Is your clinic struggling to get more patients? How many people zoom through your private practice website each day without saying a word?

Nearly half of all local businesses welcome 500 or fewer visitors to their website per month while 13% of businesses don’t see more than 100 visitors a month.

Of that number, the average conversion rate–or people who will take their interest a step further–is 2.35%. That means that 300 visitors per month results in seven interested people.

But wait…you thought that websites were the answer to the question of how to get more patients in your clinic.

Let’s flip that perspective. More than half of your competitors only see a handful of visitors browse their website each month.

So what do you do? You work with a marketing writer to create copy for your private practice website that attracts more visitors and converts those leads so you can get new patients.

Increasing Views to Get More Patients

The first step in the process to get more patients is to increase awareness of your brand. From a dental practice to a medical clinic, every office has the ability to stay on top of trending topics. 

Topic research and audience research allow medical marketing writers to see what the general public currently values. 

Write On Your Patients’ Level

For those medical offices that do have blogs, these competitors may create articles that suffer under the weight of heavy medical jargon.

It is perfectly fine to write on these terms and define them in the text, but using only the medical term for a condition is not only off-putting to readers but also leaves blogs lagging behind in search results.  

Additionally, the goal of your medical office is not to be an encyclopedia. You want content that is specific to your ideal patients’ care needs. When wondering how to get more patients in your clinic, you can also focus on getting the right type of patients into your clinic.

If you are a chiropractor, you likely will want to offer articles that align with a more holistic approach to health to draw in the right crowd. 

Use Keywords to Get More Patients

When creating content outlines, begin with keyword research.

Websites like Ahrefs offer a free keyword generator. In using this tool, you can see how many times per month users in a certain location searched for a keyword or phrase.

In the United States, the term migraines was searched 23,000 times in a month while headache behind eyes was searched 65,000 times. 

Certain keywords can be less or equally searched but have a higher keyword difficulty score in Ahrefs, which means a greater chance of your page rising to the top of search results without having to pay for a boost.

Writers want to find the sweet spot between highly searched and low difficulty for a keyword to show up on page one of Google.

Returning to the above example, migraines was searched less but has a high keyword difficulty level of 85 while headache behind eyes was searched more with a much lower keyword difficulty level of 24.

For a clinic that manages different types of headaches, a medical blog writer will get more use out of focusing on the phrase headache behind eyes to define and explain a migraine, pushing the web page into the top search results for patients who type in those very words.

Conversion Rates

A conversion rate is the frequency of a target action being taken divided by the total number of visitors.

Let’s say that your goal is to have people subscribe to your private practice mailing list.

If 1,000 people visit your website and 50 people sign up, you have a 5% conversion rate.

What Counts as a Conversion?

A conversion is when the consumer takes action and completes the desired outcome.

These desired outcomes can range from making a purchase to signing up for a service.

With the ultimate goal to get new patients, you can set goals based on your particular medical business model.

For concierge medicine, these direct primary care providers typically require an upfront fee paid monthly, quarterly, or annually. 

With text offering significant discounts for advance payment on some sites, the desired outcome is clear. One conversion equals one initial payment. 

If 1,000 visitors land on these direct primary care providers’ websites and 10 make an initial payment, then the conversion rate is 1%. 

How Does Understanding Conversion Rates Allow Medical Offices to Get New Patients?

Understanding conversion rates is an important part of analyzing the sales process. 

Is your medical office not getting the number of new patients needed? Why is this?

Recently, I reviewed the website of a direct primary care provider who wanted an SEO writer to bring in more traffic. I searched his specialty and city, and his name was first on the list. This was a promising sign–and a confusing one. Why were potential patients not expressing interest when his website was so prominent?

I looked through each page that ended with a “Book Now” call to action. 

I clicked on each link to book now, clearly the criterion for conversions.

404. Page Not Found.

His scheduling links were all broken links. His hopeful customers could not convert. 

Armed with the knowledge that the average conversion rate is slightly more than 2%, private practices with a healthy 5,000 visitors to their website per month and zero conversions could recognize that a need for more web traffic is not the primary problem.

The problem lies within. Perhaps the copy needs to be more compelling to convert leads. Perhaps the links are broken. 

Take the Next Step to Get New Patients

The many aspects of marketing may be overwhelming. Your goal is to get new patients and care for these patients rather than worry about the process involved in attracting and converting leads.

That’s where a medical marketing writer proves a valuable member of your team.
Start your path to medical marketing zen today, and fill out this contact form for a free initial consultation.