5 Digital Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Psychiatry Practice

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Learn how to reach and serve the people looking for your practice with digital marketing for psychiatrists. Here are the most impactful strategies that can increase your bookings and retain your patients.

There are 100 billion searches for healthcare on Google each year, a compelling statistic for psychiatrists to have a strong digital marketing plan. Improved online visibility is just one of the benefits your psychiatry practice will reap from the tips below.

The real value that psychiatrist marketing strategies bring is increased bookings from new patients and retaining existing patients to grow revenue. Take a page from Merrimack Valley Psychological Associates, which doubled its revenue in six months when they partnered with WebFX!

Here are effective digital marketing tips for psychiatry practitioners:

1. Attract patients in your community with local SEO

People use the Internet to look for almost anything — products, health information, and even local businesses. In fact, 96% of people learn about local businesses online.

Local SEO is a strategy that optimizes your psychiatrist’s website to appear in local search results and reach your community. When someone searches for “psychiatrists in [city name],” you want your practice to appear in the search results.

Here are some tips to optimize your practice’s local online presence:

• Claim your Google Business Profile (GBP) and add your psychiatry practice’s name, address, and phone number
• Optimize your GBP listing by adding your website URL, booking page, photos, and industry to make it easy to find
• Get listed on mental health directories like Psychology Today and Therapy Den
• Keep your NAP (name, address, and phone number) consistent across all online listings

2. Enhance your psychiatry practice’s online reputation

Healthcare providers’ online reputation matters. With 70% of people reading patient reviews when searching for a healthcare provider, psychiatrists must earn their prospective patients’ trust with glowing reviews and online ratings.

Reputation management is a strategy that psychiatrists can employ to improve their online image. This strategy tracks and manages patients’ opinions on different online platforms, including their GBP listing, website, and social media pages.

Here are some best practices to improve your online reputation:

• Encourage reviews from your satisfied patients: Send a link to their email or leave a QR code at your office to make it easy for them to review your practice.
• Track your patients’ sentiments online: Use tools like Google Alerts or ReviewAccelerationFX to get notified when your psychiatry practice is mentioned online.
• Reply to reviews. Acknowledge your patients’ online reviews. Thank them for their positive feedback. Got a negative review? Address their concerns offline and notify them through the feedback that you’ve reached out.
• Publish testimonials and positive reviews. Promote your patients’ positive reviews (while still complying with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA) on your social media pages and website. Doing so may convince your prospective patients to consider your practice or book an appointment with you.

3. Use social media to engage with your patients and local community

Social media platforms are excellent avenues for psychiatry practices to foster trust in their community. After all, 41% of consumers use social media to decide on which doctors or hospitals to choose.

Choose a social media platform to focus on, depending on your patient demographics and platform of choice. The popular ones are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

You can also use your social media presence to engage with your existing patients and share helpful tips. LinkedIn and Facebook enable you to create community groups, where your patients and prospective patients can feel safe and where you can share useful information.

4. Earn your prospective patients’ trust with a user-friendly web design

Psychiatrists need to earn their prospective patients’ trust, even before they step through their door. Make a good first impression online by having a professional, user-friendly web design.

That’s because half of people say that their impression of a business depends on its web design. Your website’s design matters to gain their trust, so here are some tips:

• Have a consistent design throughout all pages
• Make your website intuitive with a user-friendly navigation
• Have a HIPAA-compliant web design 
• Make booking an appointment easy online by having prominent call-to-action (CTAs) buttons
• Mind your website’s accessibility

5. Use email marketing to communicate with your patients

Psychiatry practices often face the challenges of nurturing patient relationships and retaining existing patients. Email marketing is an excellent way to stay in touch with your patients to do both and more!

Use email marketing to:

• Welcome them to your practice
• Send personalized greetings on their birthdays or important holidays they celebrate
• Send automated appointment reminders
• Gather feedback on their experience
• Share relevant and helpful information
• Inform them of your practice’s latest news and special offers

Of course, before you use their email to communicate with them, you must get their explicit consent. To comply with HIPAA regulations, ensure your email platform is secure and your patients can opt out of your newsletters.

Partner with psychiatrist marketing experts to grow your practice

Fostering trust among your prospective clients and nurturing your relationships with them is not a one-and-done activity. Because it’s a continuous process, you may need a trusted partner that can help you with your marketing efforts so you can focus on running your psychiatry practice.

WebFX is a full-service digital marketing agency you can turn to. With over 98,500+ hours of healthcare marketing experience, we’re no strangers to psychiatrist marketing.

We’ll craft a custom psychiatrist marketing tailor-fit for your practice, goals, budget, and patients. You’ll get ongoing support and guidance from our team. Your dedicated account manager will answer any questions about strategies or campaign results, and provide you with regular reports.

Let’s work together to grow your practice. Call us at 888-601-5359 or contact us online to get started!