Marketing For Doctors: 5 Reasons Why You’re Missing the Target

By Mike Patch On Oct 02, 2019 . 0 Comments

No matter what type of business you have, digital marketing and media have become an essential part of a companies growth in today’s modern world. This includes medical practices. While there have been misconceptions that marketing for doctors takes little effort as it’s an essential service in a community, the truth is, more and more people are researching medical advice before deciding on where to go.

In fact, 80% of people, or about 93 million Americans, have searched for health-related topics online according to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. It’s believed that 8 of 10 online health inquiries start at a search engine.

If the customer, or in this case the patient is becoming more informed about their injury or illness, they are more likely to also be selective in their search for the right doctor or medical practice. The following are 5 medical marketing and media strategies that can help increase traffic to a website and help improve the number of people walking through the door.

1. Search Engine Optimized (SEO)

SEO medical marketing goes way beyond the obvious local listings or generic keywords. With a large majority of the population hoping to avoid a trip to the doctor, an injury or illness will often become a search query as a starting point. Thousands of people search for random medical advice every day hoping to find information about their condition. Knowledge is power and despite a medical practice’s obvious wish that a person would just call to make an appointment without fail, people are now looking to alternative solutions. Some doctors may see this as a negative, but with the right SEO and digital marketing team, a patient seeking medical information becomes a potential lead if your website is the one they are reading.

For years businesses of all kinds would slap together a website with stock images, basic company information (that rarely gets updated), add a phone number and address and hope for the best. Yet in today’s digital world, we now know that a website is not just an online business card, it’s a marketing tool that can gain new customers.

When it comes to SEO, marketing for doctors starts with a well-optimized, mobile-friendly website with pages that are fast loading and have a large amount of information about services offered. It’s also very important to have an active blog that targets specific niche content for potential patients sneaking medical advice.

The easiest way to think about the benefits of SEO medical marketing is to start at the end and work your way back to the injury or illness. You need to understand that SEO is really reverse engineering a sale.

For example

1. Create content targeting the keyword like “golfer’s elbow exercises”
2. Rank the article in Google
3. A person hurts elbow playing golf
4. That person searches for tips for pain finds and reads the article from your site
5. The article offers tips but encourages the reader to see a specialist
6. The article features links to contact page and links to services pages and directions.
7. A new patient walks through the door

While the process of ranking the golfer’s elbow article in Google is a lot more complicated than making it apart of a list of steps, the benefits of having that article ranked organically for a high traffic search term has massive upside. Not only will this article need little upkeep once it’s on the first page of google for that search term, but all the clicks from that article are free.

Using SEO as a method of marketing for doctors has a lot of value. However, the process does take longer to implement. A digital marketing strategy is a great combination of organic traffic and PPC.

2. PPC (Pay-Per-Click)

PPC, or more specifically Google AdWords, is Google’s advertising system that allows advertisers to bid on certain keywords in order for their clickable ads to appear in Google’s search results on the top of the page. Since advertisers have to pay for these clicks, this is how Google makes money from search.

The obvious benefit of Google AdWords is that it works faster than SEO. You can create an account tomorrow and have ads to your business at the top of targeted searches related to your business right away. Both SEO and Google AdWords are search engine marketing strategies to generate more traffic and leads, but the cost per click can be very expensive in the medical marketing niche.

The best strategy is to avoid big expensive keywords and target a long list of cheaper keywords. Most digital marketing agencies maximize the return on investment with a PPC strategy to stretch a budget to gain the most clicks as possible.

3. Social Media

Medical marketing and social media aren’t exactly a perfect fit. It can be difficult to advertise or promote your business on Facebook without a well throughout out strategy. Most people scrolling a social media platform like Facebook don’t respond to generic ads about medical clinics. However, using the content from your blog strategically can have a positive impact on the clickthrough rate.

For example, a helpful article that talks about flu shots for kids going back to school would do well among mothers of a certain age group. The same could be said about an article about back pain for men working in the labor industry. Social media works when you go the extra mile. Simply blasting an advertisement will be a waste of time. To really maximize your ROI, you need to offer value to your potential customers. Try not to make everything about finding your next client. You need to build trust, offer value and show that you are an authority amongst the community.

4. OutReach (Email, Newsletter)

Staying connected to your customers is very important. People do business with those they know, like, and trust. With each email sent, consumers are exposed to your business and your brand. With smart planning, design, and targeted content, your business will consistently build value. There are many helpful services like MailChimp that can help you put together a creative and attractive email. By creating and sending out a bi-weekly or monthly email newsletter gives you the ability to build credibility with your audience by sharing helpful and informative content.

Most email services also offer built-in analytics for measuring the success of any campaign. The more clicks to one particular blog article or subject offer valuable insight on what type of content your customers enjoy reading. This helps complete the digital marketing cycle. A strong blog with excellent content not only helps your SEO and gives you something to share on Social Media, but works perfectly with your outreach as well.

5. Referrals

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