Are you generating a good amount of leads?
But then not converting them into patients?
If so you may find this article helpful, even if you are not in the healthcare industry you will find some good tips on how to cut down the time you waste with people who are just not interested in using your services.
I was recently speaking with a Director of a Private Hospital and he told me that cutting through all the leads to find people who are actually interested in their services was one of the biggest challenges for them.
I like to focus on real challenges real people are having on this blog so I thought I would talk today about ways you can spend more time talking to the right people who visit your website.
Below I have detailed some reasons why your leads are not converting and ways to improve the quality of leads.
Reason 1: They are simply not ready to buy
This is one of the most common mistakes I encounter and all you need to do is visit any healthcare website to see what I mean.
Most websites just talk about themselves and their services.
However, most of the people who visit your website are not actually ready to buy. So if all they hear is sales speak then that will turn most of them away.
You need to match your website content to the buyer’s journey.
The buyer’s journey goes like this:
- Have realized and expressed symptoms of a potential problem or opportunity
- Have clearly defined and given a name to their problem or opportunity
- Have defined their solution strategy, method, or approach
You need to create content to match this journey and the navigation on your website should reflect that.
Reason 2: You’re talking to the wrong people
Before you even start to create content on your website you need to understand who you are creating the content for.
A really effective way to do this is to create customer buyer personas.
These personas should describe an ideal patient and be used when creating content.
This will mean you will only attract people to your website who are actually interested in your services.
Reason 3: You’re not segmenting your leads
Not all leads are created equal, some will be at different stages of the buyer’s journey.
So what I expect one of your bigger challenges to be is that you talk to people when they are not ready.
You may hear something like, “I’m just thinking about it at the moment and not sure what it is I need at this stage.”
What do you do with leads that tell you this?
If you are dropping them then this could be a massive wasted opportunity.
You need to help them make their decisions by understanding and answering the questions they have.
You won’t be able to do this over the phone or in person because they are not ready to talk. By using your content to answer these questions your will bring your leads closer to becoming a patient.
You need to nurture them into a patient by creating content and segmenting them into buckets of information qualified, marketing qualified and sales qualified.
Reason 4: All leads go directly to sales
Are you sending all your leads directly to sales?
Well as I have explained above if they are not ready for a sales conversation it will only result in failure.
If you send your informational qualified leads to sales then they likely won’t convert.
However if you only send leads that are sales qualified then your sales agents are going to be having far more productive conversations with these leads.
Your marketing team (if you have one) should not be passing all leads to sales, only leads that have given permission for a sales conversation.
Key Take Aways
The first thing you need to understand is who you are talking to and create buyer personas that help you create content that attracts the right people to your website.
People are at different stages of the buyer’s journey so please remember to create content on your site that talks to them at every stage.
Segment your leads list into different stages so you can send them information that helps them through their buying process.
Don’t send all your leads to sales, nurture them and only send the hottest sales ready leads to sales.
Now it’s your turn
What challenges does your healthcare business face when it comes to understanding who are hot and who are not?
Let me know in the comments below.