Digital marketing, especially medical digital marketing, is both a science and an art. If you’re not familiar with this term, don’t worry; you are not alone. We use the term science loosely but appropriately because medical digital marketing organizes marketing into testable outcomes and predictions. As an art, it requires human skill and imagination in a visual form. As it relates to you, we can help you bridge the gap between the what, why, and how of medical digital marketing so that you can build a successful strategy and, as a result, business.
What is Medical Digital Marketing?
Medical digital marketing is essentially digital marketing but for a medical office, med spa, or anyone in the healthcare industry. This type of marketing uses digital tools to promote your product or service directly to your targeted and potential patients.
The truth of the matter is the term medical digital marketing may intimidate as much as it confuses. Let’s break this down into more familiar terms by exploring the difference between traditional and digital marketing.
Traditional vs. Digital Marketing
As you know, traditional marketing methods and tools rely mostly on print media to promote a business. Examples of traditional marketing include newspapers, radio, television, magazines, direct mail, and billboards. These forms of marketing have lost their appeal due to high costs and limited customer reach. These are just some of the reasons digital marketing has become so attractive. It allows you to promote your product or service directly to your target audience and measure results quickly.
Medical Digital Marketing vs. Digital Marketing
The real difference between medical digital marketing and digital marketing is that medical digital marketing identifies and incorporates the needs of medical offices into the strategy. In building a campaign, any professional providing this service is familiar with patient privacy issues, maintaining your “professional dignity,” and laws related to ethical codes of conduct in the medical field. The aim of medical digital marketing is to create a system that automatically educates, informs, and markets to your future patients, opportunities, and existing patients.
Why is Medical Digital Marketing Important?
We cannot overstate the importance of medical digital marketing. It is the bread and butter that drives how your medical office leverages and communicates your marketing message to your patient base and potential patients. Digital marketing has changed the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing, and that includes the medical and healthcare industry.
What are the Digital Marketing Channels?
As a physician, surgeon, dermatologist, or other medical professional, you should know the various digital marketing tools available within your medical digital marketing repertoire. These tools help you stay connected to your patient. They can be used to foster a relationship outside of the exam room that builds trust and confidence and allows you to engage your patient base.
Email Marketing
It’s fairly easy to understand email marketing because it is very similar to traditional marketing methods. Marketing your products or services by email can be a fast, flexible, and cost-effective way of reaching new customers and retaining existing customers (or in your case, patients) through targeted and personalized messages. Some of the most common forms of email marketing include: newsletters, standalone emails, lead nurturing, transactional, milestone emails, plain-text, and mobile-optimized emails.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Understanding SEO can be a source of confusion for many. Let’s clear things up. Search engine optimization is the process of using “organic” or “natural” means of driving online customers to your business. That means they found you. When customers find you in this manner, it directly affects the online visibility of your website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results. Successful SEO relies on technical and creative elements working together to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
If you’re on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, why not use them to promote your business? These social media platforms are commonly and strategically used in digital marketing. Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing that uses social media websites as a marketing tool to promote a product or service. One of the goals of SMM is to produce content that users will share with their social network to help a company increase brand exposure and broaden customer reach.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a form of marketing that involves the creation and distribution of videos, blogs, and social media posts to stimulate interest in the products or services being offered.
Online Public Relations
We all recognize that your reputation can make or break your business. When it comes to the internet, your online reputation is just as important. So, businesses can use online public relations to get others to make desirable comments about an organization and lessen its undesirable comments to a large degree. It is also a tactic to increase their online presence through building relationships.
How to Use Digital Marketing for Your Medical Practice
Just ask yourself, “How effective is your current marketing strategy?” In many cases, physicians and other medical professionals cannot answer that question because either they do not have a strategy, or they do not have a means to consistently and accurately quantify their marketing results. Digital marketing can instantly impact your bottom line. It can help attract and convert new patients to your practice. These tools improve patient experience, thereby increasing retention and referrals. It can streamline front office operations and increase overall productivity.
How to Leverage Digital Marketing
As a medical professional, you may not have imagined that marketing would play such an essential role in the success of your practice. Perhaps you thought after getting your medical license and finding a great location to establish your practice that all you needed was to open your doors and patients would come. That may have been accurate decades ago, but things have changed, and it’s important to keep up with the times. Not only is marketing essential, but digital marketing is essential. Your skill is in patient care. Identifying and hiring someone whose skill is in medical digital marketing will help you maximize your business strategy and potential while allowing you to focus on what you do best.
Find, Serve, and Keep More Patients!
Today, more than half of media consumption is online. As these consumer media consumption trends continue shifting, you will have to decide which form of media you will use to communicate your message. Medical digital marketing is not a maybe; it’s a must. Remember, planning, promotion, and placement are three keys to marketing. Digital marketing adds the fourth, which is price, as it is the most cost-effective means to reach your customers.
For more information about medical digital marketing, please feel free to reach out to the experts at Crystal Clear Digital Marketing. We would be more than happy to help you with your medical digital marketing efforts. Contact us today to speak with a team member and get started!
