Effective marketing strategies are designed to both attract new patients and retain existing ones. Many medical marketing strategies focus on attracting new patients and ignore strategies for patient retention. The best way to retain existing patients is by building consumer trust. Trust is the one of the best ways to keep patients coming back in a highly competitive medical marketplace. Here are four ways to build consumer trust.

1.    Be effective in communicating

Communicating with patients is a two-way process. It is very important to pay attention to a patient’s non-verbal language to access their level of comfort. If you sense a patient’s discomfort, change your non-verbal language, avoid speaking in medical jargon and be as honest as you can.

2.    Share information

Many patients will agree that sometimes they have no clue why a doctor does what he or she does during an examination. As a doctor, try your best to explain anything you are going to do for or to a patient. If you are conducting an eye exam, explain to them why they need dilation. Sometimes a brief and simplified explanation convinces patients that you are not only knowledgeable, but that you also care about their well-being.

3.    Listen to your patients

During an exam it is important for a doctor to stop talking and listen to his or her patients. Set aside some time to learn more about the patient and keep eye contact. Patients have a lot of questions and you want to be available to them. More often than not, patients can forget or become too shy to ask you a question when they are with you. Let your patients know that they can reach you through email or by phone if they have additional questions.

4.    Ensure Happy Employees

When a patient makes an encounter with a practice, the first impression they obtain is through your employees. A practice with caring employees who are willing to go the extra mile for a patient builds trust. More often than not, a patient will want to go to a practice that shows that both the employees and doctor cares about their health and experience.

Building trust is no easy task. It takes times and it can be easily broken.  Doctor’s who are transparent and share information with their patients are more likely to build trust with them than doctor’s who don’t. If you need assistance developing a patient retention strategy, contact Mindstream Creative today.