With the shift to online, virtual, and video healthcare accelerated by the ongoing public health crisis, the online presence of healthcare professionals is more important now than ever. At Crystal Clear Digital Marketing, we specialize in marketing for doctors and other healthcare providers, and we know the importance of putting forward your best face digitally.
For those doctors who are more accustomed to their brick-and-mortar healthcare operations, let us explain why your online presence matters in 2020. And, for those who are already overwhelmed with responsibilities and cannot possibly take on another obligation, we’ll provide some hints about how Crystal Clear Digital Marketing can help boost your online presence while relieving the burden on you.
The Importance of Online Presence in Marketing for Doctors
The importance of online presence when marketing for doctors cannot be overstated. Consumers in America and around the world are becoming increasingly accustomed to finding just about every manner of product and service online, and healthcare is no exception. Simply put, if a doctor lacks a significant online presence, to a large proportion of potential patients, that doctor might as well not exist.
Doctors with a strong online presence don’t just end up in the search results of future patients looking for highly rated doctors in their area, though that certainly is an important component of an online presence. Rather, patients will come across doctors with a strong online presence when researching all manner of topics related to the doctor’s areas of practice and/or expertise.
Developing Trust With Future Patients
Today’s patients not only search for doctors and doctor’s offices online, but they search for all sorts of health-related information, from investigating any unusual symptoms they may be experiencing to researching the latest treatments and health trends. By making this sort of information available online to future patients, one can begin building a relationship of trust with future patients before they even are in need of a doctor, meaning they are much more likely to return down the line when they are in need of medical services or treatment options.
What Is Meant by Online Presence?
But what exactly do we mean by “online presence” when it comes to marketing for doctors? Marketing is not the passive practice it once was, where a business might produce an advertisement for print, television, or radio and then put that ad into circulation. In today’s world, marketing for doctors involves much more even than posting ads to social media and other online platforms where one is more likely to reach the bulk of today’s audience. Rather, much of marketing for doctors and establishing an online presence involves educating your future patients.
Oftentimes referred to as “content marketing,” this form of marketing for doctors builds an online presence around providing free information to future patients. Not only does this provide a valuable public service while building a doctor’s online reputation for expertise in a particular area, but it also provides an opportunity to educate future clients on unique treatment options or other services you may provide with which they may not yet be familiar or about which they may have questions.
Meet Your Future Patients Where They Are
Content marketing usually comes in the form of blog posts or informational articles posted to a doctor’s website. However, this hardly means that establishing an adequate online presence entails nothing more than setting up a website and posting a couple of articles to it. Instead, you need to reach future patients where they are: on social media and in their emails.
Social Media
Creating a strong social media presence is almost identical to creating a strong online presence. By regularly posting content that people find useful, interesting, and trustworthy, one can build a dedicated online following. Further, social media posts are a great way to blast out small bits of information while linking people back to longer content on one’s own site.
In addition, sending out bulk emails can be a great way to leverage your current contacts while again promoting additional content available on social media pages or a business website. Marketing emails also can be a great way to provide a more personalized touch and more individualized content, for example by targeting future patients known to have expressed interest in certain services.
This All Sounds Great, But Who Has Time?
Of course, when it comes to marketing for doctors or any aspect of running a medical practice, perhaps the most valuable commodity is time. Many doctors wish that they had hours each day to post regularly online about the information that interests them or which they think might benefit their patients. But with the many time pressures facing the modern medical office, who has time to do all that it takes to develop a strong online presence?
Save Time Through Automation
That’s where Crystal Clear Digital Marketing comes in. Crystal Clear knows what future patients are looking for and where to find them, staying on top of the latest trends so you don’t have to. Crystal Clear allows you to automate 85% percent of your outbound marketing, freeing you up to focus on the reason you got into medicine in the first place: treating your patients. Leave the marketing to the experts, just like the rest of us leave the expert practice of medicine up to the doctors!
Let the Specialists Do the Work
Too often in today’s society, we ask our medical professionals to be jacks of all trades: not just experts in their respective areas of practice, but also business managers, marketers, insurance processors, and IT professionals. Meanwhile, most doctors got into medicine, believe it or not, to practice medicine! While Crystal Clear Digital Marketing might not be able to alleviate all your problems, we at least can take one area off your hands by handling your outbound marketing and future patient education in a way that is both worry-free and hassle-free.
Don’t Be Invisible!
The coronavirus pandemic has only accelerated the migration of all kinds of services into the digital realm, and healthcare services and treatments are no exception. When it comes to marketing for doctors, those without a strong online presence might as well be invisible!
Gain the Advantage
Doctors with a strong online presence have a considerable advantage over doctors without one because doctors with a strong online presence already have an existing relationship with dozens, maybe even hundreds or thousands, of potential future patients online. Those future patients already are accustomed to seeking out such doctors as trusted sources of information, so when it comes time for them to choose the doctor that is right for them, these already-trusted doctors start at the top of the list.
The greater a doctor’s online presence, the higher that doctor will rank in relevant search results. When future patients perform an online search for a certain condition or treatment option, for example, a doctor with a strong online presence who has posted trustworthy, relevant information on the topic is more likely to rank highly than a doctor who lacks a similar digital presence.
Get Better Results With Less Work
Of course, building an online presence could be a full-time job in itself. And who has the time? That’s why Crystal Clear Digital Marketing specializes in building doctors and other medical professionals a robust online presence while actually saving them time on marketing. How does Crystal Clear do this? By automating 85% of your future patient education and outbound marketing, that’s how!
Technology Meets Strategy
Crystal Clear has revolutionized online marketing for doctors by harnessing the latest in technology and strategies and combining them with our old-fashioned passion for customer service and seeing our clients succeed! We know that, too often, the online marketing sphere is overcrowded with big talk and empty promises. At Crystal Clear, we want to earn our customers’ trust and respect for the long haul, and we do that by providing real results while relieving the marketing burden on your organization.
We take our customer relationships very seriously and appreciate the trust you place in us by allowing us to handle your practice’s online presence. We know what it takes to build a successful medical practice, and we are committed to giving you the service and responsiveness you deserve.
Conclusion: Online Presence Matters More Than Ever
In 2020, online presence matters more than ever. As the old proverb goes: The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, but the second-best time to plant a tree is today. If you have been delaying building your online presence, wait no further! You only risk falling further behind in the ever-growing digital divide. Crystal Clear Digital Marketing will expand your online presence while actually allowing you to spend less time on marketing.
Hardly anybody looks in the yellow pages anymore to find a doctor or health treatment, and increasingly patients are turning to doctors with whom they already have trust and familiarity thanks to a strong online presence. So what do you have to lose? Increase your online presence while decreasing time spent on marketing with our automated services. Contact Crystal Clear Digital Marketing today to see what we can do for you!
