3 Ways to Optimize Your Patient Funnel - The Bottom
Jan 23, 2023A patient funnel is a term that describes the journey your patients take from first learning about you and your services/products to actually making a purchase. Your marketing and sales funnels for attracting new patients and converting them to paying patients may be highly effective – or a source of great frustration for you – depending upon the time and resources you are investing and the results you are experiencing. Coincidentally, a highly effective patient funnel doesn’t have to be costly.
When it comes to optimizing your external patient funnels, today let’s look at what the most common problems are with the final segment and identify effective optimizing actions to improve your results and ROI. (I covered Parts 1 & 2 of Optimizing Your Patient Funnel in previous weeks)
Bottom of Funnel (You Have Leads that are Interested but Struggle with Conversion to Sale of Your Services/Products):
Difficulty at the bottom of the funnel is the discouraging feeling when you have hot prospects who need what you have to offer and yet, for some reason, they don’t move forward or go elsewhere for the solution to their problem.
Common Problems:
- You don’t ask for the sale or make it too complicated.
- Your pricing is perceived as too high or too low.
- You weren’t top of mind or there was a lack of adequate trust when the purchasing decision was made.
- Patient perception of poor customer service.
Optimizing Actions:
- Simplify your sales process by making it easy for patients to schedule their appointments as well as have their questions answered (online, e-mail, on the phone or via video chat or text messaging) in a friendly and convenient manner. Balancing high touch with high tech is imperative.
- Have a new team member or someone you know go through your process from initial contact through onboarding as a new patient. Sometimes you are just too close to the process to see the obvious. Fresh perspectives are extremely helpful and keep you focused on continual improvement for your practice, your team and most important, your patients.
- Do a comparison price with your primary competitors but don’t try to duplicate what they are doing. If your price is higher, then focus on the added value that makes you and your products/services stand out as a ‘no brainer’. In addition, don’t try to be the cheapest game in town. This can backfire into lack of respect or value for you and what you have to offer. Don’t be afraid to stand out and be different. Offer what your patients need that others may not include.
- Create easy to understand sales sheets for cash pay services/products.
- Communicate regularly so you are top of mind and include your clear call to action.
I would be remiss if I didn’t briefly address internal patient funnels. These provide you with a way to further improve patient outcomes and enhance your relationship. Such internal funnels include nurturing e-mails that also highlight new products or services; promotion of an effective referral program; and potentially a rewards program to thank patients for their loyalty.
Bottom line, effective patient funnels can actually save you time as well as increase your patient base and overall revenue/profit. This occurs with optimized patient funnels that are evaluated for effectiveness on a regular basis and tweaked along the way. Once established, you can simplify even further by balancing your personalized communication with various automation methods…a topic for another day.
If you would like to learn about working directly with me or to schedule an free opportunity audit, contact me at [email protected].
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