Sure, there are many consultants out there who have significant – even sizeable - private practices without a website, but building those practices took TIME. It was a long hard slog that required a great deal of effort networking with GPs and others who can send patients their way. Not only does this take time and a great deal of effort but it is also highly unpredictable. Ask yourself: How many GP educational meetings have YOU held and seen either nothing or the tiniest uplift in private patients afterwards as a result?
Not only that, to succeed in networking with GPs you’re going to have to be a warm, cuddly and fuzzy person who loves to meet, press the flesh and schmooze. Not everyone is like that (I’m certainly not).
So yes, it CAN be done. But it is slow, laborious and quite frankly a pain in the arse.
There are far better and faster ways of growing your practice.
And they all require a website.
BUT.
Not any old website will do. You see, your website has one purpose and ONE PURPOSE only:
To generate patients for your private practice.
If it doesn’t do that, there’s no point having it at all.
So if you’re in private practice and do not have a website, your first task is to have one built.
But what if you have a website already?
Then what you have to do is considerably more painful: you need to ask yourself “How many patients does my website generate each week? Each month? Each year?”
This is one of the first things I ask clinicians when they consult with me.
When I ask consultants that question, most look sheepish and say “I don’t know. Maybe 1 or 2 every few months.”
If that’s you, you can do one of two things:
- Have your current website edited, tweaked and changed and see if that generates more patients for you or
- Start again and have a new website built from scratch.
I appreciate this may be painful. You’ve spent the money to get your site built and may really like the design. But remember what I said:
A website that does not effectively convert visitors into paying patients is of no value. It’s pointless.
The fact is that no matter how much you spent on your old website it’s gone. Done and dusted.
What you need to decide now is whether you’re going to continue to haemorrhage money by leaving an ineffectual and ineffective site online representing you and your practice or you’re going to bite the bullet and get it sorted out properly.
Why do I say “haemorrhage money”?
Because here’s the thing: unless you are in an extremely niche specialty there will be literally hundreds and often thousands of patients searching online every week for help with symptoms and conditions that you treat.
They will visit your website and those of your competitors. And depending upon what they see and read they will choose who they want to see.
Pick up the phone. Make an appointment.
So every potential patient that visits your site, thinks “naaah, not this guy” and goes to see your competitor instead is money lost to you. Money that is going straight into your competitors’ pocket.
Allow me to let you in to a secret.
The secret is this:
The quickest, simplest, most efficient and cost-effective way to grow your private practice is to have a website that effectively turns visitors into patients.
Let me give you an example:
A consultant cardiologist asked for my help in growing his private practice. He was based in the midlands, so he assumed he had reached a natural ceiling for his region – “it’s not like London where there’s tons of private practice”. He was getting at that stage 2 new private patients a month from his website.
The first thing I did was to critique his website and point out the things he should do to improve it. Changes to the design and content that would make it much more effective at converting visitors to paying private patients.
Unfortunately, he didn’t want to make any changes to his website. He liked it as it was and didn’t see that my suggestions would make any difference.
13 months later, pissed off that his practice hadn’t grown significantly, he asked his web developer to make just 2 of the many changes I recommended. It took about half an hour, I’m told.
As a result of those two small changes the number of patients his website generated jumped from 2 a month to 8 a month.
Doesn’t sound very exciting?
When we did the sums it turns out that over the 13 month period since our consultation – during which he had left his site unchanged – those extra patients he would have seen had he made those changes would have been worth over £78 000.
£78 000 of lost income.
As a result of changes that took about 30 minutes to make.
What income he could have earned had he implemented ALL my advice I shudder to think.
Read what he wrote for yourself:
"I'd been a consultant cardiologist for about 2 years & decided it was about time I improved my private practice. I was getting a not so amazing 2 new private patients per month.
I'd heard Dev harp on about making a website & using adwords etc. I took the plunge with both techniques & it has actually worked (I hate it when surgeons are right). After around 3 months of the website going live & without doing anything else (increasing GP talks is planned), I am now getting around 2 new private patients per week. I am now obligated to try & implement other bits of advice from Dev but will only tell him if they don't work....."
[Quadrupled the number of patients generated by from his website, lost £78 000 over 13 months through leaving his website unchanged]
Consultant Cardiologist
This why I said above – and say again:
The quickest, simplest, most efficient and cost-effective way to grow your private practice is to have a website that effectively turns visitors into patients.
So if you’re looking to grow your private practice, it ALWAYS starts with your website. And the sooner you crack on with doing what is necessary, the sooner you’ll generate the income you want.
The patients are there, your problem is they’re going off to see your competitors rather than consulting with YOU.
Click here to book a confidential, one-on-one call with me.
Alternatively, for more information and resources to grow your private practice – and access to a four part video case study:
Click here.