Growth and progress are the ultimate goals of every business. Having a calendar full of appointments with new patients is something that can keep the wheel of your practice growing, and undoubtedly a great lead generation system or strategy is the real fuel for the entire growth process.
Generating highly qualified leads may seem to be a daunting task for functional medicine marketing, but with a pragmatic approach and strategic thinking, it’s quite achievable.
This post will familiarize you with some proven and tested lead-generation strategies for your functional medicine practice.
Curate Your Unique Lead Generation Funnel
If you read about lead generation strategies or talk about it with practitioners, they will get right into a gazillion things you can do to generate leads. But, only experienced professionals and agencies will tell you to work on developing your lead generation funnel.
Your lead generation funnel is a roadmap derived from your functional medicine marketing plan that lays out how you are going to generate leads. You may call it a funnel, a system, or a mechanism, but the sole purpose of this exercise is to set guidelines.
Consider the following tips to devise an effective lead generation system:
- Decide and be comfortable with the pace of growth. Striving for overnight success won’t work. Take things at your own pace.
- Take the support of technology. Use tools, software, and resources to save time and be more efficient.
- A mix of both paid and organic ads is always the best choice.
- Focus on creating an authentic relationship with your network, fellow practitioners, clients, and prospects.
Make An Impression With Impressive Branding
Once you have your foundation set, the next logical step in your functional medicine marketing plan is to brand your practice. In a field like yours, trust plays a crucial role, and proper branding can help you establish a good reputation for your office.
There are several ways in which you can establish trust in the eyes of your prospects. In branding, everything from your brand color to your website copy and the way your staff communicates matters and can make or break your impression.
So, it’s important to consider all these elements while working on your functional medicine marketing. For instance, bright colors and gaudy decorations on your website are not appropriate for your field and may make a prospect visiting your site bounce back. However, sober colors, easy-to-comprehend information, and clear CTAs can give you a handful of leads.
If you are wondering how to start this process of generating leads for your functional medicine practice, don’t feel overwhelmed. Avail the services of an expert and experienced agency specialized in your field. My team helps many healthcare professionals grow their practice. Get to know more about our services by scheduling a discovery call here.
Revv Up Growth with Referral Network
There is a myriad of options available for functional medicine marketing, and it can easily overwhelm you. The easiest and safest strategy that you can adopt to gain leads is leaning on your referral network.
Experienced marketers and professionals know without a doubt that referrals are the best kind of leads. Genuine and authentic networking can help you generate good quality leads.
You can use your current network of doctors, naturopaths, nurses, acupuncturists, dentists, massage therapists, physical therapists, chiropractors, and other healthcare professionals as a powerful resource to generate leads.
Besides your fellow healthcare professionals, your current and prior clientele can also serve as a great source to generate quality leads. When you provide supremely great services and patients are fully satisfied, they will be willing to share you with their friends and family.
Leverage Digital Marketing To Generate Leads
In today’s age of the digital revolution, your functional medicine marketing is not complete without digital marketing. Utilizing paid social media advertisements, publishing informative posts, engaging with followers, and answering DMs are some of the ways through which you can generate leads.
Another great strategy that can aid you in generating good leads is featuring social proofs and testimonials. People have mixed opinions and doubts about functional medicine, and featuring testimonials and feedback can help them trust you. They may even become interested in learning more about your services and can be a very good lead for your practice.
Also, digital marketing is not only confined to social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, but other mediums like your blog, website, podcasts, and newsletter marketing also come under the realm of online presence and can play a significant role in generating leads.
Use Landing Pages As A Magnet To Generate Leads
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of landing pages. They are a must-have for your functional medicine marketing. These pages are immensely important, especially in the mid of the sales funnel, and contribute greatly to generating leads. In fact, it is proven that businesses that rely on landing pages enjoy 4 to 10 times better responses.
The mid-level of the sales funnel consists of highly motivated potential patients who are well aware of your functional medicine practice. All you need to do is take these leads, provide them a solid push to the next stage, and finally convert them.
Bringing this highly motivated and aware audience to your landing page and asking them to take action is not a big challenge (of course, if done right). Featuring an explainer video about your services on your landing page can serve well at this stage. Also, we know from data that featuring video content on a landing page increases conversions by 86%. It’s a double win.
Nurture Your Leads
In my practice, no matter how many practitioners I work with, my number one priority is always to adopt a holistic and strategic approach. Adopting a strategic approach lets us know that in your functional medicine marketing, lead generation should not stop at social media marketing, emails, newsletters, and SEO; rather, you should also have a strategy in place to nurture the leads you generate.
Now that I have mentioned it, I know the responsibility is on me to share how to do it. So here I am providing some proven tricks to nurture your leads:
- According to research, 33% of Americans switch companies only after one instance of poor customer service. Meaning, your functional medicine marketing head needs to have a team of competent and skilled reps who can follow up with your leads.
- Consider outsourcing the task of following up with leads to professional and experienced agencies.
- Set and decide a time span within which you should follow up with leads.
- Offer promotional discounts and deals while following up.
Gain Competitive Advantage By Using A CRM Build-Out
Adding a CRM build-out in your functional medicine marketing plan can give you an edge over competitors, up the ante of your lead generation system, and nurture them.
A CRM build-out stores and manages all the data about your leads. It renders you actionable insights and guides your next move. You can see:
- How many leads you have generated?
- How many have been contacted?
- What have been their responses?
- How many leads need to be contacted again?
All this information and more can make your whole lead generation system a lot more effective and result-driven.
To Sum Up
Growing your business in an industry that is still in its nascent stage can be an arduous job. But, if you have a great functional medicine marketing plan, it will urge you to have a strategically devised system in place. Then the exact challenging situation can be no less than a pool of opportunities. The strategies that I talked about above can help you generate qualified leads and ultimately improve conversions. You can use them as they are or fine tune to your specific needs.
Still feeling stuck due to lack of expertise and time? Think Bullish works with many medical practitioners across the country. I take pride in not only generating leads for my clients but also working on converting these leads into patients. To learn more about our services, schedule a discovery call here.
Zack Siegel
Founder/CEO
Zack is a conversion rate lover and PPC ad man spending most of his time optimizing.
He’s an avid bookworm, Chipotle’s most valued customer, and pursuant stand-up comedian…
We give him reality checks every day.