One of the biggest boons of the digital age is that it has opened up the marketing spectrum for brands. Instead of one way marketing channels, now we have marketing that happens on multiple levels and an ever increasing number of platforms. Brands can instantly and in real-time communicate with their consumers thanks to social media. They can customize marketing to address the needs and requirements of a wider variety of consumers.

All of this is good. However, while marketing for brands has a taken the digital leap, it is the consumer who has probably benefited the most. Across all industry types, digital and technological advances have made it easy for consumers to quickly access brand information. It has also increased the pressure on brands to realize product and service value appreciation for consumers.

The health industry is not immune to this shift in power either. Today’s patients are entitled and have the power of choice in their hands. This has made it imperative for a medical practice brand to deliver on what patients want not just in their time of need, but also at the right cost if they want to drive conversions for their medical practice.

The real question however is this – how successful is your medical practice brand in delivering on patient expectations? More importantly- do you have complete understanding of what you patients really want to drive practice conversions?

Importance of Patient Surveys

One of the best ways of driving patient conversions is by understanding what your patients want. And the best way to do this is by simply asking them. This is where patient surveys come in – they allow you to gain insight into your patients’ minds. Understanding the motivations of patients who have already connected with your medical practice brand can help you understand what aspects of your medical brand marketing worked and help you identify the areas that need improvement. When you have a clear understanding of what your patients want and expect, you will be in a better position to deliver on their expectations which in turn can drive conversions for your medical practice.

Designing Patient Surveys

The most important function of patient surveys is to provide you with relevant information. However, if you survey is not designed well, taking patient surveys becomes a moot action. A well-designed patient survey is balanced, provides enough opportunities to patients to provide open-ended responses, while also featuring questions that encourage crisp and clear answers. Leading questions will leave you with a lot of information that is confusing and ambiguous. Here are three things to keep in mind when you design medical patient surveys.

Be clear about the Information you want to Uncover

The basic and most important function of a survey is to provide information. However, before designing a survey you need to first identify the purpose and the kind of information you are looking for – clearly determine what you want to discover. You may be looking at increasing practice conversions or trying to get patients to frequent your social site or encourage patients to consider new services. However, without understand what motivates your patients to take action for each of these scenarios you will not succeed. This is why you need to first understand what kind of information you want, and then identify the kind of question that will prompt patients to respond.

Brevity is Key

Digital natives are impatient. And who can blame them. We live in a world where everything literally happens at the press of button! By featuring unnecessarily long questions or including an unnecessary number of questions in your survey you run the risk of patients leaving the survey mid way. Keep the overall length short, and focus on featuring question that are absolutely important for discovering the information you are interesting in uncovering.

Avoid Complexities

It is best that you use everyday language as this makes it easier for patients to easily understand the survey questions. Keep in mind the idea of a survey is to encourage your patients to provide feedback. When you include too many close-ended questions, it beats the point of gleaning information. Also, if you are planning on including rating scale question, ensure the scales are consistent. The spectrum of rating scale questions usually extends from poor to excellent. Be consistent with the spectrum you use all through the survey.

Conclusion

Once you have the information you were looking, the next step is to use that information to introduce necessary improvements or changes. Carefully consider each aspect of the survey and see how best you can introduce changes to reflect the feedback from your patients.