Five Ways to Stop Patient Prospects from Ghosting You
If you spend scarce marketing dollars to attract new patients to your high-margin service lines only to have them ghost you, a solution may be within your REACH.
// By Jessica Walker //
Does your practice invest heavily in generating leads through your marketing channels — social media, website optimization, paid search — only to have little new-patient growth? If so, you may have a GHOST issue in your patient pipeline.
Ghosting is when a valid lead who has taken some kind of action — a web form, phone call, or HRA — never engages or moves forward despite multiple outgoing contact attempts.
Ghosting most commonly occurs in high consumer choice, elective service lines/specialties:
- General Surgery
- Pain Management
- Bariatrics
- Behavioral Health
- Fertility
- Cosmetic Surgery
Care Sherpa’s research and experience with clients show that 79 percent of prospective patient leads never convert to a patient. These are the top reasons leads do not convert:
- 41 percent do not respond when contacted and go cold — “ghosting”
- 38 percent were never contacted by the clinic
- 8 percent were existing patients
- 5 percent were trash leads/spam
- 4 percent were not qualified due to clinical or financial reasons
- 4 percent were truly not ready or declined
Our best practice to stop ghosting and repair a leaky conversion funnel follows what we call the R.E.A.C.H. method. This methodology is based on our data and experience working with clients. The goals of this method are twofold: (1) resolving the non-responders, and (2) increasing front-end revenue cycle.