For Osteopathic Clinics: Three Web Marketing Tactics to Stop Worrying About Patient Numbers

If you run an osteopathic clinic, you may recognise some of these.
・You want a steady flow of patients
・You built a website, but new patients are not coming
・You want to try attracting patients online but do not know where to start
To solve them, here are the online marketing activities that work for bringing patients to an osteopathic clinic.

Why an osteopathic clinic should market online

Why should an osteopathic clinic market online in the first place?
There are two broad reasons.
① Competition between clinics has been intensifying
② COVID-19 has made it hard to rely on offline methods alone

1.1. Competition between clinics is intensifying

Competition between clinics has become very fierce over the past four or five years.
There are nearly 52,000 osteopathic clinics in Japan, more than there are convenience stores.
Include massage shops and similar and the figure approaches 130,000.
As those numbers show, competition is intensifying and attracting patients has become very difficult.
The result shows up in the number of insolvencies.
According to research by Tokyo Shoko Research, 93 clinics went under in 2018, the highest figure on record.

1.2. Bookings fell because of COVID-19

The second reason is the effect of COVID-19 on clinics.
With the pandemic, average bookings at clinics fell about 31% year on year (2020).
It is not only restaurants: winning new patients has become harder for clinics since the pandemic began.

With trading conditions getting harder across the sector, clinics increasingly need to think about how to stand apart from their competitors and bring in new patients.

Marketing online is very effective for winning new patients, because it reaches people from the latent end of the scale right through to those actively looking.

2. Three online marketing activities that work for clinics

Here are the three highest-priority ways to win new patients online.
There are plenty of ways for a clinic to attract patients online — a website, SEO, search advertising, display advertising, Instagram advertising, Twitter, TikTok — but here we pick out only the highest-priority ones.

2.1. Building a website

The first is building a website.
Getting your clinic known online takes advertising and posting on social media, but without a website in the first place patients will never hear of you.

And the most important thing when building the site is that
who the clinic is for (the target) and what it offers them (the benefit)
is stated clearly.
So when you build the site, set out the target and the benefit.
On top of that, the elements that make a site better are
・what is appealing and strong about your clinic in particular
・the quality of the photographs
・pictures of the practitioners and staff
・reviews
・pages built with smartphones in mind
・how to get in touch

Include these and build a site that convinces patients.

2.2. Search advertising

The second is search advertising.
Search advertising means ads shown alongside the results on a search engine such as Google or Yahoo!. You can show an ad against a particular keyword, and because it appears while the person is searching that keyword and their interest is high, the enquiry rate tends to be good.

Once the site is built, run search ads next.
Search advertising puts your ad in front of people who are about to go to a clinic, which makes it highly effective.

The keywords you absolutely must cover when running search ads are
area + condition.

Anyone searching the area your clinic is in together with a condition you can treat is certainly a target, so search ads against those keywords are essential.

2.3. Map search optimisation (MEO)

The third activity is map search optimisation.

MEO stands for map engine optimisation, the work of getting your clinic to rank near the top on Google Maps when someone searches.
MEO is one of the activities a clinic should take on to bring in patients.

The reason is that a clinic is closely tied to its local area.
Most new patients search for
area name + osteopathic clinic
is what they search.
A clinic with a high rating on Google Maps is then naturally the one they pick.

There are three things to get right with MEO.

① Fill out your Google My Business listing
Complete every field, including the clinic details.
・Upload ten or more photographs
・Put keywords relevant to your clinic, such as the area name and the conditions you treat, in the business description
Detail like this is worth the effort.

② Collect reviews
More reviews means a better rating and reassurance for new patients, so actively ask the people who visit to leave one.

③ Keep your NAP consistent
NAP stands for
N = Name: the name of the business or clinic
A = Address: where the business or clinic is located
P = Phone: the telephone number
.
Keeping the clinic name, address and telephone number consistent everywhere they appear online tends to improve your MEO ranking.

3. In closing

We hope that was useful.
This article has covered three online activities that work for winning new patients at an osteopathic clinic.
Of the many options — building awareness on social media, Instagram advertising with its targeting, and so on — these are the ones to prioritise.
Start by putting your website and Google Maps information in order and running search ads, and you will have the foundation for attracting patients online.

NowVillage also runs online marketing training for osteopathic clinics.
If you would like to know more about the seminar, or you are stuck on how to run search ads or on any other online activity, do get in touch.