9 Digital Marketing Strategies for Dermatologists to Promote Patient Acquisition

One of the most competitive medical specialties is dermatology, and starting a practice in this field requires dermatologists to learn about patient acquisition strategies. With the help of these digital marketing strategies, you can strengthen your online presence and attract more patients to your clinic.

Author: Jennifer Highland, Content Manager of Miiskin | Reviewed by: Slavica Nikolić, SEO Specialist of Miiskin

Covered in this article:
Digital Marketing Impact on Patient Acquisition | Inbound Digital Marketing | 9 Digital Marketing Strategies

Starting your own dermatology practice is hard, and one of the biggest challenges new dermatology practices face is finding ways to attract patients, although it doesn’t have to be.

In the United States, patients can wait up to 30 days to get an appointment with a dermatologist¹, which means there are too many patients and not enough dermatologists. But, how can you get these patients to your dermatology practice?

With the internet, television shows, and billboards all competing for attention, it is easy to see why patient acquisition may seem difficult. Besides, several nationwide online dermatology services in the U.S. diverge thousands of patients from local dermatology practices all around the country.

Luckily, many patient acquisition opportunities are available that you might not have yet considered.

You don’t have to break the bank to increase patient acquisition, but you must dedicate some effort to it if you want your private practice to succeed.

One of the most significant opportunities is to compete with these centralized online patient services and offer a teledermatology service in your local state or the states where you have a medical license to practice medicine.

You’re on the right track if you are part of this demographic and looking for digital marketing strategies to grow your business and attract new patients to your dermatology practice.

Digital Marketing’s Impact on Patient Acquisition

As mentioned above, patients rely on the internet to find relevant medical information. Competitors use different strategies to stay ahead of the game, so it is not enough to be an excellent dermatologist; you also need digital marketing skills that promote patient acquisition so potential patients can find you.

Digital marketing techniques for healthcare are the best way to keep up with the competitive environment.

What is Patient Acquisition?

Patient acquisition is defined as any digital marketing tactic you can use to bring new patients to your private practice for treatment.

We’ll present you with nine patient acquisition tactics (focused on digital marketing methods) to help you meet the challenge, grow your practice and draw in additional patients.

What is Digital Marketing?

All marketing activities that take place online are referred to as digital marketing, often known as online or internet marketing.

Businesses use digital channels to communicate with current and potential customers through their websites, email services, social media networks, and paid promotions.

What Is an Inbound Digital Marketing Strategy?

An inbound online marketing strategy for dermatology consists of growing your private practice by building meaningful relationships with patients and prospects by providing valuable insights and knowledge on your area of expertise.

It empowers your potential patients to reach their goals with your private practice as a service provider.

An inbound digital marketing plan pulls people toward your clinic’s website, where they can read and view your content, get familiar with your brand, and ultimately make a decision.

On the other hand, outbound marketing employs more conventional forms of marketing, such as TV and radio commercials, billboards, magazine advertisements, and flyers.

SEO-optimized content on your dermatology website answers your patients’ questions and demonstrates the unique value of your offerings.

Hubspot, the Digital Marketing Company behind the concept of inbound online marketing, describes the inbound flywheel and the different types of content your need to produce for your intended audience.

Attract: Attract the right people with valuable content that establishes you as a trusted authority with whom they would like to engage.

Engage: Present valuable insights and solutions to solve their problems and meet their goals, making them more likely to become your patients.

Delight: Offer help and empower your potential customers to reach their goals with your treatments.

For example: If you are reading this article, you are likely to be a dermatologist who owns a private practice or is interested in opening a private medical practice and wishes to attract new patients.

We want to attract you to our website to build a relationship with you.

Why? Because we have a fantastic product called Miiskin PRO for dermatologists and primary care physicians that allows patients to request asynchronous virtual care. Offering telemedicine visits will help you differentiate your clinic from competitors and attract new customers.

Feel free to read about Miiskin PRO later; first, we would like to give you some online marketing tips to help you with patient acquisition strategies.

9 Proven Digital Marketing Strategies to Promote Your Dermatology Clinic Online and Improve Your Patient Acquisition

Create a mobile-friendly website
Offer teledermatology
Fill in business listings
Create social media channels
Get customer reviews
Create educational healthcare content and start a blog
Invest in Search engine optimization
Invest in paid promotion
Engage and communicate with your patients online

To grow your dermatology practice and increase patient acquisition, you need to work on making your clinic as visible as possible.

Some of these tasks can be tackled as a one-time project, such as building the clinic’s website, and others will require continuous attention, such as managing your social media channels.

dermatology marketing get new patients to your dermatology clinic

Nowadays, if a dermatology clinic does not have a solid and trustworthy online presence, it might as well be closed. To attract patients to your practice, having a dermatology website, company listings, and social media presence is more important than having a prime location on one of the main streets in town. Why? Because patients are too busy to visit a dermatology clinic in person just to book an appointment.

Today’s customers are digital, and when they need something, they go online to look for a product or service; that is why having a solid online presence is essential to attract new patients to your dermatology clinic.

76% of consumers look at a company website before visiting the business in person1
44% of consumers say they frequently use search engines to find information about businesses and services in a specific location²
45% of consumers are likely to visit a company’s physical site after seeing a solid online presence³

Suppose you do not have a solid digital presence. In that case, most people will not know you exist – so take action and follow these online marketing strategies listed below to increase patient acquisition.

MIISKIN PROMO

Attract New Patients to your Medical Practice with the Miiskin platform

Skin Health Solution for Providers

Boost patient acquisition: The Miiskin website is visited by 250,000 patients every day; offer these patients care delivered by your practice.

Automate patient intake: Patients can fill out any intake forms, make payments and give consent via the Miiskin app.

Offer efficient care delivery: Triage patients, renew prescriptions and make routine visits more efficient with an asynchronous telehealth solution.

1. A User-friendly and Mobile-responsive Website is Essential for Digital Marketing

As one of the best internet marketing strategies to attract new patients to your dermatology practice, you must ensure that your website is aesthetic, informative, fast, user-friendly, and responsive, as 60% of all internet searches come from mobile devices⁴.

Learn more about web design and development of your dermatology website.

2. Offer Virtual Visits to your Patients

There are many types of useful dermatology software, but implementing teledermatology is a great way to attract more patients to your dermatology practice.

There is a high demand for dermatology care and a lack of dermatologists in the United States. Store-and-forward teledermatology software can help you keep up with this demand by allowing you to provide virtual treatment without patients having to book an appointment.

Patients can go to your website, click on the “Request Care” pop-up, follow the guided flow, and wait until you review their case and take action.

In the Miiskin PRO platform, you can review their case, give them a diagnosis and offer them treatment or you can prioritize the patients who need an urgent in-person appointment, like in the case of Megan Fry.

Patients can also request virtual medication refills without setting foot in the clinic.

In most cases, this whole process takes less than 48 hours since you receive the patient’s case.

It is also important to mention that reimbursement for teledermatology in the U.S. is comparable to physical consultations by private insurance companies.

3. Create Business Listings for your Clinic

Today’s patients want to know they are dealing with a credible, reliable dermatology clinic—otherwise, they will look elsewhere. As a dermatologist, you want your business to stand out.

Creating a profile in several online business listings and directories can help you achieve credibility and trustworthiness.

Besides, having visibility on leading directories can help increase your office traffic and the number of new prospective patients.

Creating these business listings is relatively easy but a bit time-consuming. You will save some time if you write some text in advance to describe your clinic and the services you offer.

Besides creating a user-friendly, mobile-first practice website, you also may want to consider creating social media channels for patient acquisition.

Since creating social media channels is relatively easy, you can do this by clicking on the step-by-step guides listed below or asking a younger family member to help with this task.

If you create social media channels, you must make posts at least once or twice per week but don’t stress if you don’t have enough content to post so often in the beginning.

Updates on your social media content are important, but most importantly, your social media pages will help populate the internet with your name and brand.

5. Get Customer Reviews for your Website, and Social Media Networks

Get customers to review your business and add those reviews to your practice website and social media channels.

Research shows that more than 70% of patients read online reviews when considering a new doctor⁵

Three relatively easy and free websites for customers to make reviews are Google, TrustPilot, and Facebook.

6. Create Educational Healthcare Content and Start a Blog

Many people are curious about their health and research on the internet to find relevant information.

Content creation is one of the most proven digital marketing strategies, so incorporate educational content creation as a part of your patient acquisition strategy and establish yourself as a reliable information source.

Writing and posting quality and helpful content on your blog regularly will help you position yourself as an expert in your field and help you drive organic search traffic to your website. More traffic means more chances to turn website visitors into patients.

7. Invest in Search Engine Optimization

There are two types of SEO, local and global; the most important type for dermatologists and dermatology clinics is Local.

Google localizes results for mobile devices as much as possible because they are tied to a particular geographical area.

For many search terms, people are looking for a local service. For example, when users search for a dermatology clinic, they want a clinic close to home or their work. That is why they will use the search term “Dermatologist Near Me” instead of “Dermatologist in Minneapolis.”

8. Invest in Paid Promotion

Paid advertising is a digital marketing strategy where marketers pay to place their adverts on a particular network or platform.

This is also a good tactic to use as a patient acquisition plan.

Pay attention that there are different types of paid marketing and that not every kind may be suitable for your business.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Google Ads
Facebook Ads
Twitter Ads
LinkedIn Ads
Google and Facebook remarketing

9. Engage and Communicate with your Patients Online

Use different digital channels to communicate with your patients and to keep them engaged.

Email marketing is a powerful digital tool for spreading the word about your medical practice and informing patients about your dermatology services. It enables you to maintain a digital connection with your patients and makes promoting and sharing your educational content easier.

Social networks are also an excellent place to create and strengthen relationships with your patients.

Interact with your audience by answering their questions and offering educational articles and videos about various dermatology health issues. That way, you will increase your brand exposure and visibility. Also, your current and potential patients will like you more and become loyal, as your active interaction gives them confidence.

Surveys and chatbots are another great way to interact with your patients. It’s crucial to stay in touch with your patients frequently and learn what they think about your service.

Conclusion

Any patient acquisition plan must be based on these digital marketing tactics to be effective.

These proven online marketing practices will help you raise brand awareness and trust among your potential patients and eventually encourage them to take action, so they become your patients.

Still, keep in mind that getting new patients is just the start of the long process; there is still work to be done to keep them and make them loyal.

Don’t miss the opportunity to check what other dermatology marketing strategies, besides online activities, can help you grow your newly established business.

References:
¹ https://patientengagementhit.com/news/long-wait-times-in-dermatology-harm-patient-experience-safety
² https://visualobjects.com/digital-marketing/blog/benefits-of-local-seo
³ https://visualobjects.com/digital-marketing/blog/benefits-of-local-seo
⁴ https://searchengineland.com/report-nearly-60-percent-searches-now-mobile-devices-255025
⁵ https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/02/08/2380830/0/en/New-Research-Finds-That-Over-70-of-Consumers-Read-Online-Reviews-When-Considering-a-New-Doctor.html
⁶ https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/the-beginners-guide-to-evergreen-content
⁷ href=”https://patientengagementhit.com/news/long-wait-times-in-dermatology-harm-patient-experience-safety
⁸ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pde.14479