Quick! What are three things you never leave home without?
I’d put money that you included your cellphone in your list of three things. Maybe it was even number one on your list. (My list: keys, phone, wallet.) Did you know that the average person looks at their phone 150 times per day? And they keep their phone within arm’s reach 14 hours out of every day.
- So what? What does this have to do with your medical practice? Everything! Text marketing (SMS Marketing) can be an incredibly effective tool in your marketing toolbox.
How effective is SMS Marketing? Take this quick quiz & check your knowledge of four popular channels:
[gravityform id="30" title="false" description="false"]
Ninety-eight percent! That’s crazy high. And, get this! The average response time for a text message is 90 seconds. Average response time for an email is 2.5 days. That’s 240,000% faster for a text response than an email response.
Right now, you can’t get more real-time than texting. It’s just simple science: people have their phones with them all the time, they check their phones all the time, and they consistently read their text messages. So, how can you use this to benefit your practice?
There are lots of ways practices are using text messaging and text marketing. Here are just a few:
- appointment reminders
- health tips
- check up reminders
- medication expiration reminders
- discounts
- reminders of events (health fair, screenings, etc.)
- appointment openings
As you can see, some of the purposes are personalized messages to a single user. The others are marketing to your entire patient (and potential patient) population. You can choose to do just the individual or mass texting or you can do a mix of both.
You’re probably thinking, “Yeah, that’s all well and good, but I do not have time in my day for one more thing! I barely have time to eat lunch most days!”
That’s the beauty of using texting. It’s going to SAVE YOU TIME! No, really. It will. How much time is spent calling or sending appointment reminder postcards? What if you had an automated system that would send tips and reminders to patients about their health and scheduling appointments? What if you could actually improve the overall health of your patient population with a simple text marketing system?
It’s all possible! And it’s really not that difficult. There are plenty of quality text marketing services out there that you can implement yourself. Or, you can give us a call at 419.629.0080 and we’ll help you get started!
