Think about the last time you needed a new service in a hurry. You probably didn’t ask around for weeks. You searched, skimmed the first few results, clicked a couple of websites and made a decision in a few minutes.
Patients choose a practice in much the same way, and most of that decision is made before anyone picks up the phone. Understanding that journey is the first step to marketing your practice properly. Here’s what it looks like for most patients, and where practices tend to lose them.
It starts with a search, and usually a local one
Most patient journeys begin with a search like ‘GP near me’, ‘dentist Norwood’ or ‘physio for back pain’. Google answers local searches with the map pack: three practices shown with a map, above the regular results. Those three listings win a large share of the clicks.
If your practice isn’t in the map pack for the searches that matter, many patients will never see you at all, no matter how good your care is. What decides who appears there? Mostly three things: how close you are to the person searching, how relevant your Google Business Profile is to what they searched, and how prominent your practice is online, which includes your reviews and your website.
What you can do about it:
- Choose the right primary category on your Google Business Profile, and add secondary categories for your other services.
- List your services, opening hours and real photos, and keep them up to date.
- Make sure your practice name, address and phone number are identical everywhere they appear online.
Then they compare the shortlist
Patients rarely book the first result they see. They compare two or three practices on a handful of things. Is it close? Is it open when I need it? Can I get in soon? What will it cost? Do I feel comfortable with these people?
Your Google Business Profile and your website need to answer those questions quickly. Billing information, availability, location and photos of your actual team and rooms do more work here than any slogan.
Reviews play a part too. Patients can leave reviews on Google, and you’re allowed to ask them to. What you can’t do under the AHPRA guidelines is use reviews about clinical care in your own advertising, such as quoting them on your website. Let them live on Google, where patients will find them anyway.
The website is where the decision gets made
Once a patient clicks through to your website, you have a few seconds to reassure them they’re in the right place. On a phone, which is where most healthcare searches happen, that means:
- A clear headline that says what you do and where.
- An obvious way to call or book, visible without scrolling.
- A page for each of your main services that answers the questions patients actually ask.
- Practitioner profiles with real photos, qualifications and areas of interest.
- Pages that load quickly. A slow website loses people before they’ve read a word.
If your website is hard to use on a phone, or makes patients hunt for the booking button, you’ll lose people at the final step, after you’ve already done the hard work of getting them there.
Trust is built with information, not hype
Healthcare is personal, and patients are cautious. The practices that win online tend to be the ones that explain things clearly and honestly: what a service involves, who it’s suitable for, what the risks and recovery look like and what it costs.
This happens to be exactly what the AHPRA advertising guidelines ask for. Balanced, accurate information isn’t a compliance burden. It’s what builds the trust that turns a visitor into a patient, and it’s what Google rewards with better rankings.
Booking should be the easiest part
The final step is often where practices lose the most patients. If online booking isn’t available, the phone goes unanswered at lunchtime or the enquiry form asks for too much, people give up and go back to the search results.
Look at your booking journey through a new patient’s eyes. Can they book in under a minute on a phone? Do they know what happens after they submit a form? Small fixes here often make the biggest difference to your numbers.
Where to start
If you’re not sure where your practice is losing patients, start by measuring. Track how many people find you through search and maps, how many visit your website and how many call or book. The gaps between those numbers will show you where to focus.
If you’d like a second pair of eyes, our free practice growth audit looks at every step of this journey for your practice, from your search visibility to your booking process, and gives you a clear list of what to fix first.