The spread of COVID-19, or coronavirus, has forced us into a national emergency, shutting down several restaurants, bars, and small businesses. The general public has been encouraged to practice social distancing to help prevent the spread of the infection… which means more downtime than we’re used to. Our lives have been quickly disrupted in so many ways.
If you’re fortunate enough to be healthy during this time and find yourself and your practice staff with extra time on your hands, here are a few things your practice can do during these difficult times to gear up for better times.
1. Effectively Communicate With Patients
Make sure you’re effectively communicating with your patients about how your practice is maintaining cleanliness and inform patients of any change of business hours. The best places to make this update is Google My Business, your practice website, and through email marketing. In addition to updating your business hours, you can also add a brief company description indicating whether or not your practice operations are affected by COVID-19. Lastly, share detailed and timely updates via Google Posts about any changes happening with your practice.
Google said it is using Duplex, Google’s AI-based phone calling service, to call businesses to check if business hours have changed or if the business has closed. Google wrote, “using our artificial intelligence (AI) technology Duplex where possible to contact businesses to confirm their updated business hours, so we can reflect them accurately when people are looking on Search and Maps.”
2. Audit Your Practice Staff
Whether your practice is temporarily closed or operating under shorter hours, you’re most likely experiencing lower patient cases. Take this downtime to audit your practice staff. You can monitor reports such as phone calls, email communications, and so on. This is valuable to do on a regular basis, but oftentimes the demand and stress of running a practice prohibit this from being done as often as needed. Use this time to audit your practice to ensure maximum efficiency when we’re able to operate at normal business hours again.
3. Review or Develop Your Marketing Plan
Although the circumstances are unfortunate, this is a great time to review your marketing and practice plan. You can revisit, or develop, a plan regarding budget, strategy, and/or staffing capabilities. Here are some great resources for practice planning:
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Download our Free Digital Marketing Guide
Other Resources:
- 6 Medical Practice Marketing Strategies that can TRIPLE Your Leads in 2020
- How To Build a Profitable Practice
- How To Convert Phone Calls Into New Patients
- Is Your Healthcare Marketing Plan Working
- How to Build A High Impact Brand for Your Medical Practice
- Healthcare Digital Marketing Metrics: What to Know Before You Measure
If you need help with your marketing strategy, please reach out to us at 855-522-3600 or email sales@doctorlogic.com. We’d love to help you take this time to devise a plan of action for maximum efficiency after the coronavirus.
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