6 Critical Steps in Reopening Your Practice After COVID-19

With COVID-19 restrictions slowly beginning to ease, it’s time to prepare your practice for reopening. But where do you even begin? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with this step-by-step guide. Read the blog or download the full guide along with a simple checklist for you to track your progress.

1. Before You Get Started

1. Strategize a Plan – Before you begin on anything, make sure to take some time to regroup and strategize a plan for reopening your practice while updating your marketing efforts to reflect that. This includes mapping out your plan, assigning tasks, and setting due dates to stay on track.
2. Create a Checklist – Put together a checklist with all of your action items separated by category so they’re easy to track your progress. Check each item off the list as you go to ensure that nothing is missed and work isn’t duplicated.
3. Prioritize – There are some action items such as updating your your business hours or changing the notification on your website that need to be updated first. Make sure that you tackle the high priority items first and execute your checklist in order of importance.

2. Your Website

1. COVID-19 Pages or Pop-Ups – You likely have a pop-up, homepage section, or dedicated page on your website with COVID-19 information regarding your practice. Do not remove these entirely. You will now want to edit those pages to let people know you are open for business as well as any other relevant information, such as new procedures and safety precautions. Edit your pop-up to announce you’re reopening. Ensure this announcement stands out by increasing the font or using a color that stands out.
2. Suggested Pop-up Content:
3. “We’re Open” announcement
4. New hours & steps/procedures Treatments currently being offered
5. Call-to-action such as “Book Now” or “Schedule a Consultation”
6. Contact/Booking Forms – If your forms were changed during COVID-19 to send patients to a virtual consultation link, make sure to update them to reflect your current contact and booking process. Remember, just because you’re open and seeing patients in person doesn’t mean that everyone is comfortable yet with in-person interaction. Make sure to keep your virtual consultation links and pages active on your website and continue to provide a portion of your consultations virtually until things fully normalize, keeping in mind that could be a while.
7. Written Content – If you wrote blogs on your practice being temporarily closed or published any other COVID-19 related content, make sure you start producing new content immediately with relevant information. This is also a great opportunity to revisit your keyword strategies and develop new blog and subpage content with your new focuses to build authority
8. Post-COVI-19  Content Ideas:
9. Reopening info – hours, procedures, etc.
10. Post COVID specials and promotions Health & safety tips for pre/post-treatments.
11. New treatments or offerings

3. Social Media

1. Post Announcements – Publish a series of posts and stories letting your audiences know that you are now open and taking bookings. Give all the information needed such as new hours, procedures, and what treatments you are able to offer at this time. Remember that people are still concerned about their safety, so make sure you stress that you are still following all sanitation & health guidelines in place.
2. Update Your Profiles- Make sure you update all the information on your social media pages just like you did with your website. Consider adding covers to your social profiles announcing that you’re open, and make sure all of your CTA (call-to-action) buttons lead to the correct place.
3. Boost Your Posts! – If there’s any time to boost all of your social media posts, it’s now. Boosting your posts ensures that your announcements get in front of all of your followers, and by spending a bit extra, you cast a wider net and reach an audience outside your normal viewers. Patients will be intensely seeking services like yours, so make sure you boost your posts announcing your offers and reopening to get high engagement on them!
4. TIP: Reinforce Your Safety Measures
5. Taking temp checks at the door
6. Short waiting times in waiting room
7. Less people in waiting rooms
8. Option to wait outside
9. Still offering virtual consultations

4. Email Marketing

1. Announce Reopening – If you’re planning on reopening, begin making your announcements as soon as you can – even if that is a month in advance. This is not the time to be shy, the more communication the better in times like these. If you’re the first to notify a patient that you’re open, you’ll be the first that they look to book with. Make sure to let them know what treatments you are/aren’t able to offer at the time. This is also a great time to announce any specials and promotions on high-demand treatments.
2. Share New Procedures – Simply announcing that you’re open is not enough. Remember that people are very concerned about their safety during this time so it’s important that you let your patients understand that there will be changes to your normal operating procedures in order to continue to serve them safely such as mask requirements, spacing for patient appointments and waiting rooms, options to wait outside, temperature checks at the door, and more.
3. Send a Letter From The Doctor – Your patients are going to be uneasy during this uncertain period as the country begins to open up, so an email with a personal note signed by the doctor can do wonders for easing their concerns and making them feel safe. Keep it simple, reassuring, and direct.
4. TIP: Use Marketing Automation
5. Use automation tools to automatically resend unopened emails to your subscribers to ensure you get the most eyes on your announcements.

5. Search Engine Optimization

1. Business Information – The very first thing you should do if you’re planning to reopen your practice is go to your Google My Business page and update your information to reflect your hours. Google is the most used search engine on the planet, if a prospect searches your practice on Google and it says that you’re still “temporarily closed,” then you may lose a potential patient. Be sure this info is also updated on your other listing sites as well.
2. Google Posts – Google Posts allow practices to share messages on Google My Business which show up in the local panel on Google search and on Google Maps. This is just another way to get more eyes on your reopening announcement. You don’t have to overthink this, just take a post from Facebook or Instagram and repurpose it for a Google post. Make sure it includes all of the relevant information to your practice’s reopening.
3. Keywords – Revisit your focus and/or keyword list. There may be competitors who have permanently shut down or are choosing to delay their reopen date. This is a good opportunity to expand into other geo local areas or even to prioritize services that were previously dominated by competitors. Take some time to rework and reimplement your keyword strategy to reflect those new areas of focus.

6. Ads & Promotions

1. Special Offers – What’s high in demand? People are looking to refresh now maybe more than any other time in history. Think about the services you offer that patients will be clamoring to book such as spa services and injectables and offer something to get them excited and sign up for your wait list.
2. TIP: Create a Waitlist
3. Offer incentives and sign-up forms for patients to be the first to receive high-demand treatments once your practice reopens. This creates a rolling demand.
4. Digital Ads – If there’s ever a time to run ads on social media, it’s now! If you disabled or reduced your spend on any of your campaigns during COVID-19, now is the time to turn them back on. Running ads ensures that your announcement gets in front of thousands of new and old eyes who can take action when they find out you are open. Even with modest budgets, you can get in front of people who would love to come in for your treatments. Remember, people are itching to look good and feel refreshed after being stuck home for so long!
5. Seasons & Holidays – Just because we’ve been quarantined doesn’t mean we aren’t looking forward to the summer. Start thinking about how you can get people excited for the warmer months and looking great. Also, keep holidays like Father’s Day and 4th of July in mind!
6. TIP: Gift Cards Are Gold Right Now
7. This is the perfect time to utilize gift cards for your specials and promos. With the uncertainty of scheduling, this allows flexibility for the patient to schedule their treatment while also providing upfront payment for you!

Need More Help? Schedule Your One-On-One

We understand that every practice is unique. Reach out to book a one-on-one with one of our marketing educators so we can answer your questions and address any specific pain points of reopening your practice. Give us a call at (800) 949-0133 so we can help you get your practice back up and running stronger than ever before.

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