Modern medical marketing offers your practice a wealth of exciting opportunities to grow and connect with patients. Search engines, social media, and mobile devices have changed every aspect of how we interact as a society, including how patients find and evaluate their healthcare providers. Is your practice ready? At Crystal Clear Digital Marketing, we provide practices with the tools they need to leverage the promise of medical marketing in the digital age.
What is the Importance of Modern Medical Marketing?
Did you know that 72% of Americans have used the internet to search for medical information? It is one of the most popular topics on search engines like Google. Did you know that many people search for providers online, rather than or in addition to asking friends and family for recommendations? Are you aware that today, 74% of mobile phones are smartphones?
Digital marketing can help your practice and your patients in several ways. First, it makes your practice accessible to prospects who are looking for medical services on the internet. These individuals will land on another practice’s site if you do not have one that is readily available.
Second, it allows prospects to get to know you via your social media. Third, it provides a means of communication with existing patients that is a two-way street, facilitating engagement and boosting patient retention. Fourth, it generates data that can be used to evaluate your marketing techniques and the performance of your practice.
What are the Components of Modern Medical Marketing?
So, what does digital marketing look like? Is it enough to maintain an attractive website and occasionally make a post on Facebook? In fact, overlooking the suite of digital marketing tools available to today’s practices is equivalent to dismissing a great opportunity to maximize your exposure, improve your patients’ experiences, and control your operating costs.
Here are some of the most important components of modern medical marketing:
- An interactive, well-maintained website
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Content marketing
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Mobile marketing
- Pay-per-click advertising
- Analytics and reporting
Optimizing Your Practice with Digital Marketing
Make Sure Your Website is Attractive to Prospects and Search Engines
It is no longer enough just to create an attractive website that sits statically on the internet. Search engines prioritize sites that are continuously updated with high-quality content that links to other sites. When prospects and existing patients visit such a site (ideally one that is rich with photos, videos, and opportunities to engage), they will understand that your practice is up-to-date and well-run. It is especially important that your site be designed to work on mobile phones because most people conduct the majority of their internet searches on mobile devices.
Leverage the Power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
It is important that prospects see your practice on the first page of results from Google and other search engines. Fortunately, by understanding how search engine optimization works, you can create a website, content, and a social media presence that are both informative for patients and attractive to search engines.
Boost Traffic and Demonstrate Your Value Through Content Marketing
Modern medical marketing involves creating substantial posts (usually articles) that offer information people in your targeted audience want. By offering consumers insightful, informative articles pertaining to your area of expertise, you can build credibility, increase your exposure, and drive traffic to your website.
Creating attractive content requires you to identify what interests your prospects and patients. This could be a review of a newly developed procedure, expert advice on what to do if you suspect you have a specific condition, an explanation of one of the treatments you offer, etc. You can post this content to your website, your social media, your blog, or another party’s digital media. You could even include it in an automated newsletter.
When people stop to read the content, they will deepen their relationship with your practice and invest time in your materials. Doing so helps you build an impression, retain their attention, and showcase your expertise.
Make Your Practice Stand Out On Social Media
Social media includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms. By creating eye-catching profiles and like-worthy posts, you can allow prospects to familiarize themselves with your practice before they even come in. When your social media is rich with intelligently written, valuable content, it will reflect well on your practice.
Allowing patients and other experts to post user-generated content can enhance your SEO and foster a community around your practice. All of this activity will show that your practice is active and ready to meet the needs of its patients.
Communicate with Prospects and Patients via Email Marketing
Studies have shown that email continues to be the preferred means of communication in a professional context. It is also less expensive than print marketing. With modern digital marketing, you can automate all of your communication with patients and prospects, saving your staff time and allowing you to share updates and new offers quickly.
With email marketing, you can retain the attention of existing patients and promote new services to your existing client base. Your patients will appreciate the fact that you choose to communicate in a way that is convenient to them.
Make Sure Your Practice Looks Good On a Smartphone
Today, it doesn’t matter if your practice has a website that looks great on a desktop computer if it is not also accessible to a mobile phone. While it is easier to build a website on a desktop, it is important to keep in mind that most of your traffic will actually be generated from smartphones.
Some practices maintain two websites: one for desktops and one for phones. But this is not necessary! You can create one website that is optimized for both. Beyond your website, all of your digital marketing should be created with mobile phones in mind. This includes making sure people who open your emails on their phones will be able to access all of the content therein.
Increase Your Revenue with Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click advertising involves creating sponsored listings on search engines like Google. The advantage is that you only pay according to how many people click on your listing. This ensures that your cost is in direct proportion to how valuable the service is to you.
Determining how much of your budget you want to spend on pay-per-click advertising can be a little bit tricky. You don’t want to spend money to have a huge visible presence if that presence is not translating into paying customers. Fortunately, with some expert advice and by using built-in analytics, you can determine how much of the impression share in your local market you can capture and how you can make that impression powerful enough to get new patients through your doors.
Take Advantage of Analytics and Reporting Functionality
Digital marketing creates data pertaining to many aspects of the relationship you have with patients. While creating meaningful reports used to involve manually entering information into spreadsheets, sophisticated programs can now pull data from your digital marketing and give you valuable insights from customized report templates.
By taking advantage of this opportunity to analyze your marketing and your operations, you can:
- Understand how visible your practice is within your local market
- See how prospects respond to your marketing materials
- Assess engagement levels pertaining to your social media
- Find out what kinds of content are most valuable to prospects and patients
- Identify services that can be valuable to clients
- Discover how patients receive your services
After reviewing your analytics and reporting, you can adjust your marketing and services to be more appealing to your prospects and clients. This will save you time and money by allowing you to make changes that you know will be effective based on real information. In this way, you can use your digital marketing to improve the experience of your patients.
Modern Medical Marketing Benefits You and Your Patients
Today’s consumer has clearly demonstrated a preference for online communication, especially via smartphone. When you create content that is accessible online, you demonstrate your value and foster patient relationships in a way that is convenient for the people who can benefit from your services. Digital tools give you the opportunity to reach people who are looking for care but who might not find you via traditional means. Best of all, the wealth of data generated by digital activity has the power to take the guesswork out of your marketing.
If you think maintaining an impressive digital presence sounds like a full-time job, don’t worry. You can outsource the tasks related to your digital marketing to experts who stay current on SEO techniques, social media developments, and other ways to optimize your online presence. Doing so has a high return on investment for your practice and allows you to focus on what you do best: providing exceptional care.
Whether you are interested in medical spa software, SEO for doctors, or any of the other innovative solutions that we provide, feel free to reach out to Crystal Clear Digital Marketing for more information on effective digital marketing for your practice. We are excited to be a part of your practice’s success story! Contact us today to get started.
