
What you're seeing now is an actual web form, and it's not a PDF.
It's called responsive design, and what that means is that it responds to whatever device the viewer is using.
You’ll see there that the font size and the size of those fields are just as large as they would be on a computer.
You don’t have to enlarge it; you don’t have to scroll left and right.
All you do is scroll down and keep filling out the questions, but it’s completely readable.
So, a good online form should be responsive, and that's a question that you would definitely want to ask your designer: Is this responsive? The same thing goes for your website, by the way.
It should always be responsive so people on phones have full visual use of that.
Here’s another one: These forms that you're going to make, these electronic forms, they’re not going to match our current forms, and our doctors are going to flip if that information is in a different place.
They will, you're right, and your staff is used to seeing everything in the same place.
So, you want your forms to continue to look the way you're used to them looking.
The way this works, the way the system works, is that the form that the patient sees is that wonderful mobile-friendly responsive form.
But somewhere in the magical world of the internet, the form that comes into you is going to look almost identical to what you're used to.
It gets transformed back into a PDF for you, and you don’t have to worry about it looking any different from what you're used to.
That’s a very good feature of an electronic form.
Okay, so you've probably seen those build-your-own-form programs.
You know, there are some good things about them, but most of the feedback we hear about that is, 'Yeah, they say they’re simple and that they’re easy for anyone to design and create, but they’re not.' I’m not a web designer; I’m an office manager.
My staff is not web designers; we don’t have time for that.
We don’t want to learn a whole new program, and you’re right.
That’s not your job.
A custom web form should be designed for you, again, to match your current forms, not some templated form.
Take that off your back.
Let somebody else take that off your back.
That’s not your job.
How about the security of electronic forms, that’s always a big worry: Is this HIPAA compliant? And obviously, that’s an excellent question because nobody wants the HIPAA police at their door because of their forms.
This is definitely something you should always ask whoever you’re working with.
Make sure—and don’t just ask—they should have documentation to show you that their system is fully HIPAA compliant, encrypted end to end.
Along with that, also make sure that they are ADA accessible, which is a big deal these days too, for the disability act.
Make sure, again, they can show you that their forms are ADA accessible.
No police should be coming to your door; we don’t want that either.
Okay, how about this one we hear: ‘Well, we use our form through our EMR system already.
So, we don’t really need another new system for forms.’ Along with that thought, we often hear too, though, that we don’t really like those forms.
They want certain information because that’s what needs to go into the EMR, but there’s a lot of other information that our doctors and providers want to know too.
And those EMR forms just don’t ask that.
So, again, a custom form is designed with all the questions that you need those answers to, and not questions that you don’t need the answers to.
Oh, and the ever-popular question: ‘Can I afford this? Is this going to break our bank?’ These digital forms—well, they’re not as expensive as you think, for one thing.
And a lot of questions have to go into that answer too because, first of all, how much are you spending on paper? Are you even still mailing forms out to patients? Because a lot of practices are.
Think of that: you know, that’s a forever expense of paper and stamps.
Then, just looking at money in terms of time, how many hours are your staff spending dealing with paper forms? Electronic forms speed up the entire process of the whole check-in system.
And not to mention how much time are they spending just trying to read someone’s handwriting? It’s kind of crazy, passing that form around the office, trying to get everybody to, ‘Can you tell what this says?’ ‘No, I can’t.’ Or sometimes guessing wrong, which could be very detrimental if you’re reading their handwriting wrong on a medical form.
So, yeah, they’re not that expensive, and time equals money.
One thing, and this is probably going to be the biggest area here that I’m going to mention, is: ‘Our patients don’t want to fill out forms online.
They still like the paper ones.’ Okay, well, first of all, do they? Do you really know that? And yes, of course, some do.
There’s always going to be an element of that.
You know that that’s just always going to be there, but one of the main areas I want to stress today is patients never want to fill out forms, right? So, but they have to; that’s just part of it.
But with online forms, patients can have a much more enjoyable experience, and obviously, what we’re doing is about keeping our patients happy.
With the online secure forms, they only see the questions that pertain to them.
Why that’s important is that it makes your form a much shorter-looking form, much less overwhelming.
What that’s called is conditional logic.
So, for example, if there’s a question that says, ‘Do you have secondary insurance?’ Well, someone that doesn’t just says ‘no,’ and then they never have to see all those other questions that ask about that insurance.
Or if somebody doesn’t have 25 different medications, they don’t have to see an entire page of blanks just to write in medications that they don’t have.
So that shortens your forms dramatically, and shorter forms make people less likely to give up filling them out halfway through.
I’m sure that you get some forms that are not even finished or they just leave out big chunks because they didn’t feel like answering those long questions.
There’s actually a name for this; it’s called form abandonment.
That’s when they just decide at some point, ‘I’m not going to finish this form,’ and either you end up with a partially filled-out form or you just don’t even get them back from them at all.
So that’s not so useful.
Along with the conditional fields, another way to make sure you get all that information you need is that you can have any number of required fields on that form.
You can require the signature; you can require the insurance information, so you know those things that you absolutely have to have.
The form won’t submit without them, again ensuring that you’re going to get all the information you need and you can read it when you get it.
Another way to do that is to keep to have duplicated fields automatically filled in.
So they only have to type in their name once, they only have to type in their phone number once, etc.
And again, this is how your patients are going to experience your forms.
That’s oftentimes their first impression of your practice, and it’s a good way to start out with those kinds of features going on.
So let’s leave the past where it belongs.
Get those paper forms back in the past where they belong, and let’s move to the future where your patients and your staff are going to be much happier.
[Music]
That’s what I wanted to show you today.
Thanks so much again for coming.
Remember to write some questions over in the chat so we can answer those at the end.
We really appreciate you being here; it’s great to have so many of you on board.
I’m going to turn it back over to Ryan now, who’s going to talk to us about managing your reputation and all things Google.
So that was fantastic.
Know we’ve had a shared client that recently was in need of a digital solution like yours.
Number one, they were tired of doing paperwork.
You know, they were tired of chasing down missing information.
Yeah, and it was just really a very clean and simple process.
You know, that client obviously relayed that back to us.
So, you know, you built a great solution; it’s super easy.
And, you know, ultimately, it’s mobile-friendly and mobile-optimized, which is, you know, what everybody wants, right? How much time is everyone on this webinar spending on their mobile device? So, it’s gotta work.
Good to hear that, Ryan; appreciate it.
Yeah, that’s awesome.
Well, thank you everyone.
My name is Ryan Schumacher with Satisfied Patient.
We help practices and doctors improve and control their online reputation to get more new patients and retain existing patients.
We do this through a best-in-class and industry-leading patient satisfaction survey that takes your patient literally less than one minute to complete.
There are a ton of other benefits to controlling your online reputation, but today we’re going to focus on how you can dominate Google and avoid negative reviews.
You might be thinking, you know, if you’re like most practices and doctors, you’re probably thinking, ‘I’ve got a great practice,’ right? But your online reviews might not match the level of patient satisfaction you actually deliver.
And you probably hate getting negative reviews.
So, and you also might be thinking, ‘Hey, you know what? I don’t need to manage my online reputation because I’ve got a steady stream of new patients coming in the door.’ And that’s a normal thought; that’s okay.
But what we’re going to get into today is really four key components to help you.
Number one, how online reviews impact your referrals.
How patients are searching online.
How Google search works.
We’re going to unpack Google search in literally five minutes or less.
And the new referral process.
So, some very important things here we’re going to cover in order to understand how to dominate Google.
The first thing is online reviews are directly impacting you and your referrals.
Nine out of ten patients are looking at online reviews and reading them to make their healthcare decisions.
So, Amazon has us all trained, right? Let’s be real; we’re all buying and purchasing from Amazon.
We’re all looking at reviews online about products before we make our purchasing decision, and that has transcended healthcare.
It’s been doing that for a long time now.
The second bullet though on this slide, a single negative review can drive away 22 percent of patients looking for a practice or provider.
I think this is probably the one takeaway I’d want you to have here because it’s impactful.
No one likes a negative review; it’s detrimental to your business.
And frankly, it hurts and has a big impact.
The last piece, a one-star increase can improve your revenue from five to nine percent.
So think about that for a second.
If you’re at 3.0 online and you go to 4.0 online, that can have a five to nine percent increase in revenue.
So we have clients who achieve growth beyond these numbers.
The power of online reviews is really truly transformational to your business.
The next part of this is, you know, how patients are searching online.
It’s very important to understand how patients are searching and how Google search works.
Google’s currently controlling a little more than 92 percent of the search engine market share worldwide.
Right? So, in terms of how that’s broken up, you’ve got your desktop users.
Right? So most of us are probably on desktops right now.
And then you’ve got your mobile search.
Right? So every Android device has a Google operating system on it.
Right? So mobile search is built right into that.
And then you’ve got iPhone users using Google.
So again, Google’s dominating the landscape.
Patients are searching for your practice on Google, which makes the third point here: your Google review is directly impacting the visibility of your search engine rankings and your patient trust.
So, patients are using Google to search.
And I want to talk now about how Google search works.
So we’re going to unpack, in a very simple and easy-to-understand methodology, about how Google search works.
In the bottom left-hand corner of this slide is the Google search bar.
And again, you can do a voice search as well by hitting the voice button.
You can type in text.
But how patients are searching and how Google search works: they’re typing in ‘best ophthalmologist,’ ‘best OB-GYN,’ ‘best ENT,’ ‘best doctor’s name.’ So we’re seeing a ton of doctors’ names being searched right now, which is why doctor reviews are important.
And how that works is Google has indexed the entire web.
So an easy way to think about this is they crawled the entire internet.
They’ve indexed it, so they’ve created a library.
Right? And they rank everything based on relevance and hundreds of other factors: location (so where are you physically located when you’re doing that search, so they can serve the right piece of content to you), keywords, links, freshness, all of those things.
As a result of all these factors, they return search results.
And one of those search results could be your Google My Business listing right here on this slide.
This is an example of one we’ve blurred out the practice name.
Your Google My Business listing is one of the most powerful marketing and communication channels you have.
It’s the most powerful and visible on Google, that’s for sure.
There’s no doubt about that.
When you search, the first three listings underneath the map are called a Local Three-Pack.
This is the place where your Google My Business listing lives.
Depending on the search terms, your listing can also appear on the right side of the page if you're on a desktop.
For example, if you're searching on a mobile device, your Google My Business listing may pop up immediately.
How Google search is working and how a patient is searching is very important here.
If I’ve done the search and I get this listing returned, and now I’m looking at it saying, ‘What is this? This is a 3.9-rated practice,’ I might click on ‘34 Google reviews’ and read what these reviews say.
For example, if I see, ‘Worst experience ever; they make you wait forever,’ this is an example of how this provider’s probably losing a lot of patients and referrals based on their online reputation.
Here’s a couple of examples of some satisfied patient clients.
By continuing to add these five-star reviews to your Google My Business listing, you’ll continue to feel the growth and control your online reputation.
So now I’m looking at a 4.9 rating with 479 reviews.
This practice is rated great.
I think I want to come here.
Let’s take a look at the reviews.
Reviews are driving new patients, revenue, and more.
For example, if you look at the first review on this page, it says, ‘I chose Dr. Prickett because of the reviews.’ This patient went to see Dr. Prickett, had a great experience, and then wrote another review as a result of that great experience.
The second one says, ‘I selected Dr. Wood because of the review I read about him.’ The third one says, ‘Another great example; they found them through their search online.’
It’s amazing how reviews are influencing the patient’s decision to come into your practice or not.
Fun fact: 85 to 95 percent of all your reviews are going to be on Google.
That’s because of what we talked about before: their domination of the search engine market.
When we first started six years ago, we gave patients, aka consumers, 10 review options.
Over time, we used the data to understand which review platforms were the most influential.
Data helped us determine which review platforms were the most impactful for practices and which ones we could eliminate.
The result is that now 85 to 95 percent of reviews are on Google.
This is how people are searching and how they want to review your business, in addition to Facebook and one other niche site.
A great example of this impact is a client in New Lenox, Illinois.
Staffing is a huge challenge right now, and these reviews don’t just influence patients.
They also play a significant role in how you dominate Google and the entire marketplace, affecting your practice’s reputation.
In New Lenox, Illinois, a practice administrator was trying to hire for a highly competitive position.
They found a candidate they loved, but the candidate had another offer.
She said she would consider the offer but took a moment to look at the practice’s Google My Business listing.
The candidate ended up wanting to work there because of the practice’s 4.9 rating and excellent patient satisfaction.
The other place might have been equally good, but their online reputation didn’t reflect that, so the candidate went with the practice that showed strong patient care.
This situation highlights the importance of a positive online reputation.
Another thing we encourage clients to do is to share their positive reviews.
Many staff members are likely juggling multiple responsibilities because of staffing shortages.
Sharing these five-star reviews can help boost your practice and morale.
For those of you already at a 4.9 or 5.0 rating, you might feel that this doesn't apply to you.
However, even top-rated practices benefit from taking our patient insights, they’re focusing on the top opportunities inside their practice and making their jobs even easier so they’re not chasing a bunch of stuff.
We’ve actually simplified their lives, made it much easier, and they’re delivering an amazing patient experience.
The last piece of this is the referral process has changed.
You see the top of the slide here; this is the old referral process.
We got a referral, went to see our primary care provider or physician, and then we were referred out to a specialist.
That is the old way.
Those days are over.
The new way, which we’ve covered in depth, is that the patient goes online, searches, and then decides.
But the biggest thing we’re seeing right now is the impact on the referral.
It’s amazing.
My wife got referred to a GI doctor.
What’s the first thing she did? She looked online at their ratings and reviews.
She went back to the referral coordinator and said, “I need another referral. I don’t want to go there based on their online ratings and reviews. Have you seen their ratings and reviews?” The referral coordinator hadn’t seen them, so now they’re looking into it, wondering why the patients are upset, which may not be the reality but that’s what’s on the internet.
My wife got a new referral and went to a different practice and had a great experience, so it was all good.
The new patient referral process has changed and is impacting referrals.
One of the examples on there, the Retina Center of Texas, is a 98 percent referral-based practice.
It is very important to control and manage your online reputation in that context.
That’s it for me.
I invite you to stop losing your patients on Google.
We’re going to turn this over to Amy Burke from AB Marketing Company.
Amy’s got some exciting stuff to share with you today as well.
Thank you, Ryan.
Take it away.
I hear you a lot.
Alright, awesome.
Thank you so much, Ryan.
Good stuff about online reputation.
Awesome.
So yes, hi guys.
Again, my name is Amy Burke.
I’m with AB Marketing Company, and I support practices with sales and marketing tactics and strategies.
We’re going to talk about some of those today.
Maybe there we go.
So what I’m going to provide for you today—and you know there’s so much with marketing.
Marketing is a big bucket.
There’s a lot of different ways you can slice and dice how you want to market your practice.
I have a limited amount of time today, so we’re just going to do a high-level review of three different ways that you could use low-cost but high-value strategies for your practice to get you up and running and set you up for great success as we roll into 2022.
First up is social media, which I would assume everybody on the call today is using in some aspect.
Why? Well, social media is free.
It takes really only time, not money, unless you decide to run ads or do boosting or anything like that.
But today we’re just going to talk about the organic aspect of social media and what I love about social media when it comes to promoting your practice is not only is it free, but it also is a great way to generate awareness and engagement with current patients as well as potential patients.
As we just finished hearing from Ryan, people are turning to the internet for resources and referrals, and social media falls right in line with that.
The other thing I love about social media is it really can help build your field of expertise.
I know we have a diverse group joining us today on the webinar, so if you are really specialized in your field of medicine, then using this platform can help elevate your credibility.
Let’s talk about the different platforms.
On this page, we’re going to break it down quickly.
We have Facebook, Instagram, and yes, TikTok is rising up even in healthcare and rising up in general for social media platforms.
But these three, I would focus on primarily if you want more engagement and interaction with patients and/or potential patients.
Twitter and LinkedIn, we’ll lean on for a little more interaction with other healthcare providers within your community and some of those referral sources that you may be getting.
Maybe you want to strengthen that relationship.
If you’re getting some but think you can get a lot more referrals from them, I would really turn to LinkedIn for that.
I’ve included YouTube here.
YouTube is great for educational videos.
If you are not doing videos with your practice and your providers, I highly encourage you to start a YouTube channel.
It’s free to start, and you can post some really great educational pieces on there.
This would address patients, other healthcare professionals, and referral sources.
Okay, so screenshot opportunity here.
I’m going to talk through this quickly, but these are my best tips and practices when I’m helping current clients.
When we go through what your social media looks like and being social; that’s what I want to stress the most.
What I often see with practices are updates like, “Our phone systems are out,” “Sorry, be patient,” “Our office is closed tomorrow,” or “Here’s the allergy count for today.”
While those are all great and you should keep doing that, include some social content as well.
Be raw, be real, post pictures and videos, and go live.
It doesn’t take much; you can do so much just using your own mobile device.
What this does is lead to engagement.
Engagement means looking for comments and shares, which means more eyeballs are getting on your practice and/or your doctors.
I like to suggest following the 80/20 rule.
What that means is 80% of the content you’re putting out should be informative, educational, and provide value for your patients.
The remaining 20% should be the ask, the call to action—come see us, call us for this, make an appointment.
You get the idea.
Be consistent.
I don’t care if you’re posting once a week or two or three times a day.
Whatever you choose as your cadence, be consistent with it.
One thing to remember is even bad marketing done consistently will outpace really good marketing done inconsistently.
Repurpose your content.
Whatever you put out there, you can always break it down into little micro pieces to give you more content.
Time is a big factor, and all practices are super busy, so use a scheduling system.
If you’re using Facebook, they have a built-in feature where you can pre-schedule posts to save time.
Lastly, which probably should really be first, is to have a plan.
Make a plan and follow your plan.
Now, I don’t know if Dr. Rogers made it on the call today, but I have a call out for him because this is a great example of using a live piece on your platform.
Let me point out a couple of things here.
I love how he has a shirt on that clearly shows the name of the practice; it’s very vivid and visible.
He took the opportunity to address his audience with a hot topic.
He made this recording in his office, which builds some credibility.
He talked about a hot topic with kiddos going back to school and whether to wear masks or not, and gave some advice on that.
I’m sorry it’s a little cut off there, but he spoke to this, posted it on their business page, and as you can see, it garnered 219 shares and almost 15,000 views.
Great stuff!
What you can also do with this is take those questions and comments he received, which are 75, and break that down and use that for content.
Address those with your audience.
Go back in not just on that particular post but make that a new post or filter that into our next topic email marketing.
So here's another low-cost great strategy you can use for your practice.
This is going to be a lot like social media so you're going to generate awareness some engagement with both potential and existing patients.
What I love about email marketing is it allows you to nurture and build those relationships.
And both think of this both ways right.
You can also send these to your referral partners to keep them on top of mind and keep them updated on changes and events going on in your practice and overall this enhances the patient experience.
You could actually tease out a few things like hey we want to send an email blast to all of our patients that are now I’ve been with us for one year and celebrate a one year anniversary or maybe you're going back to that pediatric example and you want to send out an email communication to the parents reminding them hey kids are going back to school and we have a new uh not a new but we're offering a back to school checkups or something like that just because your parents are busy so just getting that email reminder would be great.
And then I suggest that information can go right back on your social media because some people are reading social media all the time others are reading their email marketing all the time and then low cost and you own the list.
Well sorry there we go sorry now one of the questions I get when I work with clients and and practices that want to start emails like well where do we start and how much so I recommend do what works for you start with monthly or quarterly and then move from there.
You can add in weekly or bi-weekly touch points which could be short um promote services right that that is really key reminding your patients maybe you have some cash or elective um procedures in your clinic that sometimes they just forget about or don’t realize that you do offer those.
So this can be a a great way to again keep that top of mind and then things already talked about reminders updates and then making sure it’s value based.
I don’t know why this is sorry guys.
All right we seem to be freezing up okay now for tips and best practices.
The one thing I want to stress here is gain permission okay so make sure you’re getting permission you know if it’s a new patient coming in hey this is something we offer can we send you our monthly newsletter and then always include an unsubscribe option as well.
Maybe they just don’t want to receive those or maybe they’re a patient that has moved out of your practice and they no longer want to get those communications.
And then the big thing I want to stress here as well is this is generic guys right.
This is not sending patient information.
This is not any HIPAA information or direct hey Dr. Smith is sending out a message to Amy Burke today because here’s her lab results.
That’s done separate in your patient portal.
This is going to be a completely different mode of action.
And then follow the same things that we talked about with social media 80/20, be consistent, repurpose your content or use those we interweave those and use them together and then make a plan and follow it.
And here is a quick example I’d like to share with you.
I know it’s a little small sorry but if you want to take a screenshot and blow it up but you can see here there is an area for your logo and this would just be the first page.
But what I love about this example is the first page this is dental by the way if you can’t tell is they’re providing value.
Let’s talk about vitamins and minerals for a healthy smile right.
Later in the tour page two or three you can do more of the promotional aspect of it.
So this is going to have patients wanting to receive your newsletter on a monthly basis or quarterly basis.
Okay and then the best for last which really doesn’t cost anything but time, training, and education.
And this is what I call inside marketing.
So some of the best marketing happens inside the practice right.
What is your practice doing to deliver a wow patient experience? And as Ryan mentioned just a few minutes ago, a patient experience can actually start in the digital world when they start seeing your if they’re googling you or they’re looking things up on Facebook or different platforms.
But the other piece of that is right when they walk in into your office.
How is this front desk approaching them? What does that look like? What does the wait time look like? Different things like that.
Train your staff to leverage more from the patients that already know, like, and trust your doctors and practice.
Guys, you’ve got patients that love you but how can you get a little more out of them without having to get some new patient influx into the practice? And then I highly recommend tools and systems.
Put those in place just to automate and streamline the process.
It’ll make it easier for everybody and keep everybody on board.
So if you're kind of wondering, well, what are some real, like, what specifically ideas for this?
Well, what we talk about here would be, again, the new patients.
I would definitely encourage you, if you haven't done this already, map out what that new patient experience looks like from the online portion to the in-bound phone call to getting them scheduled and so on.
You get the idea.
Make sure you have appointment confirmation protocol.
I’m certain you have something in place, but make sure it's streamlined and efficient.
In-bound phone script, this is great.
I highly suggest having this mapped out as well and maybe even a manual form so if Susie is normally the person that's taking those in-bound phone scripts but she's out today, Betty can step in and review that at the beginning of the day and realize these are the steps and the scripts and what she should be saying.
Referral workflow, that's huge.
Ryan touched on that a little bit too, but make sure you have a very efficient workflow in place.
And then offer more elective services and cash products.
You know, guys, if you're not offering that up, I'm gonna go back to a pediatric example real quickly, but you know, that office offers ear piercing for kiddos and does every mom know that that's an option for the next visit or an additional visit? If they're not talking about it, they may not know.
And then ask for those testimonials.
The best place to get testimonials is when you have that happy patient that just finished a great experience in your practice right then and there.
Quick screenshot opportunity here.
So kind of talked about all this, we'll just run through it.
But train your staff to close those new patient leads.
You've worked hard, maybe even spent marketing dollars to get those patients to call you, so have your staff trying to close that.
Develop that phone script and those talk tracks so everybody knows and they’re not fumbling.
Map out what that wow patient experience looks like for your practice.
Use the system and tools to have a really efficient referral workflow.
And then educate and train staff for case acceptance and for those elective and/or cash products so sell more in your practice.
That can be a quick injection of revenue into your practice.
And then overall, develop a strategy that includes sales and marketing for the entire practice and have a playbook.
I really recommend looking at that on a quarterly basis and pivot or increase and make changes as necessary.
There we go.
Okay.
All right, guys, that's all I have for you.
Um, as I mentioned, marketing is a big bucket.
I could probably talk 30 to 45 minutes on each of those topics.
I hope that you are able to gain at least one thing that you can take away for sales and marketing within your practice.
Implement it today, work on it, get your plan in place, and execute it in 2022 for a great successful year.
And I love this right here, it's like marketing does create the opportunity to grow your practice, so capitalize on that.
All right, that's all I got.
Thanks, Amy.
That was fantastic.
Thank you for sharing that, Amy.
Everyone who joined today, thank you so much.
We're going to do Q&A now at the end, so please drop your questions in the chat.
I saw a couple of questions come in throughout, so please go to the chat and ask your question to myself or Carolyn or Amy.
One person is going to be randomly selected from that chat to win a $50 Amazon gift card.
We'll email that to you.
I also invite each and every one of you to, if you're interested in seeing a demo of Carolyn's online forms, please reach out to Carolyn.
If you'd like to see a demonstration of Satisfied Patient, please reach out to myself.
And Amy Burke, if you'd like to have an assessment, please reach out to Amy.
While we wait for the questions to come in, I want to ask a question, you know, first to Amy.
Just my own question, Amy, if I had no money, so zero money, what is the one thing you would recommend I do from a marketing perspective?
Yes, Ryan, that is a great question.
Thank you for asking.
If you are spending and actually have no marketing budget in place, I highly recommend that third aspect that we just spoke about: your inside marketing.
Because really, you already have people in place and that's not any additional cost; it's just a little bit more time.
And that would really help your practice with overall patient experience and satisfaction.
Awesome, awesome.
Hey Ryan, I have a question for you too.
I'm just curious, what's the worst rating that you've seen when you've started working with a practice and how high were you able to get it up to?
Yeah, great question.
So, you know, the lowest rating we had a practice one time that was rated 1.2, believe it or not, on Google.
Probably the lowest I've ever seen.
And we took them to 4.9.
They've got hundreds of Google reviews right now.
And, you know, I think that kind of answers Jessica's question.
What's the best way to grow your Google reviews? It's Satisfied Patient, Jessica.
We've got another one in the chat here from David Johnson.
I'm a numbers person, not a marketing person, which is great by the way, David.
Who can go to for more direction and advice?
So, yeah, in terms of, you know, marketing assessment, feel free to reach out to Amy.
You know, anything from obviously a website form perspective, please reach out to Carolyn.
Anything to add to either of that, ladies?
Well, I would second that.
Amy could really help you with directional advice on, you know, your overall marketing plan.
I think she'd be able to see what you're currently doing and what you might be able to add to that, and she can help you find the tools to do that.
Yeah, thank you, Caroline.
David, happy to help you.
You know, one of the things that we do with practices, first and foremost, is we just go through a quick phone assessment.
It takes 45 minutes, and we identify gaps, right? Areas of opportunity.
Awesome, awesome.
Looks like—did you get the question from Courtney?
I do see one in here from Courtney.
Courtney, how should you handle a negative review posted by someone who has not been to your practice that talks about a false experience? That is extremely common.
Google has a way to...
So, I don't know if that's a Google review or not, but for example, we just had a very large client get dinged on a Yelp review, and we helped them remove that.
So, feel free to reach out, but in essence, every review platform has a way to report a negative review.
Now, keep in mind consumers are getting smarter; patients are getting smarter.
So, if they don't violate one of Google’s or these review platforms' policies—because it is reviewed by automated bots on these review platforms—you have to continue to report it.
If they don’t use vulgarity, they don’t use slander, you know, it may fall within those guidelines and it may stick.
But absolutely, you can report it, and happy to give you the steps depending on what platform it is to report those.
But that is a challenge, and that is why you need a platform like RC.
Don’t, frankly, you know, those become less of a concern when you're so highly rated.
And along those lines, Ryan, it looks like Debbie Ladopolsky is asking if you should always reply to those negative reviews.
Yeah, so I think it depends.
I think it depends on the situation.
I mean, it also depends on the platform, right? But I will say that, you know, think about it from your perspective.
If you're going into a practice and, on your own, for your own visit, let’s say you're going to see your internist or your OB or whatever it may be and you read their online reviews and you see a negative review and you don’t see a response, how would that make you feel? Would that make you feel like that practice cares about that experience and that patient?
We encourage our clients to respond to the negative reviews.
There are some exceptions to that, but the majority of the time, they will respond.
You want others who are reviewing your practice or looking at your reviews to see how you would handle that situation because they're like, “Hey, you know what? I may have had a not-so-great experience, and how did they handle that?” Oh, you know what? That message is non-defensive.
And we actually have a whole list of how to respond to negative reviews and can help you with that.
But yes, you should respond.
Now again, there are some exceptions to that rule.
You don’t want to poke a sleeping bear either.
Amy, I see a question for you from Jim Lowry.
Are you recommending that office staff ask patients which social media platform they use?
Oh, Jim, that’s a great question, and I’m going to say yes.
Yes, because—and here’s why—we don’t know what we don’t know, right? So, social media can vary on your patient demographic.
You know, millennials right now, in addition to the baby boomers, are the largest population in the United States.
Millennials are definitely using social media, and generally speaking, they’re using Facebook and Instagram.
But I have no idea what your practice says, sorry, Jim.
But I would dig into your demographic, you know, figure out what your target market is and then go from there.
And if it just means asking your patients, you could do that in a survey in the office.
It could even be a question that you have on an intake form for a new patient.
And then, yes, take that information because information is powerful, right? You can take that and then deliver upon it.
So, good question. Thank you.
Carolyn, I have kind of one last question for you in terms of the forms, and then I know we need to kind of randomly select a winner here for the gift card.
But Carolyn, what’s kind of the number one thing in terms of, you know, what I should be thinking about in terms of, from a practice, considering, you know, the forms solution that you have?
Well, I think the number one thing is just the way that it’s going to help your whole process work internally in the practice.
Obviously, keeping the patients happy is our goal.
Excuse me, but keeping your staff happy and functioning and things running smoothly makes everybody’s lives better.
And to streamline that process to make things happen more smoothly and quickly.
That’s just going to make everybody’s lives better.
So getting away from those paper forms and streamlining that electronically makes that so much smoother.
Awesome, thanks for sharing.
I just see that Courtney had one quick follow-up question for you, Ryan.
Yeah, I see that.
Is it a HIPAA violation to state that we don’t show you a visit to our practice?
I’m not aware of that, Courtney, being a HIPAA violation.
Again, I’m not a HIPAA attorney, but I can tell you I’ve seen that response hundreds of thousands of times online.
I would think that if they’re not your patient, you’re not violating any HIPAA because they’re not a patient.
Again, not a lawyer, but that would be my initial response to that.
Yep.
And Debbie, just to close the loop on your question about who should reply to the review: the response should come from whoever is managing the platform you're responding on.
For example, if you're responding to a negative review on Google, you would say something like, “Thank you, Debbie. [Name], Practice Administrator. Here’s my phone number. Feel free to reach out if you have additional questions.”
It’s a lot about having them contact you as well so you can learn more and figure out what really went on.
A lot of times, there’s more to it than just what they vented online.
Cool.
Ryan, did you get to Jessica’s question about the best way to grow your Google reviews?
I think I did, and directly answered it.
I didn’t look—satisfied patient.
I mean, I think that’s what it boils down to.
Just, yeah, that’s it.
It’s pretty easy—plug and play.
Awesome.
Amy, one last tough question before we select a winner and wrap up: How do you get a physician off your social media platform who has left your practice?
Good question, Lori.
Yeah, well, okay.
So, I can take that one for you.
Lori, I’m happy to do a one-off on that because it depends on which platform you’re using.
So, yeah, this is probably not the time or place to dive into that, but you can certainly do that.
And again, every platform unfortunately works a little differently.
So, feel free to reach out to me, and I can walk you through that or send some information to you digitally.
Cool.
And Amy, we randomly selected a winner.
Who is it?
Hang on, hang on.
I got a basket with all these questions.
Yes.
All right, we’re going to pick.
I’m not looking, not looking.
All right, here we go.
I have one—Courtney!
Yeah, Courtney.
Awesome.
Courtney, we’ll reach out to you, and Carolyn will send that to you.
Everyone, thank you so much for joining.
Thank you so much.
We appreciate your time and we’ll see you on the next webinar.
Thank you.
Bye, guys.
Thanks!
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