Six Digital Marketing Objectives Your Medical Practice Can Do Today To Start Getting More Patients
By Amber Turner On Nov 23, 2021 . 0 Comments
You know you need to do marketing for your medical practice. How can you spend your time most efficiently? Where do you start?
There’s a wide variety of healthcare marketing strategies to choose from, but there are some that are more impactful than others. Keeping this in mind, we have compiled six easy marketing objectives you can do today to start getting more patients through your doors.
You’ll make a huge impact on your practice by running through this quick marketing list.
The Most Important Thing to Know about Marketing for Your Medical Practice – Search Google For Your Services
The first step is knowing where you stand. Have you ever searched for your medical services or specialty on Google from a location near your facility?
As you might know, this is the most critical moment in marketing for your practice.
Let’s say your medical practice is an urgent care clinic; have you ever Googled “urgent care clinic near me” to see where your practice is ranked amongst your competitors?
“Most patients do not look further than the first page of search results. You need to be there, every time and as much as possible, especially for searches for your services or specialty.”
– Klara Morgan, Marketing Director @ Koda Digital
If you aren’t on top of search results, you are leaving money on the table. AND yes you can get ahead of results like Yelp and Healthgrades.
How can you get started rising in the search results?
First (and maybe needless to say) if you have a marketing agency, shoot them a quick email and find out what’s going on! They should have a plan and a goal.
If you don’t have a marketing team, there are things you can do to rise in these searches. It’s called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Embarking on this mission is one that is worthwhile if you have a lot of downtime. Set aside a few hours each week that you can dedicate to this. Your time spent here is an investment, and one that will help your practice immensely.
If you don’t have time or a marketing team, you need to find someone who can help you. Take 10 minutes today and reach out to a few medical marketing agencies and start gathering quotes and getting an idea of how who would be the best fit.
If you choose a great digital marketing agency, these ten minutes you spend gathering quotes today will likely lead to more patients than any other ten minutes you will ever spend.
More on this at the bottom of this article.
Show Patients That You Care About What They Have To Say – Respond To Online Comments & Reviews
Not only does responding to reviews build trust with your customers, but it builds trust with the search engine itself. It could be as simple as thanking a patient for a positive review, give helpful information regarding your practice, or you could engage in a conversation. You can win a customer today!
“You shouldn’t ignore negative reviews, either. Matter of fact, PRIORITIZE them!” – Austin Heerwagen, Founder of Koda Digital
Respond in a professional, well-thought-out way, and provide a way for the patient to resolve the issue with you offline.
If other potential patients see that you have taken the time to address those concerns, it will help to quell any doubts about your practice.
Show a Friendly and Familiar Smile – Take Pictures of Your Practice and Staff for Facebook and Google My Busines
s
People don’t connect with a name on a website; they connect with a face. People want transparency and a personal photo opens the door.
A personal photo creates trust in you and your medical practice and increases your ability to connect with your current and potential patients.
You do not even need to hire a professional photographer for this. Follow the quick and easy DIY tips below to boost the quality of your photos:
Make sure the pictures you take are well-lit.
Generally, avoid the use of flash.
The main source of lighting should not be behind you.
Tidy up your workspace or backdrop.
Smile! 😊
Add them to your Google My Business (you can quickly review the business info while you’re in there too, doubling checking your hours of operation, etc.) and also give the pictures to the person running your social media so you can share the content with your Facebook fans and LinkedIn connections.
View Your Site on A Mobile Phone – Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly to Help with Search Rankings and Attract Patients
Picture yourself as a potential patient and open your website on your phone. How fast does your website load? How easy is it to find what you’re looking for? Can you easily book or request an appointment?
If you haven’t made your website mobile-friendly, you should. The majority of patients coming to your site are likely to be using a mobile device. If you have a practice like an urgent care, about 80% of the patients on your website will be using it through their phone.
A website not made for mobile requires users to pinch or zoom in order to read the content. Your potential patients will find this a frustrating experience and are likely to abandon the site.
If you really want to know what Google thinks of your website, take this super fast, free, and easy Mobile Friendly Test now.
If your website isn’t up to par, you’re going to have to fix the one you have or get a new one. This is not a quick fix.
Who can do this?
If you have a web developer (the person who built your existing website) or marketing agency, ask them to fix it ASAP. If you don’t, your task today is finding someone to help you.
Because building a website yourself is not recommended.
It’s not because you can’t do it, web development is arguably much easier than med school, and there are new tools online that look pretty slick.
It’s because building a website is not a project you want to undertake twice. It takes time to learn and build, and you should want to get it right the first time.
Plus, if your website isn’t working well on phones, this is an emergency. Ditch the rest of this article and get help as quickly as possible.
Get More Patients Through the Power of Social Media – Run an Ad on Facebook
Facebook is by far the most popular place for social media marketing. Social media ads allow you to reach even more of your audience, often at a low cost. You can then turn these users into followers and potential patients.
“If you’re keeping up a Facebook page but not boosting posts and running ads, you are doing 90% of the work for 10% of the results at best.”
– Klara Morgan, Marketing Director @ Koda Digital
Reasons why you should be advertising on Facebook:
Facebook Ads Are Affordable
Facebook Ads Are An Effective Way to Reach Potential Patients
Your Audience is on Facebook
You Can Target Specific Types of Users
Ads Are Easy to Set Up
You don’t have to be an expert to start advertising on Facebook. Starting an ad on Facebook, like a ‘Likes Campaign’, is really fast (about 5 minutes the first time) and easy to do in just a few steps.
Step 1: Go to your Facebook Page, Click Promote then Promote Your Page.
Step 2: Go through the following sections to customize your ad:
Ad Creative: Provide text and select an image or video for your ad. Facebook will automatically suggest text, images, and other details based on your Page, but you can change these.
Audience: Choose a recommended audience or create a new audience based on specific traits.
Daily Budget: Select a recommended budget or provide a custom budget.
Duration: Select one of the suggested time frames or provide a specific end date.
Step 3: When you’re done, click Promote Now.
It’s that easy! Before moving on, dedicate a little money to run ‘Likes Campaigns’ and boost posts each month. A couple hundred dollars will go further than you may think.
Send an Email Blast To Your Existing Patients
Email marketing is a great way to communicate with your patients and can be very beneficial to your practice. It is surprisingly easy to kick-start your email marketing and start attracting more patients.
Most importantly, research reports confirm, email marketing is among the most effective tools available for brand awareness, retention, and new business acquisition.
Email marketing has also proven to be perfect for sending appointment reminders and follow-up emails to ensure your patients do not miss their checkups.
Through sending email blasts, you can also educate your patients about general healthcare tips, offers, and discounts, and updates about your practice.
Your list of emails if likely the most untapped resource your practice has.
If you have a day to dedicate to learning and experimenting, tools like Mailchimp are somewhat easy for first time users, and after two or three it will start to go more quickly.
If you don’t have time to dedicate, find someone who does.
Consider Koda Digital to Supplement Your Team So You Can Focus on Your Practice
Individually, any of these tactics can help grow your medical practice, but these marketing strategies are ideally employed in tandem in a coordinated, sustained manner by digital marketing professionals.
For that reason, Koda Digital places tremendous emphasis on developing custom marketing strategies for each of our clients. No two practices are the exact same, so they don’t need the exact same solutions and approaches.
At Koda Digital, we strive to make your professional life a whole lot easier. We work hard to be transparent. We will show you what’s working and what’s not, and ensure you’re continuing to see a fantastic return from your investment in digital marketing.
We will be there to help you reach your goals, and we’ll be there to celebrate with you too. We care deeply about our clients and we consider ourselves much more than an agency.
In fact, just think of us as part of your team.
Now Is The Time – Start Getting More Patients Today
These marketing tasks will help you welcome more new patients through your doors in no time. Knock out as many of these important steps as you can today.
Mark your calendar to work on the ones you couldn’t get to.
Individually, any of these tactics can help grow your medical practice, but together they will support and enhance each other, producing much better results than one strategy alone.
We know these suggestions will put you well on your way to developing a solid and scalable marketing strategy for your medical practice.
Come back here and tell us about the before-and-after. I bet you’ll have something to say!
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