A practice manager pulls out her phone to show me the clinic's Instagram page, and honestly it looks great. Before and after posts, patient testimonials, even a leg pain reel that went semi viral.
Then I ask one question: how many of your referrals came from a doctor who saw any of this? The room goes quiet, because the answer is exactly zero. Not because the content was bad. It was never made for the referring provider, and it never showed up where referring providers actually are.
Hi, I'm Morgan with Messick Marketing. In the video below I talk about the audience most specialty practices forget to market to altogether: the doctors who send you your patients. This post goes deeper on the part you can use this week: the three things a referring provider wants to know about you, where she actually pays attention, and how to turn a patient post into a referral post.
Why does patient content miss referring doctors?
If you remember one thing from the video, let it be this: a specialty practice has two distinct audiences to serve at the same time. Patients, and the providers who refer them to you.
Those two audiences are not asking the same questions. A patient wants to know:
- Is this procedure for me?
- Will it hurt?
- Does my insurance cover it?
A referring provider already knows the procedure, so none of that is news to her. She is asking a completely different set of questions, and one social post cannot answer both sets at the same time.
So what usually happens? The practice answers the patient questions, because those are the easiest to write. The doctor scrolls right on past, if she ever sees the post at all.
What are the three Fs every referring provider is asking about?
I like to think of a referring provider's questions as the three Fs: fast, feedback and follow up.
Fast
When I send a patient to you, how fast will they be seen? And how fast will I hear back from you after the visit? She is picturing a real patient in her exam room, and she wants to know that patient will not sit on a waitlist.
Feedback
Am I going to hear back from you at all, and what kind of report can I expect to receive? A referral that disappears is a referral she has to chase, and she does not have the time.
Follow up
Is my patient going to come back to me happy and satisfied, or confused, or worst of all upset? Her name is attached to the recommendation, so how your office treats her patient reflects on her too.
"Your patient content is probably doing its job. It's just not doing the other job."
Look at your last ten posts with those three questions in mind. If none of them say how quickly a referred patient is seen, what the referring office hears back, or what happens after the visit, a doctor could read every one and still not know what it is like to send you someone.
Where do referring providers actually pay attention?
If referring providers are not on Instagram seeing your reels, where can you find them? Picture a primary care doctor. We will call her Dr. Lee. She is not a real person, but you will probably recognize her.
Dr. Lee sees 20 patients a day, and at night she stays up late charting. At lunchtime she is probably not scrolling Instagram for funny videos. She probably is on LinkedIn, seeing what her colleagues are up to, checking for updates about the hospital system, and seeing what is going on nearby.
She also reads the referral letters and the follow up notes your office sends after a patient visit. That, by the way, is a form of marketing. It may be the piece of your marketing she reads most closely, because it is about her own patient.
Dr. Lee spends her limited free time wherever she gets the most value. In this case that is LinkedIn and her inbox. Your job is to meet her there.
What does a referral post look like?
The most important thing to remember is that this is not a patient facing post. It needs to be written peer to peer, something one clinician would actually want to read from another.
Take an orthopedic practice as an example. The patient post might say:
"Does your knee ache going down the stairs?"
That is great messaging for a patient. The referral version of the same topic answers the three Fs instead. It tells the referring provider when you would want to see a knee pain patient, how fast that patient can reasonably expect to be seen, and what follow up the doctor can expect to hear from you afterward. Built out, the structure looks like this:
- Fast: "New knee pain referrals are seen within [your real timeframe]."
- Feedback: "You will have our findings and the plan within [your real timeframe] of the visit."
- Follow up: "Your patient comes back to you for ongoing care."
Use your real numbers, whatever they are. A referral post does not explain the condition or the treatment, because she already knows that information. It shows her what working with you actually looks like.
This works almost the exact same way for any specialty that runs on referrals: a pelvic floor therapist who gets referrals from OB/GYNs, or a GI practice that gets them from primary care.
Other referral content that works
- Short case studies with some of the details anonymized.
- A "when to refer" guide that a practice could print out and keep at the front desk.
- A quick note about new hours or a new location, and how fast you can get someone in.
Why does the same post work on LinkedIn and not on Instagram?
The platform choice is intentional, because the goal is to meet referring providers where they already spend time.
Instagram is great for patients because it rewards things like emotion, faces and quick stories. LinkedIn is built for professionals. When your doctor posts there, it reads like one colleague talking to another. The exact same post on Instagram would just read as an ad.
You do not have to pick between the two. You just have to stop expecting one social post to do two jobs at the same time. Serve your patients on Instagram and Facebook, where social media works as a trust channel. Serve your referring providers on LinkedIn, and in the follow up note your office already sends.
Common questions about marketing to referring providers
How do you market a specialty practice to referring doctors?
Treat referring providers as their own audience with their own content. Write peer to peer posts that show what working with your practice looks like, publish them on LinkedIn, and treat the referral letters and follow up notes you already send as part of your marketing.
What do referring doctors want from a specialist?
Three things, the three Fs. Fast: how quickly their patient will be seen. Feedback: whether they will hear back and what kind of report to expect. Follow up: whether their patient returns to them happy and satisfied.
Is LinkedIn or Instagram better for reaching referring providers?
LinkedIn. It is built for professionals, so a post from your physician reads like a colleague talking. Instagram rewards emotion, faces and quick stories, which makes it a better fit for patients.
What should a referral post say?
It should answer the three Fs: when you would want to see a patient, how fast that patient can expect to be seen, and what the referring doctor will hear back afterward. It does not need to explain the condition or the treatment, because the doctor already knows them.
Are referral letters and follow up notes really marketing?
Yes. A referring doctor reads the notes your office sends about her own patient, and those notes show her what working with your practice is like. That makes them a form of marketing.
Give referring doctors their own content
Your patient content is probably doing its job. It is just not doing the other job. The doctors who send you patients need their own content, in their own place, made specifically for them, and it needs to answer the three Fs: fast, feedback and follow up.
A simple place to start: pull up the last follow up note your office sent to a referring doctor and read it the way Dr. Lee would. Does it answer all three?
This is the kind of work we do with specialty practices at Messick Marketing every week. If you are wondering what a content strategy could look like for your practice, send me a message and let's talk.