When patients are in your doctor’s office, you have a big opportunity. You can use in-office marketing tactics to share messages, promote health initiatives, and reinforce your brand.
In-office marketing is a great way to promote your business and inform patients about your practice’s offerings, specials, and events. But, it does even more than that. Sharing on-brand messages also helps you build trust, develop lasting patient relationships, and boost your patient referrals rates. In-office marketing isn’t just advertising. It’s brand building, and here is how it can benefit your doctor’s office or private practice.
What Is In-Office Marketing?
In-office marketing is a tactic wherein you use communication tools to share promotional and on-brand messages with patients who are inside of your office.
Unlike other marketing tactics that bring patients to your practice, these strategies aim to connect with patients once they arrive. The goal isn’t to introduce your brand to patients; it’s to reinforce your brand with your patients.
You can do that in a variety of ways.
How to Launch In-Office Marketing Initiatives
Using in-office marketing tools and tactics, you can connect with patients through multiple strategies.
1. Engage and inform through digital content.
You probably already have static signage on the walls or pop-up foldouts on your tables promoting your practice’s additional services or healthcare initiatives. You can elevate the effectiveness of this office in-marketing tactic by turning your content digital.
The same promotions that are on your paper signs can become much more engaging and effective when promoted through tools such as:
- Individual digital screens that feature both promotional and entertaining content
- Video wall screens that use two or more TV screens to create an eye-catching digital display
- Digital menu boards that highlight your services and share pricing details and promotions
Patients are more likely to notice and pay attention to information on digital screens. An Intel study found that “animated digital content consistently attracted four to six times the number of viewers compared to the equivalent static posters.”
Another benefit of using digital content is that as you change promotions and highlights, you don’t have to order new print materials, you can simply update content through a digital content management system.
2. Use content to connect with patients at every in-office touchpoint.
Typically patients move through multiple rooms during their visit to a healthcare office. As you plan your in-office marketing tactics, consider how you can connect with them at each phase of their visit.
- When patients arrive, use touchscreen kiosks for their check-in. This allows you to speed up the intake process, share promotions, and encourage patients to schedule their next appointment.
- While patient sit in the main waiting room, use digital boards to both inform and entertain. Use a mix of promotional and informative content as well as entertainment to help patients learn more about your brand and make their wait feel faster. Digital content can make a wait feel up to 33% shorter.
- Also, place digital signage in exam rooms. Waiting in a doctor’s office isn’t exclusive to the waiting room. Use the same engaging and informative content in exam rooms to help patients pass the time while they wait to see the doctor.
3. Reinforce your brand through TV wraps and private label TV.
It’s possible that you can use digital wait boards to entertain patients and make their wait feel shorter all while still reinforcing your brand and subtly sharing promotions.
Through branded TV wraps, you can surround your television programming with your logo as well as tickers that share marketing messages or even news and social media feeds.
In addition to adding branding around the content, you can even brand the content itself. Through private label TV, you can create your own custom, branded channel that plays only the content you select. So you can develop a channel that’s a perfect fit for your audience. Your custom playlist could include only:
- Health-related content
- Stories about your office or staff
- Stories about your community or charity work
- Information about procedures and follow-up care
- Clips from TV shows and programs that your target audience would enjoy
4. Offer free WiFi to in-office patients.
To connect with patients in your office, you can also use screens that don’t belong to you. You can leverage the screens that patients bring into the office with them through WiFi marketing.
WiFi marketing is an in-office marketing strategy that starts by offering free WiFi access to patients while they’re in your location. When patients use your WiFi, you give them a tool to help them pass the time and improve their experience while in your office. But, you also create marketing opportunities.
When you offer free WiFi, you can:
- Present custom splash pages to audiences once they login. On these pages, you can share offers and promotions or simply present information about your office that patients otherwise wouldn’t know.
- Prompt patients to sign up for and use patient portals. If your office struggles with getting your patients to engage with your portal system, you can guide them toward those platforms once they log-in.
- Ask patients to join your email list. When patients log into your WiFi network, ask them if they would like to receive your monthly or weekly email newsletter. Highlight the benefits of joining your list which may be to receive regular wellness tips and advice to help them improve their health and well-being.
Bring In-Office Marketing To Your Healthcare Practice
So many healthcare practices and doctor’s offices spend all of their marketing resources working to bring new patients to their office. But, getting new patients is only half of the marketing process. The other half is getting patients to trust and love your brand so they return and recommend your office to family and friends.
To build this affinity with existing patients, use the in-office marketing tools and tactics mentioned in this post. Using these strategies to both inform patients about your company and provide an upgraded patient experience is a powerful way to reinforce your brand and build lasting relationships with each person who walks into your practice.
Learn more about how to create elevated patient experiences and office marketing campaigns in our free ebook: The Ultimate Guide to the Outpatient Customer Experience.