Telephone Answering Service for Doctors, Nurses and Aesthetic Practitioners- A Great Investment?

How to Market a Health Business

To grow my clinic and to make more profit, I first had to understand marketing and then I had to identify areas where there were bottlenecks in my system for getting new patients.?

In article, I discuss my marketing system for generating leads and my system for converting those leads into sales, that is new clients and patients for my clinic.?

And at the end, I will tell you the most effective change I made that eliminated the major bottleneck and obstacle to growing my new patient numbers. Once I removed this bottleneck, I was able to boost my profits.

Some Marketing Jargon

But before we get on to my marketing and sales systems, let me clarify what we are talking about.?

Let’s simplify the jargon and the mystery.

You may have heard that to have a successful health business you must identify your NICHE.

So what is a NICHE?

Put simply, your NICHE is a group of people who might be interested in your services and products. So for instance, your niche might be people who are concerned about the appearance of their face or body, perhaps they want to get rid of lines and wrinkles or they want to reduce areas of fat or to lose weight.

In my clinic, my NICHE was a group of people who were concerned about their leg health because they had a leg ulcer, or people who were concerned about the appearance of leg spider veins.

Your NICHE is the group of people you can serve and help with their problem.

If you connect with people in your NICHE, through relevant content, they will begin to regularly read, listen to and watch stuff about you. That relevant stuff is your CONTENT.

Your content must resonate with your NICHE.

It must address their concerns and it must speak their language. If you really understand your NICHE, you can regularly produce content that is relevant and valuable to them.

People who regularly consume your CONTENT, become your audience. So once you have an audience, you must grow and nurture it. You do this by regularly distributing your CONTENT through your MARKETING.?

Marketing

Marketing is the method you use to distribute your CONTENT to your audience. It might be through your blog, through your social media like Facebook, Instagram, tiktok, youtube or Twitter.

At this stage, you don’t know who the people in your audience are. Over time, as your audience consumes your content, they begin to see you as a trusted expert, an AUTHORITY? who can help them in a TRANSFORMATION. An AUTHORITY WHO can get them from A to B. From an unhealthy leg with an ulcer to a healthy leg without pain. From a face with lines and wrinkles to a face with a fresh and youthful appearance.?

Once you have gained the trust of your audience and the status of an authority, these people may want to give you their names, their email address and their telephone number.?

Leads

Put simply, LEADS are people in your audience who have given you their email address or telephone number.?

LEADS ARE PEOPLE IN YOUR NICHE THAT YOU CAN CONTACT.?

With leads, you have a way of making sales, a way of increasing client and patient numbers and a way of boosting profits.

Without leads, you do not have any sales, and without sales, you don’t have a health business.?

NOW, here’s the thing. There is something quite special and unique about the health and aesthetic business world.

That unique thing is that most healthcare and aesthetic enquiries and buying decisions are made on the telephone in my experience.

88% of? NEW patients, clients or customers for a health or aesthetic related condition will pick up the telephone to enquire or book an appointment.

Sure, they will look at your website and your online content distributed through your marketing channels, but in the end, they will want to SPEAK to someone from your team ON THE TELEPHONE.

This is particularly true if the condition is sensitive or confidential. No one in your niche wants to fill out a long online enquiry form. They want to call you. That's why your telephone number must appear on every page of your website.

The telephone is the most commonly used method for you to acquire leads and sales. So the more efficiently and QUICKLY the telephone is answered the better.

Here’s another important fact you should know, most of the people in your NICHE will have spent at least 2 weeks doing online research before making a telephone call and during this time they will have visited several websites. That is why it’s so important to have a great website.?

The Importance of the Telephone

When you receive a call from your audience, typically 2 things happen.

They will be happy to give you their name, telephone number and email address, because they trust you, you are an authority that can help them.

Your staff must be trained to ask for this information at the beginning of a call from every new caller. Once you have this information, you have just acquired a lead.

Now the second thing that happens is that lead is very likely to convert to a sale if the person answering the call is friendly and knowledgeable.?

In my clinic over 70% of leads generated on the telephone are also converted into a sale during the same phone call.?

By that I mean, most people who called to make an enquiry also booked and paid for an appointment.

This high lead conversion rate is a result of engaged clinical staff who genuinely wanted to help people in our niche. They spend a lot of time answering questions, explaining what we did and why.? They would also spend time listening, really getting to understand the concerns of the caller.

Now let's be clear, my own in-house team was the best at sales, but? they were not available all the time to just answer the telephone.

All my team members were multi-skilled - they assisted in the treatment room, chaperoned in the consultation room, sent out invoices, registered payments on Xero, managed, and ordered stock. They might be busy doing something else and couldn't get to the phone.

The line might be busy.

What’s more, my clinic wasn't open 7 days a week.

But the telephone was ALWAYS answered.?

There is nothing worse than an ANSWERING MACHINE AND A RECORDED MESSAGE!

I don’t know about you, but if I get an answering machine, I don’t bother to leave a message, I just put the phone down and move on to the next business.?

THE SOLUTION...

The Telephone Answering Service

I carefully selected a telephone answering service, which used a script that I gave them when answering my calls, and I had an on-boarding process. All the calls were recorded for me to review and to give feedback and instructions to the call centre. At least in the early days.

In this way, I never lost a call, and I was able to "legitimately" have longer "opening hours" on Google My Business (now called "Google Business Profile").

This is super important because the term “near me” is frequently used in searches and Google Maps will show those that are open and those that are closed.

Using a call centre and updating my opening times on my Google Business Profile, I registered a 40% increase in "Leads Generated" and over the course of a year, this led to a substantial increase in Revenue.

BTW, "Leads Generated" is a fundamental KPI - Key Performance Indicator in your business.

Do you use a telephone answering service? Do you think it represents a good ROI? Let me know in the comments section.