Successful Formulas For Healthcare Marketing
In a competitive healthcare marketplace, most prospective patients have multiple choices in care. For this reason, it's essential for practices to have a well-planned marketing strategy that successfully reaches and captures the attention of their target audience.
Today, it's more challenging than ever to keep up with emerging developments in the healthcare industry and the ever-changing Internet marketing landscape. Focusing on patient care while also trying to promote your practice can feel overwhelming. It's best to develop a trusting partnership with marketing professionals who understand healthcare, offer the solutions to catalyze practice growth, and will do the legwork for you.
At DoctorsInternet.com, we provide complete website and online marketing solutions for a broad range of medical and healthcare-related professions. As a company founded by healthcare professionals, we understand what it takes to run an office, deliver top-quality care, and how to build a thriving practice.
Here's some helpful advice and useful marketing strategies to reach your target audience and bring new patients to your door:
It's essential to have a plan and a budget
While this step requires the most thought, there are recommendations for new and existing practices that provide clarity. This helpful article on the DoctorsInternet.com website offers detailed guidelines and numbers:
https://doctorsinternet.com/how-much-should-i-spend/
Develop your brand
Define your practice and present a consistent message that resonates with your target audience. It's essential to identify what's unique about your practice, what makes it special, and the key features, services, and messages you want to convey. Be consistent and true to your mission and your story across all marketing platforms.
Establish a robust online presence
With a growing number of patients looking to online searches for care, it's key to have an attractive and engaging website that functions as well on a mobile device as it does on a laptop or PC. It must also provide the best possible user experience, be easy to navigate, quick to load, search engine optimized, ADA accessible, secure, and HIPAA compliant.
Employ effective Organic SEO strategies
Whenever a prospective patient in your area is looking for information or care, it's critical that your practice is one of the first results to appear. With close to 80% of consumers using search engines to find local information, it's essential to increase your practice's visibility in search.
In addition to building authority with Google and other major search engines with content that's relevant, authoritative, keyword-word rich, and engaging, other less visible or unseen aspects of your website must also be designed to meet search engine requirements for optimal ranking.
Be active across popular social media platforms
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube offer an effective way to connect your practice with the larger audiences you want to reach! Beyond providing an ongoing and inexpensive way to get your practice noticed by more potential patients, a strong and engaging social media presence also offers additional points of entry to drive traffic to your website.
Invest in Pay-Per-Click ads and other types of paid search
While SEO is vital to achieving top placement in the search engine results, it's a long-term process. The best way to supplement organic SEO traffic and see immediate results in terms of online visibility and page one rankings is with targeted Pay-Per-Click ads. With Pay-Per-Click Campaigns, you can optimize your advertising budget and achieve immediate and guaranteed page one results. In addition to Google Ads, you may also choose to participate in ad retargeting or other highly effective paid search options such as Facebook Ads.
Generate positive online reviews and patient testimonials
Today online reviews are the new "word of mouth". In an age when more than 75% of new patients select healthcare professionals based on online reviews, what your patients are saying and how they rate their experiences can affect practice growth. It's essential to establish an online reputation that reflects the skilled, compassionate, and high-quality experience your practice provides.
Positive reviews, glowing testimonials, and 5-star ratings offer valuable "social proof" to prospective patients that choosing your practice is a wise and sensible decision. While it's not always possible to please every patient, respond in a wise and friendly manner to any negative comments posted that may come your way. Take the opportunity to learn from them and avoid any similar situations in the future.
Participate selectively in traditional marketing approaches
While most marketing efforts these days are online, some traditional approaches to build awareness of your practice and the services you provide can also be helpful. Introducing yourself and your practice to referral sources and getting involved in your community also support practice growth.
Periodically review and assess your marketing strategies
Effective marketing strategies depend upon ongoing supervision and periodic review. You need to determine if your efforts are demonstrating results, what's not working, and if there are any areas that require improvement. It's essential to adapt your strategies to marketplace changes, demographic shifts, your competition, and other factors that can influence practice growth. You also need to be certain that you are not losing your hard-earned new patients due to the way your office team is handling calls, the intake process, or interactions with patients.
Look to the experts for support and advice
When your primary focus is providing excellent patient care, all of the above strategies for success are daunting. Although you clearly don't have the expertise and time to devote your efforts to marketing, we do! At DoctorsInternet.com, we've helped thousands of healthcare practices across the country enjoy a robust online presence and practice growth.
From conception to going "live," we develop personalized digital strategies that convey your practice's unique character, reflect the latest healthcare marketing trends, and reach your target audience. With our help, the next time a prospective patient searches online for an office just like yours, your practice will be among the first to appear.
