Social Media Tip: Encourage New Patient Referrals Online

Last week we talked about the importance of encouraging your satisfied customers or patients to “check in,” rate and review your business on your Facebook page and other social media accounts.

The next step is to ask them for new patient referrals. After all, referrals still account for up to 70 percent of new patients for most healthcare providers. (See Rethinking Healthcare Marketing for more stats.)

You may have been doing this offline already — offering a “where did you hear about us” section on new patient paperwork and rewarding existing patients who referred friends to your practice with a prize, discount or at the least, a thank you note. (If you aren’t already tracking how new patients find you — whether referrals, social media referrals, online search, print or television advertising, or other marketing activities — now is the time to starting doing so.)

A natural extension of your offline referral is to remind current patients that they can easily make referrals on social media as well by linking to your page the next time a friend posts a “I’m looking for a new dentist/orthodontist/family doctor/optometrist/chiropractor/etc.” status. You know you’ve seen them in your own personal newsfeed.

Make it easy for your current patients to refer their friends to you with a complete Facebook profile that includes all the details of hours, location, phone number and website address, plus a vibrant page filled with educational and inspirational content that shows you care about your patients’ health and the information they are seeking.

In many ways, simply by “liking” your Facebook page and engaging with your content, your patients are already providing an implied referral whenever their interaction with your Facebook page is seen in their friends’ newsfeed.

That is just one of the 6 benefits of Facebook we outline in our 3-page guide designed especially for healthcare providers.