Medical Practice Marketing: 7 Ways to Get More Patients

By Corey Frankosky · Last Updated July 11, 2026

Getting more patients comes down to one thing. You have to build a path that is so smooth people move from a Google search all the way to a five star review without getting stuck anywhere along the way. Someone searches dermatologist near me, lands on a site that actually books them, shows up to the appointment, and then leaves you a review that helps the next patient find you. This post breaks down seven ways to handle your medical practice marketing, whether you are launching a new practice or trying to grow an existing one. It is really one strategy split into pieces, and it is where I would start with any practice that needs the phone ringing.

Build a Website That Actually Books Patients

Your website is where most of your medical practice marketing lives or dies. It seems simple enough, but I have seen plenty of practice websites where the whole thing is harder to use than it needs to be. The number one goal is to make it obvious and easy for someone to go in, book, and be done with it.

Picture the full path. Someone goes to your website, books the appointment, shows up, finishes, and then you follow up with an email or text that says here is your next appointment, or click here to book your next one, and by the way, if you enjoyed everything, please leave us a review. That is the goal with your entire digital marketing strategy. You want to keep people moving smoothly from the moment they decide they need a dermatologist all the way to the five star review.

When you build your site, make sure it covers the basics without making people hunt for them.

• Visible phone number and call buttons. People on their phone should be able to tap and call in one move. Test every button after you launch and make sure it actually works.
• An accurate booking button. You can connect third party booking software so someone can schedule right from the page. Confirm the booking flow works end to end before you send traffic to it.
• Mobile friendly and easy to use. Most people find you on a phone. If the site is slow or confusing, they pick another practice.
• The answers people are looking for. Where you are, when you are open, which insurances you accept, whether you are taking new patients, the forms they can fill out ahead of time, your services, and your doctors.

Without those things, you leave a patient with an open ended question in their head, which is can I actually trust this practice. I searched dermatologist Denver and opened a few sites to see this in action. The good ones made it instantly clear. Patient forms, services, meet the team, location, insurance, all right there. Apex Dermatology Group and Denver Dermatology Center both had clean, professional sites with specific pages for cosmetic treatments and easy ways to schedule or make a payment.

Then I hit one where I would want to make changes. It had a couple of images and a book now offer, but not much information about the practice or the results. Most people are not going to book until they see more about you and what you actually do. Sometimes you do not need the biggest website in the world. If you run a specific program and you just need people to sign up, a simpler page can get the job done. But a professional site almost always helps you book more patients.

Question to Answer:

If you opened your own website on your phone right now, could you book an appointment in under 30 seconds without getting confused?

Watch the Full Walkthrough on YouTube

I put together a video walking through all seven of these medical practice marketing strategies, and I pull up real dermatology and med spa websites in competitive markets like Denver and Phoenix to show you what is working and what I would fix. If you want to see the actual sites, the Google Business Profiles, and the ad results I am talking about, the video below covers everything.

Question to Answer:

Have you watched the full walkthrough so you can compare your website and Google Business Profile against the ones I break down in the video?

Build Out Your Google Business Profile and Win Review Velocity

Your Google Business Profile is what shows up when someone searches for a local dermatologist, dentist, or med spa in your area. You want it built to drive people in and built to sell your services. That means getting new reviews, replying to reviews, adding images, and keeping the profile fully filled out.

I looked at a dermatology practice near Denver and started asking the questions I would ask any client. Do we have all of our services listed? Do we have images, photos, and videos, and could we add more? Do we have anything from existing patients? In their case, the answer to that last one was no, which is a missed opportunity. You can encourage patients to snap a quick picture of the practice, not of themselves, and leave a five star review at the same time.

Reviews are where a lot of practices leave money on the table, and it is not just my opinion. Survey data shows 84% of patients check online reviews before choosing a new healthcare provider, and more than half read at least six reviews before they decide. And the pressure is rising, not easing: in rater8's 2026 report, 55% of patients say they have walked away from a provider based on what they read online, up 15 points in a single year. That practice near Denver was sitting at a 4.8 rating with reviews coming in, but the newest ones were three and four months old. That is the review velocity problem. Patients discount older reviews and expect to see recent feedback, so a steady flow matters as much as your overall score.

• Fill out everything. Services, hours, address, website link, booking link, category, and plenty of photos. The more complete your profile, the better it tends to show up.
• Keep new reviews coming in. Review velocity works alongside your star rating. A page with recent reviews looks active and trustworthy. A page with nothing new in six months looks stale.
• Reply to your reviews. Respond to the good and the bad. It shows patients you are paying attention, and in rater8's 2026 data, 66% of patients said a provider's response to reviews directly shapes whether they trust them.
• Post to your profile and stay active. Do not forget the page exists. Keeping it active helps your local presence over time.

One more shift worth knowing in 2026: a growing share of patients start these searches with AI tools like ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, and Gemini, not just the classic Google search box. Those tools pull from the same reviews, ratings, and profile data you already manage, so a complete, well reviewed Google Business Profile now feeds your visibility in AI search too. The work is the same. The payoff just reaches further.

Get this right consistently and you end up with a profile carrying 200 plus five star reviews, ranking well in your local area, showing up right when someone searches for what you offer.

Question to Answer:

When was the last review posted to your Google Business Profile, and do you have a simple system for asking every happy patient to leave one?

Run Google Ads for High Intent Searches

There are people all day long searching dermatologist near me, dermatologist Denver, and specific treatments like Botox near me. Those are high intent searches. Someone typing them is usually ready to book something soon, and running Google Ads for those terms is one of the best ways to get people in the door.

I searched Botox near me from Murrells Inlet and got almost nothing, which is fine, because it just shows how much this depends on your market. When I searched Botox Phoenix, it was a completely different story. There were two ads at the top, and one practice, Beverly Hills Rejuvenation Center, was showing up at the top for basically every search. They are clearly spending real money, and they are getting the visibility that comes with it.

That is the reality in a competitive market. Even with a five star rating and 200 reviews, you might not crack the top of the map pack when other practices have thousands of reviews and are running ads. If you are not showing up in that top section, ads are how you buy your way into the conversation while you keep building everything else.

Google Ads does take skill to run well. You are targeting the right keywords, sending traffic to the right pages, and managing your budget so you are not wasting spend. Done right, it is one of the fastest ways to put your practice in front of people who are actively looking for what you do.

Question to Answer:

Do you know which high intent searches your best patients are typing, and are you showing up for them either in the map pack or through ads?

Send Paid Traffic to the Right Landing Page

Running ads is only half the job. Where you send that traffic decides whether the click turns into a booked appointment. If someone searches for a specific treatment, send them to a page about that treatment, not your homepage and not a page for something else.

Here is the mistake I see. Someone is looking for medical dermatology because they have a rash on their hands, and they get dropped on a Botox page. They are not looking for Botox. That click is wasted. If you run a Botox campaign, build a Botox landing page. If you run a pediatric dermatology campaign, send those people to a pediatric dermatology page.

Match the page to the search, and make sure the page is built to convert. That means a clear headline, the information the patient needs, and an obvious way to book, call, or message. Sending paid traffic to a page that is actually designed to convert is a huge part of your practice growing instead of just spending money.

You also still need a clean, friendly homepage for the people who land there. It should make it very easy to book, call, or message without any friction.

Question to Answer:

For each service you advertise, do you have a dedicated landing page that matches the search and makes booking obvious?

Build Reviews That Win the Click

Reviews do more than build trust. They decide who gets the click in a crowded market. When someone searches Botox Phoenix, they see a stack of practices with ratings right next to their names, and they compare in seconds. If you are sitting at a 4.7 and there are twenty other practices at a 4.8 or higher, that small gap can cost you the click.

The data backs this up. Roughly 72% of patients say they will only consider a provider rated four stars or higher, and about half will not choose a provider with no reviews at all. rater8's 2026 report puts that bar even higher, with three in four patients saying they would not book with a provider rated below four stars. In a competitive space, your rating is the first filter patients apply before they even read a word.

So you protect that rating and you keep it high.

• Reply to every review. Thank people for the good ones and respond honestly to the bad ones. Patients read the responses, and a thoughtful reply to a negative review often matters more than the review itself.
• Handle negative reviews the right way. If you fell short, own it and say so. If a review is not true, respond calmly with your side, and if it violates the rules, work to get it removed.
• Automate your review requests. Follow up after every appointment by email and text asking for a review. Around 74% of patients say they would leave a review if the provider simply asked.
• Ask while it is fresh. Nearly half of patients who leave a review do it within 24 hours of the visit, so the ask should go out fast.

Reviews are word of mouth marketing at scale, and they feed directly into how well you rank locally, and increasingly into what AI tools say about you when a patient asks for a recommendation. The more consistent five star reviews you gather, the more clicks you win.

Question to Answer:

Does your rating hold up against the other practices showing up for your main searches, and are you actively working to keep it above four stars?

Follow Up Fast on Every Single Lead

Speed wins the patient. You can build a perfect website, run great ads, and gather hundreds of reviews, and still lose patients at the front desk. Make sure you answer the phones, and make sure the people answering are good at going from phone call to booked appointment.

I have worked with medical practices where the front desk was not good at that, and you could see the drop off. They would tell me they were not sure what was happening. Then you dig in and find that three people are answering the phone, and one of them is clearly not converting calls into appointments the way the other two are. There is not much of a sales pitch to it. Someone is calling because they need an appointment. The job is to book it, confirm it, and keep it organized.

Fast follow up keeps the whole thing on the rails. When someone books, they should get a confirmation. When they have questions, someone should respond quickly. Part of your marketing is getting people to call, and part of your operation is making sure that process runs smoothly so you can focus on providing great care instead of chasing details.

Question to Answer:

Do you know how well each person at your front desk converts a phone call into a booked appointment, or are you guessing?

Track What Actually Brings In Patients

You are spending money in a few places, so you need to know what is actually bringing patients in. Is it Google Ads? Is it Meta Ads? Is it organic search? Without tracking, you are flying blind and guessing where to put your budget every month.

Get the measurement pieces in place so you can see the full picture.

• Set up call tracking. A large share of medical practice leads come in by phone. If you are not tracking calls, you are missing where a lot of your patients come from.
• Turn on enhanced conversion tracking. This helps Google attribute more of your conversions accurately, which feeds better data back into your campaigns.
• Use Google Analytics 4. Go into your GA4 data every month and look at how people are finding you, what they do on your site, and which channels lead to booked appointments.

Once you can see which channel drives patients, you put your budget behind the thing that works instead of spreading it thin and hoping. That one habit, reviewing your data every month, is what separates practices that grow from practices that keep spending without knowing why.

Question to Answer:

Can you say, with data, which marketing channel brought in your last ten new patients?

Website Plus Google Ads Is the Winning Combo

If you take one thing from all of this, make it this. Start with the website, then run Google Ads, and those two together give you the best chance of staying present when people in your local market are searching.

Build the website first and make it work. User friendly, SEO friendly, easy to book. Then start running Google Ads to high intent searches and send that traffic to the right pages. The website does the converting and the ads do the finding. When both are dialed in, you show up when it matters and you turn those clicks into appointments.

Keep in mind the competition is real. In a market like Phoenix, you are up against practices spending heavily to sit at the top of every search, plus mobile providers who go to the patient instead of asking the patient to come in. That is exactly why the combination matters. A strong site, a well built Google Business Profile, steady reviews, and smart ads stack together to keep you visible against practices with much bigger budgets.

Question to Answer:

Are your website and your Google Ads working together, or are you leaning on one while the other holds you back?