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Patient feedback is one of the best tools for improving your healthcare marketing strategies. Implementing these valuable insights helps ensure patients feel heard and cared for. Here are our top ways to effectively integrate patient feedback into your marketing approach!
1. Put out surveys and questionnaires
Perhaps the most straightforward but easily effective of strategies! There’s nothing more valuable than receiving feedback directly from your patients, hence the importance of surveys and polls. You can include them in blogs, emails, and social media posts—or even hand them out in person, such as in waiting rooms or healthcare events!
Here are some things to keep in mind while putting together your surveys and questionnaires:
- Be mindful of the length! Patients can be easily overwhelmed by too many questions. The more time they dedicate to it, the more likely they’ll pass it up. So be sure to keep the questions short and simple.
- Be direct with your questions. Form them in clear, precise ways to leave no room for confusion. Be sure to utilize terminology that your patients would understand, and avoid biased language.
- Give options for open-ended questions. Giving patients the freedom to express their feelings and experiences allows you to receive even more detailed information. Open-ended questions can reveal trends in the patient experience that you may not have been aware of beforehand, or bring up any additional concerns that might’ve slipped by you.
2. Employ interviews and focus groups
While surveys are the easiest and most versatile way of getting as much personalized feedback as possible, interviews and focus groups are also highly valuable if looking for more detailed accounts and face-to-face feedback.
Interviews allow you to engage in a direct face-to-face dialogue with patients. While it’s not a large pool, it’s still vital to approach patients on a personal, tangible level. A one-on-one discussion about their personal experiences and cross-referencing with other data gives way to much more nuanced feedback.
Focus groups extend these in-person experiences to a bigger, yet still intimate, data-gathering method. You can utilize a focus group to gather a small group of relevant patients and conduct questioning in person, allowing them to bounce off each other and cross-reference their experiences. This can help round out the feedback you receive, and get a bigger picture of what your patients expect from your company.
3. Utilize data
You can collect data via interactions on your website and social media posts. While not directly receiving personalized feedback, it is still a handy way of receiving more objective, overall patient activity and interest. You can extract the answers to all sorts of marketing questions such as:
- What types of posts bring in the most interactions?
- What sort of content could you benefit from providing more of?
- What topics generate the most feedback and interactions?
- What platforms do your patients seem to be most active on?
Data can answer all of these and more, and so can be invaluable in improving how you can collect and integrate patient feedback in the future.
4. Engage with them on social media
Social media can be a great way of getting honest feedback and dialogue with current and potential patients. Social media posts encouraging discussions of your audience’s experiences, opinions, wants, and needs can round out whatever feedback you’re missing to improve your marketing strategies.
You can also tap healthcare influencers to help reach your audience and get enthusiastic feedback. Influencers are familiar and approachable in ways that a simple, faceless survey isn’t. By attaching such charismatic feedback methods, you can liven up your marketing strategies and attach them to approachable faces, making your company far more relatable and recognizable.
5. Encourage internal communication
Have your team share their experiences, and cross-reference their own (non-confidential) patient feedback and data. Expert opinions and collaboration can help interpret patient data in professional ways that, in turn, can further your understanding of how and where to integrate change.
When your team is in sync, it makes collecting and incorporating patient feedback even easier! So keep your employees up-to-date, facilitate communication and honesty, and be prepared to support them through any questions and ideas they may have for your healthcare marketing strategies.
Keep up with Rave Health for more expert tips!
A successful patient feedback system is flexible and constantly evolving. All feedback is useful feedback, including negative feedback. Focus on areas you need to improve, and strive to enhance the areas you excel at. Your patients are your priority, so any feedback should be accepted and integrated with care.
Want to learn more about improving your healthcare marketing? Get in touch with our experts, and check out our other blog posts!
