Whilst there are still many uncertainties surrounding the healthcare, wellbeing, and classes industries and how the landscape will shape up in the coming months, what we do know is that in the short term your overheads are likely to increase due to the inflated prices of PPE and restrictions on client rotation in your clinic. It is unlikely that you’ll be able to recoup these costs by increasing prices as many of your clients are likely to have suffered from a reduction of income in recent months. So, what can you do balance things out?

In short, you’ll need to find a way to streamline operations whilst improving your marketing output and visibility to ensure you can acquire as many clients as possible. We know that reducing the costs whilst increasing revenue might sound impossible however we have you covered…

Improving your customer experience and onboarding process

As businesses start to lay out plans for reopening in the coming weeks, now is the perfect time to ensure your customer experience and onboarding processes are efficient as possible.

• Online bookings and payments: If your clinic doesn’t already offer patients online bookings and payments – don’t wait to make this transition. You can almost be certain that your local competitor offers this and in the age we live in, where telephone bookings have slumped a huge 65% in 5 years, can you afford to lose a potential customer due to a poor digital experience?

• Self-service portal: If you are currently offering online bookings and payments, does your current system have a ‘my account’ portal for your clients? By stepping into this self-service approach, you’ll give your clients the tools they need to manage their own bookings, payments, receipts and more. This simple move instantly allows you to free up time that would have been spent on admin tasks such as taking payments over the phone, printing invoices and such - time that can be reinvested in attracting new clients.

• Digital forms: Another great tool for reducing time spent on admin tasks is the utilisation of digital forms. Digital forms can be sent via SMS or email at the point of booking to collect treatment consent, Covid awareness, marketing consent and more. An important note is that you’ll want to ensure your forms sync with your patient and clinical records (ours do!) to avoid the manual keying of data after completion.

By enhancing these three processes, you’ll free up hours every week in admin time which can be spent delivering more treatments and some marketing activities. All aimed at improving your revenue.

Improving your marketing output and digital visibility

Whilst we don’t expect you to become a marketing and communications expert overnight, there are a few simple tasks you can do now to improve your chances of landing more clients.

• Email marketing: It costs almost 5x more to acquire a new client than it does to retain an existing client. If you are using a clinic management system then you’ll already have the email addresses of your current/previous clients so why not send them a monthly email including an offer and some news to remind them you still exist? If 2 of those book an appointment each month, you have made 100% profit as you are drawing down from the time saved on admin.

• Facebook ads: Social media ads aren’t for everyone and are not nearly as complex as you may have been told. There are two great ways to target people for your business.

  • Facebook pixel: Install the Facebook pixel tracking code on your website. Pixel tracks visitors on your website and its more than likely that they are an interested prospect. With pixel, you’ll be able to retarget people who have visited your website with ads across the Facebook estate.
  • Lookalike audiences: Another use for your client list is setting up lookalike audiences on Facebook using your client list. This instructs Facebook to generate a list of potential matches for your business based on the information of your patient list.
    
    

• Google ads: Google ads aren’t just for the big businesses of the world. Your clinic can begin acquiring new clients in a really cost-effective way with the right approach. Ensuring your landing page is relevant to the keywords you are bidding on is almost half the battle. Build out a landing page for your specific service and the area you are focusing on such as ‘Manchester Physiotherapy’ and test a small amount of budget on acquiring bookings this way.

Tying all your systems and processes together with TM3 Connect

With TM3, you’ll have the tools to enhance all of these processes without the need for multiple systems. Our latest innovation Connect allows you to market your business via email, social or paid search marketing. Clients are then funnelled into your Whitelabelled branded website or landing pages to book and pay online, at this point registration forms can be automatically sent authorisations and consent are granted – meaning less time spent on admin in clinic and more time delivering treatments.

To see Connect for yourself, get in touch with our sales consultants today.