Why follow-up with prospective patients?

We all know that follow-up is important with patients after major illnesses or procedures. Successful outcomes involve a partnership between the physician and the patient. As the medical provider you have to oversee the treatment of the patient, lead them down the best recovery path and monitor their progress. The patient also has roles, like following your treatment plan and communicating any health issues or concerns in a timely manner.

It’s important to follow-up with prospective patients if you want to grow your practice, especially if you are spending marketing funds to get them to reach out in the first place.  Don’t assume that they aren’t ever going to convert, if they don’t schedule after the first contact. Many prospects shop around with different doctors, practices or hospitals before they commit to moving forward with one.  Cosmetic and elective procedures like bariatrics see a lot of competition and patients know that they have many choices.

Follow-up with prospective patients, is just as important. Today’s patients have several options to choose from, no matter what specialty you practice. They are bombarded with options on the TV, their phones, in their social media groups and even across gaming devices. Whether you spend thousands of dollars on traditional media, digital marketing or social media platforms, you have worked hard to get your message in front of people that need your services.

Then one day they reach out, asking for more information. Someone from your office takes the call or follows up with their request, but they aren’t ready to schedule yet. Or they schedule a consult and don’t move forward with any of our services or procedures. What follow up messages are in place? Did you collect enough information on them so that you can continue to deliver messaging that will help them to decide to book an appointment? 

If they came in for a consult but didn’t move forward, do you know why?  Do you have messages ready that can help them through the decision making process? Did they fill out a survey that can help you to determine if your staff is trained and courteous? Have you even thought about your follow-up with prospective patients? 

Keep reading for more information on Follow-up with prospective patients.

In our extensive tracking of prospective patients through the decision process, we see a high percentage of people reaching out with contact forms and calls, but not booking a consultation for months and months. Sometimes over a year. How many other sales messages are they going to see from your competitors before they come in? What is your process to keep your practice on the top of their list? 

If you don’t have a process to follow-up with prospective patients, you may easily lose them to someone else, who does.

All too often we see poor prospect follow-up in specialties like Cosmetics and Bariatrics. The staff is either too busy contacting only the newest leads or enjoying some down time when the phones aren’t ringing. If someone has taken the time to send in a contact form or call your office, you need a plan to deliver messaging to them until they either schedule a consultation or ask to be removed from your list. 

We aren not advocating that you spam them to death, but we are saying that if you don’t put your message in front of them, if you don’t follow-up with prospective patients, you may lose them. There are easier ways to do this, other than making your staff send multiple emails or calls over extended periods of time. They also don’t need to be lumped into your monthly newsletter for current patients. Prospects need different messaging than current patients. 

Luckily, there are HIPAA compliant email marketing programs that can be utilized to send your messages and follow-up with prospective patients. Many of these will also let you add tags to your prospects lists, so you can personalize messages based on their interests. Tracking programs that can give you more detail about how they interacted with your website and social platforms, so you know more about their needs. Personal demographics and data can also be pulled into your CRM to give you another layer of information to help you speak directly to their situation. 

Check out our blog on Drip Funnel Marketing, if you are wanting a hands off way to follow-up with prospective patients.

If you want them to come to you when they are ready, you have to stay in front of them. If you aren’t chasing them, someone else is. Don’t waste effort and advertising dollars to chase only new leads. Warm up those lost prospects with more information. If this seems overwhelming, MD Integrated is just a call away. We have experience creating marketing messages for patients and prospective patients that will help them move down the marketing funnel and book appointments.

We have spent years seeing patients go through the process. We can not only help you drive new leads, we can also help you hold onto them through the long decision cycles for big procedures. 

We have helped many doctors and practices develop a plan to follow-up with prospective patients.  Reach out if you would like to find out mor