Close to two billion people worldwide have partial or complete hearing loss, making it the third most common chronic condition after heart disease and arthritis. Hearing care practices provide an essential service by helping detect hearing loss and providing solutions that help patients get their hearing back. Owning a hearing care practice can, therefore, be highly rewarding when you understand your impact on people’s quality of life.
As with any other business, you need strategies to attract customers and keep the business growing. Here are some ideas.
Adjust to Customer Needs
Rigid businesses do not do as well as flexible ones that are open to making changes to cater to specific customer needs. For example, there could be high demand for hearing care specialists in a local area from working professionals. The business will not be able to cater to them if it closes its doors at 5 PM on a workday, since most people will not want to take a day off to get a screening.
Offering evening and weekend appointments makes it convenient for customers, and you are likely to capture a market that is ignored by other practices.
In addition to convenient hours, audiologists should also provide personalised services. Each patient is different and experiences hearing loss differently. Providing the same tests and services to everyone disadvantages those with specialised needs.
Providing customised services increases loyalty, satisfaction and retention, in addition to helping your business differentiate itself from competitors.
Invest in Technology
Manual processes like inputting and managing patient data are labour-intensive, time-consuming, and costly for all types of business. Using different systems for these processes can also lead to poor data quality and bad customer experiences that can lead to revenue losses. This makes using the right technology crucial in hearing care practices.
There have been a lot of technological innovations in recent years targeting hearing care practices. For example, data integration solutions make it easier and safer to store and retrieve patient data, while helping these businesses leverage commercial and clinical information in new ways.
Practice management software, which is becoming popular in this field, also helps practices improve key performance metrics like sales, conversion rates and clinic performance. For example, automated email and SMS appointment reminders reduce the number of people missing their appointments, improving conversions and increasing sales.
Work with a Reputable Partner
Working with partners who have been in the hearing care business for decades allows you to learn from their expertise, experiences, and innovations to provide the best services to your patients. These partners can also help you set new business goals, optimise your products and services, and support your existing customers better so they become long-time patients.
You can also leverage their lead-sourcing programmes to get more local patients to your practice. Lastly, you can receive sales support that helps you optimise your marketing, customer service, training and more. Partners like Phonak have an excellent programme for hearing care practices and specialists, which you can learn more about by visiting this site: phonak.com/en-uk/professionals/become-a-partner.
Conduct Community Outreach
Free hearing screenings and other community outreach options allow practices and audiologists to engage with local communities, generate leads and drive traffic to their offices. This is made possible by portable and easy-to-use tablet-based screeners that allow screenings almost anywhere, including at large gatherings, sporting events and even in film screenings.
You can also hold seminars to educate the community on the importance of taking care of their hearing, directing them to come in for a free screening if they experience any signs of hearing loss. From there, you can explain how to know whether they are experiencing hearing loss, if they need hearing aids, and what difference getting a pair would make to their quality of life.
Investing in Marketing
Marketing can have a very high return on investment when done right. It can help generate awareness while driving specific actions such as patients setting appointments or buying hearing aids. You can consider community outreach as direct marketing, but you need to do much more than that to help your practice thrive.
The best place to start is on social media. Social media gives you a wide reach in your local community, and you can refine this targeting by using paid ads. Also, hire a developer to build you a professional website and a graphic designer to create complementary marketing materials like brochures and business cards.
Traditional and offline marketing options can work too. Consider postcards, TV and radio adverts, newspapers, and flyers to complement your digital marketing efforts.
Reach Out to Existing Patients
In addition to providing excellent service, creating positive relationships with existing customers can also keep them happy and increase the likelihood of them returning. You can do this by staying in touch with them through emails, calls, SMS, and other ways.
You can check in with them when it is time for a hearing examination, send informative and valuable information, or send them holiday greetings.
All this helps keep your practice on their mind, making them more likely to choose you if they need to see a hearing care specialist in the future.
Hire the Right People
Many businesses hire audiologists and other professionals based on their credentials and academic qualifications. While this is required, it should not be the only consideration. All hires should be aligned with your business’s culture and understand your vision and mission so they can help the business work towards them.
They should also have pleasant personalities crucial for creating positive relationships with their coworkers, customers, and prospects.
Invest time and money into training and onboarding so new hires feel part of a team from the first day. Additionally, invest in their success and growth so they can help your business and be loyal. If you do, you will not have to go through the expensive and time-consuming hiring process again.
Starting and growing any business is always challenging. Business owners have to think about hiring the right people, increasing revenues, gaining enough market share and ensuring the business succeeds. The same rules apply to your hearing aid practice that serves in an essential but competitive field. Fortunately, you can learn from other businesses that have been in the same space, refining well-known strategies and finding ways to stand out to ensure growth and success.
