And I completely agree. All things being equal people decide on price, because that is the one element they can easily quantify.

But read this recent article about patient deaths and physician reprimands.

If your patients read that article would they only be concerned with price?

How Do You Make Patients Consider Something Besides Price?

Well to start you must have a reasonable technique and a reasonable expectation of it’s efficacy. Just like medicines …there are no communications strategies that are 100% effective. So you can’t quit using a strategy the first time it doesn’t work.

Your goal is to increase your percentages. The majority of people who get quoted a price over the phone will never call back. We have the statistics. But it’s a Catch-22. Because if you don’t answer their price question they will get annoyed…and never call back. We have those statistics too.

What’s a patient-coordinator to do?

What Do Your Staff Say Now?

When confronted with the price question most patient coordinators respond one of three ways:

1. Always quote a price.
2. Never quote a price.
3. Quote a purposely vague price range and say that a consultation is needed for an exact price.

Numbers 2 & 3 tend to frustrate patients. So if left unmanaged most offices eventually deteriorate to quoting prices, especially busy offices, because it gets them off the phone faster.

What Could Your Staff Do More Effectively?

Is your goal is to make the patient feel it is in their best interest to weigh more factors in their decision process than just price? It should be.

So what is your main challenge? Your goal to add variables to their decision process works against their natural instinct to simplify the decision.

This is especially true since things like reputation and safety are much harder to quantify than price.

So how can you get the patient motivated to go against their own desire for simplification?

Do you remember Socrates? He used questions to make people reexamine their beliefs. And the method has been lauded for thousands of years.

Why does the Socratic method work? It works because it is more respectful to the person than lecturing them on what they should believe.

Exactly What Should Staff Say?

1. First they should quote a price range to diffuse the struggle that the patient is usually expecting over quoting prices.
2. Next they should ask an assumptive question like “How are you quantifying the important issues between doctors like their training and skill level? Are you finding that part difficult?”
3. Your third step should be to offer a very specific….quantifiable….Unique Value Proposition.

Most of your competitors will offer non-specific undifferentiated superlatives like “Dr. Smith is really good.” “ Everyone loves him.” etc. Some are a little better and offer specifics like “Dr. Smith has performed over 1,000 Liposuctions” or “Dr. Smith is a board-certified plastic surgeon”.

If you are struggling with how to craft a credible Unique Value Proposition call us at 888-Mktg-Pros (888-658-4776). The initial consultation is free.

Google doesn’t give you equal credit for all your backlinks. Google prefers some links over others. In fact some links can actually HURT your Google Rankings!

You already know that Google increases your rankings when other sites have one-way links to your site. You also know that reciprocal links (link swaps) don’t help. But what you might not know is that Google has an algorithm for judging your one way links.

Google likes some links and they hate others.

For instance Google gives less value for links from sites that aren’t deemed relevant to your site. So having your friend’s hair salon link to your medical practice won’t help you.

And in this article Google Engineer Matt Cutts explains how paying for links can actually get your site penalized.

How You Can Beat The System

So if you can’t trade links…and you can’t buy links…and you can’t use links from friends outside your industry. How do you get links?

How do you ask someone to link to your website if you can’t link back to them without destroying the value of the link?

There are lots of ways. Medical vendors like Allergan or Radiesse have directories that will include a link to your website. Professional organizations will often link to their members. Charities that you support may link to you. Ask news sites that feature you to include a link. Update your listing in review sites like Citysearch.

One of the fastest and best links you can get is from a hand-reviewed directory that is highly regarded by Google.

15 Minute Trick to Boost Your Medical Practice SEO

Google likes directories that hand-review all their listings because they know each site was personally deemed to be a legitimate business.

Here are our favorite hand reviewed sites. Each one takes about 15 minutes to submit your site:

1. Best of the Web: Our favorite. Submission time is very short, usually less than 15 minutes, and the response time is less than 24 hours. Google has a high trust with then. Highly recommended.
2. Yahoo Directory:  The paid directory can be submitted to in about 30 minutes and is one of the reliable places that Google pulls from.
3. Business.com: Like Yelp or Kudzu, you can claim your site. But a site advertised through them gets the authority with the search engines.

We routinely add our clients to at least one of these directories as part of their overall SEO strategy. But you can also do it yourself and save money.

Once You Start Don’t Ruin Your SEO

So once you get started acquiring one-way links what can ruin your effort? Giving away one-way links to your vendors.

Many vendors will try to get you to post their logo on your homepage with a link back to their website. That’s good for them but bad for you.

The solution? If you want to add a vendor’s logo to your website just make sure it doesn’t link to their website.

For a complimentary full SEO report on your website use our contact form.