More Revenue – 10 Ways to Find More Patients to Treat with Hearing Loss

What do you want: Clinic Revenue. When do you want it: Yesterday.

Here are ten ideas to generate $25,000 in revenue under 30 days and to open the patient floodgates. Learn them. Then use them.

1. Brand your clinic and create a strong personal brand. The most important thing you can do for yourself and your clinic is to create your personal brand. You are who the patient comes to see. Get started building your brand by writing articles and submitting them to e-zines, websites, press-release sites and local newspapers for publishing or republishing. Including your picture where possible is powerful. Patients need to know who you are and what you do before they come to see you.

You need to be connected to the community you serve. You need to become part of that community. Connect with business owners, professionals, and families in your local area. Think about events, meetings, and conferences you can attend. Get to know the people who run these events. Lastly, connect with people in your community who have influence. The more influence they have the more important they need to be to you. Building a relationship with them will have the biggest impact on your revenue.

2. Find a strategic partner. Look for people that have the same objective as you do. Approach them and trade leads, share marketing information, sell package deals, and more. This works online as well as offline. Success is never done alone. It takes a network of people to help you reach your goals. Medical professionals, business owners, and community leaders are great places to start.

3. Study successful businesses or people. Study the aspects that make people and businesses successful. Then model your business after them. Do not outright copy them, but practice some of the same habits that have helped them succeed. Attend events like the International Hearing Society conventions and meet people who can help you grow.

4. Take a little time to brainstorm. New ideas can be the difference between success and failure. Grab a sheet of paper (old school right!). Write the problem you are trying to solve in your practice at the top of the sheet of paper. Then down the left-hand side write the numbers one through 25. Brainstorm! List out 25 ways to overcome the challenge you just wrote down. This will change your life.

5. Take risks to improve your business. Some advertising can be free, but is it getting any type of results? Usually, you have to spend money to get results. Spending money on advertising might not sound like the most fun thing to do but is one of the most necessary. Investing in advertising can be scary. It’s important to find partners in the hearing industry that understand how to get results with the advertising dollars you spend.

6. Include emotional words in your advertisements. Use words like love, security, relief, freedom, happy, satisfaction, fun, discover, etc., for a powerful effect.

7. Ask people to review your website. You can use the comments you get to improve your website or you may turn the reviewer into a patient.

8. Create an e-newsletter and send it regularly to your contact list. You need to be collecting patient emails and also potential patients. Send them an email at least once per month, but even better is once per week. Including a weekly newsletter is a great way for potential patients and current patients to understand the importance of what you do, and stay connected to your database. You can utilize email marketing services to send e-newsletters that are inexpensive but produce major results.
Make sure your phone number is clearly visible on each email. Include information about events you are attending, your partnerships with local businesses, your published articles, and the upcoming places you will be speaking at. Basically, keep your email list updated about anything you are currently involved with and all your endeavors. It will increase your revenue.

9. Send old-fashioned thank you cards. Handwritten thank you cards are one of the best ways to gain new business for your clinic. When is the last time you enjoyed receiving a form letter or were pleasantly surprised by one from a health provider? You weren’t, so don’t send them. The patient must know you took the time to stop and say thank you for their trust. Hardly anyone sends handwritten thank you cards anymore. Surprise them and get the patient talking about you to their family and friends. Word of mouth exposure still works. Add two business cards inside the thank you card. Ask them to give the 2nd card to someone they recommend to come to see you.

10. Do you share mutual patients with local physicians? If so, go introduce yourself. Physicians could be an endless source of referrals for your practice. Building positive relationships with physicians may not be as difficult as you think. First, don’t be intimidated. Your job is to connect with the office staff first. When you have impacted wax, ruptured eardrums, and probable ear infections, pick up the phone and personally call. Send a report to the physician acknowledging your concerns. Stop by the physician’s office and introduce yourself while dropping off additional information about the patient’s hearing loss. Include contact information or brochures about your clinic. This process will help open the relationship door.

Roll up those sleeves. Pick a strategy above and implement it. Each one of these strategies can work for you. However, they won’t work if you don’t move yourself and your clinic forward and make them work. Make it happen. Take the 30-day challenge. Don’t wait for patients to come to you – You go find them!

– Nathan Bush, MBA