Bariatric Surgery Seminars: Online vs. In-Person

Bariatric Medical Marketing Practice Rules

The Third Rule for Growing Your Bariatric Practice Places a High Value on Online Seminars

If you’ve been following our blog series about how to grow your bariatric practice, you have already learned our first two rules:

• Rule #1: Know Your Numbers

• Rule #2: Make It Easy for Patients to Find You

Now it’s time to introduce the third, which is to use online bariatric seminars (OLS) to:

• Increase qualified bariatric patient intake leads

• Expand into new bariatric surgery markets

If you’re thinking, “Well, we already have a pretty good in-person bariatric seminar in place and seem to get decent results with it,” please be advised:

If you aren’t offering online bariatric seminars, competitive medical practices probably do—and they are taking your share of new bariatric patients.

Most simply, online bariatric seminars enable a better experience for prospects—and that directly translates into better conversion rates for you.

We know this because we conducted a one-year study of a bariatric surgery practice that offered both in-person information sessions and online seminars.

Although their conversion rates were decent for in-person seminars, they paled when compared to OLS:

There’s no mystery to why this happened. Two key reasons are because bariatric surgery prospects are often:

• Apprehensive about in-person seminars

• Too busy to attend in-person seminars at a set date/time/location

But, when prospects have access to online bariatric seminars, they can register and begin watching immediately.

More Benefits for Online Bariatric Seminars

Not only do online bariatric seminars help improve your conversion rates, but they can also be highly efficient and economical for your practice. This is because they:

• Are recorded and produced once: This prevents you from having to commit resources for conducting the same seminar over and over.

• Deliver the best payer mix: OLS gives you access to working and busy adults that are Internet and computer savvy.

Components of a Successful Online Bariatric Seminar

Our experience in developing successful online bariatric seminars has given us the ability to share some sound advice about key components that include:

• Requiring registration that should be captured in Google analytics, too

• Linking the registration to patient management software for a better understanding of the patient pipeline

• Polls and surveys to test knowledge

• Short, easy-to-digest segments rather than one long 30-minute clip

• Interactive playback features that allow patients to pause resume the seminar

• Optimized, professional-developed content for online viewing and NOT just a recording of a typical in-person seminar

• Tracking for analytics and viewership

• Automation for sending post-seminar requests for insurance verification, consult, etc.

Please be sure to also watch our online seminar 4 Powerful Strategies That Can Grow Your Bariatric Program to learn more!

As Guideway Care – Sequence To Activation’s director of digital production, Karen Haft regularly engages with bariatric medical practices to find solutions that help grow their revenues and profitability.

Guideway Care – Sequence To Activation is a cloud-based technology and services company that improves profitability and patient outcomes for hospitals and practices through end-to-end patient engagement solutions backed by clinical and non-clinical teams. Its HIPAA-compliant, SaaS platform improves care team workflows, automates patient communication and tracks patient progress to optimize the patient journey. Since 2004, leading healthcare providers have trusted Guideway Care – Sequence To Activation to help acquire, manage and engage patients through complex episodes of care.