Marketing & Branding in Improving Patient Experience & Reducing Patient Stress
“Will this provider actually be able to help me?”
“What if something is seriously wrong with me?”
“Will I ever be able to run again without pain?”
“What if I get lost on my way to the clinic and am late to my appointment?”
“What if they don’t really listen to me?”
As a health & wellness business owner, you obviously won’t be able to eliminate all of the anxious thoughts and questions someone has before scheduling or showing up for their first appointment, but there are things you can do to reduce them.
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the biggest reasons I decided to focus on marketing & design for health & wellness businesses was because of my own experiences as a patient. Many providers I’ve seen were found through Google search, where I may be looking at a few options and trying to decide which one will be the best match for me. Other providers I went to were from referrals, and even if I had already decided I was going to schedule an appointment, I may have done it sooner and been less anxious about it if their website had been more clear.
Your website, marketing, and branding strategy are important not only for attracting new patients but also an important part of providing an excellent patient experience.
Website
A well-designed website can help patients feel more comfortable and confident in seeking care. An easy-to-navigate website and clear information can help reduce a patient’s anxiety around fear of the unknown, lack of information, and uncertainty about what to expect. For new patients, you’re not only competing against other related businesses, but also against apathy, anxiety, and avoidance. Maybe the potential new patient isn’t comparing you with other providers, but deciding whether to schedule with you now or put it off until later. The information they find on your website may help them feel more comfortable to go ahead and schedule their appointment instead of putting it off indefinitely.
Provide Details of What to Expect
Including something like a step-by-step guide or FAQ page can help your patients feel more prepared and confident. What do your new patients need to know about where to park, where to check in, what forms they need to fill out, pricing & insurance coverage, and any other specific instructions?
Photos are a great way to give people an idea of what to expect when they visit your office. Consider including photos of your front desk and waiting area, staff members, and any services you offer. If finding the entrance door to your office could be confusing in any way, make sure to provide details about that.
Patients want to know that their healthcare provider will listen to their concerns and work with them to solve their problems. Be sure to communicate your approach to healthcare on your website. Do you use alternative or integrative methods? Do you regularly recommend lifestyle changes? Let potential patients know what to expect.
User-friendly Navigation
Patients want to be able to easily navigate your website, understand who you are, what you offer, and how to make an appointment. Your website navigation should be simple, user-friendly, intuitive, and mobile-friendly so patients can easily find what they need.
Consistent Design & Branding
Having consistent branding across all platforms–website, social media, and physical space–is important for building trust with potential patients. You want a patient to feel like their experience with you is consistent whether in person, on your website, or on social media. This will make the experience of interacting with your practice feel more cohesive and professional. The colors you use, font choices, and images can all convey a sense of warmth and professionalism to potential patients, helping them feel more comfortable and confident in their choice to schedule with you.
Patient Testimonials & Reviews
Google Reviews are important for SEO, but they’re also important when potential patients research you. I personally have felt more confident in scheduling with certain providers whose websites may have been lacking after reading their Google Reviews. Often times, other patients manage to answer questions I may have, can point out something I may need to be aware of (like if the entrance isn’t in a particularly obvious location), or may have even added photos there. Including positive patient testimonials on your website and social media and highlighting patient success stories can help build confidence in the provider’s ability to provide quality care.
Scheduling and Communication
Make it easy for patients to contact you and schedule appointments. Easy communication methods like online scheduling, patient portals, and HIPAA secure email can make it easier for patients to schedule and communicate with you. I personally prefer online scheduling because it’s much easier to have a browser tab open with the provider’s available times and a tab open with my own calendar. I can quickly see what open spots in their calendar will fit into my own schedule.
Many EHR platforms offer built-in automation options, so I also recommend seeing what is possible to automate in your program. Instead of only sending an appointment confirmation email after an appointment is scheduled, you may also be able to automatically send a welcome message with details of what to expect.
As a health & wellness business owner, you have the ability to make decisions that can positively impact the way future and current patients interact with your business through your marketing and branding. A well-designed website, effective marketing, and a professional branding strategy are key components of providing an excellent patient experience. By keeping these things in mind, you can build trust with future patients to help them feel more comfortable in seeking care and provide such an excellent patient experience that your patients will be excited to tell other people about you.
Check out the services I offer, and contact me if you’re interested in working with me to update your website, marketing, & branding.
Here are some specific examples I have encountered as a patient:
Chiropractor
Positive:
Website was very easy to navigate
Website included good info about who they are and gave me an idea of their philosophy of care
Website had great photos of the inside of the clinic, including staff. I had a really good idea of what to expect to see when I got there, which helped to reduce the anxiety of going somewhere new.
From the services I could see they offered, as well as the content they posted on social media, I knew they offered a more holistic approach than some chiropractors and that the additional services they offered could benefit me in managing my autoimmune disease. (The thing that made me feel confident in this part was actually not on their website at all. While researching them, I happened to find them in a directory of people who had been trained by a known expert and researcher I was already familiar with.)
A professional had made the website for them and it was obvious that it was well thought out.
Negative:
They did list an option to email them about scheduling an appointment, but they apparently didn’t check that inbox often. After not getting a response for a few days, I called to make an appointment.
Recommendations:
Make sure that the contact methods you include are those you check regularly.
Acupuncturist
Positive:
Good Google reviews
Convenient location
Had online scheduling and available appointment times that worked for me
Negative:
No clear path through the website pointing me to scheduling an appointment.
There was a LOT of information on the website, accompanied by generic images. That much information, when not clearly presented, is a bit overwhelming.
I wasn’t given clear recommendations before I left about when I should schedule another appointment or how many appointments were recommended to work on the primary issue I’d scheduled the appointment for.
Recommendations:
Restructure the website so there’s a clear path to scheduling an appointment. It’s not bad to include the other information, but make it easy for me to find what I’m looking for.
Include more photos of the clinic, and make sure they’re well lit. Since the entrance isn’t super obvious, mention that on the website and include the photo of the entrance door. I don’t remember if the entry door had a logo on/beside it or not, but if not, I’d highly recommend adding more visible signage.
Have a consistent process for making sure the patient knows how often to schedule and providing any homework they are supposed to do.
Physical Therapist
Pelvic PT for surgery rehab, this clinic was part of a larger regional company
Positive:
Their webpage was actually just a relatively simple page on the parent company’s website, but it included details about the types of issues they focus on, photos and bios of each of the PTs, a photo of the outside of the building, and a couple photos showing the inside of the clinic. I generally felt like I knew what I was walking into.
They were very responsive to the email I sent them with some questions I had before scheduling an appointment, and I was able to schedule an initial appointment online.
Convenient location & hours that allowed me to at least do some of my appointments before work
Homework was provided through an app that was easy to use.
Negatives:
Ongoing scheduling was a little tricky. It had to be done in person or over the phone and available appointment times weren’t always consistent. With the number of providers there, and how they switched me between a few different providers, it would have been tricky for them to consistently provide online scheduling, but that would have made it easier for me.
I have some negatives about not being able to see a consistent provider and spending a good bit of time at appointments with an assistant instead, but those can’t be solved with marketing & branding and are why I ended up switching providers (to someone I first heard about on Instagram, and then did a lot of reading about her and her services on her website).
Other:
This isn’t directly related to the PT clinic at all, but why isn’t PT automatically recommended after major abdominal surgery? I had ovarian torsion and had to have emergency surgery to have an ovary removed. The extent of recovery info I got from the hospital was that I could start doing cardio exercise 2-3 weeks later. They never defined what they meant by “cardio”. In the 2-3 week range, I was able to walk more upright for the first time since surgery. Did “cardio” mean walking? I had no guidance from the doctors for recovery at all. The PT was the one who told me how to remove the surgical glue that was still there past when it needed to be, how to remove the suture that was also there past when it needed to be, how to care for the scars, how to get back to basic life tasks, and how to get back to my regular workouts.
Gynecologist
Urgent Care & Primary Care / They have a few locations around the area, all in easily accessible areas near locations that patients are familiar with.
Positive:
Great Google reviews
Very convenient
They did include photos of the waiting area (though they weren’t in a featured area on the site)
I called to make my first appointment since it was a day-of appointment for some pain near my surgery incision that showed up a few months after surgery that I was concerned about and they were able to get me in that morning. They structure their schedule to make appointments like that possible. I was in and out in under an hour.
For a regular check-up, I was able to schedule online since I was now an existing patient, and scheduled my appointment for one week later. They got me in at my actual appointment time and I was in and out in 30 minutes.
Suggested Changes:
Feature the clinic photos! You can tell they put thought into what their clinic looks like to make it comfortable and welcoming.
The first location I went to was very confusing to try to find its location in the building (it turns out it wasn’t in the main core of the building, but on the ground floor–below the main level/main parking–and facing the outside of the building). The second location I went to was in a retail area that I was familiar with, so I already knew what the outside looked like and what to expect for parking. Since people often feel confused or lost in finding it, add more instructions to the website, and add any additional signage in the building that the landlord will allow.
Clean up the website some and edit to reduce large blocks of text. Make sure that things aren’t so close to overlapping on the page (especially when viewed on mobile)
Integrative MD
Primary care doctor
Positive:
I found some mixed reviews online, but the 1 and 2 star reviews were generally from people who had gone in expecting a typical doctor but instead got a doctor who was more likely to recommend lifestyle changes, herbal medicine, vitamins, and acupuncture before putting someone on long-term medication. As this is what I was looking for, the negative reviews confirmed that it would probably be a good fit just as much as the positive reviews. (If someone expected something different, it’s because they didn’t read the website at all. The homepage stated: “This approach is not for everybody; [Dr’s name] doesn’t practice simple medicine. Her patients are active partners, managing their health at all levels. Rather than simply treating symptoms, she strives to find the root cause of health issues and work with her patients to change activities that are putting their bodies at risk as they make the journey back to wellness.”)
The doctor’s bio described not just her education and training, but how she ended up interested in integrative medicine
Negative:
The website was very basic. It didn’t look particularly welcoming and it was pretty text heavy (thank you to Wayback Machine for making it possible to look at what this website looked like several years ago).
There were no photos (They have some now, but they’re small and dark and don’t give a great idea of what to expect when you arrive at the clinic.)
