Healthcare Marketing That Works: 10 Strategies To Grow Your Practice
In today's world, patients have such a wide variety of options when it comes to obtaining healthcare. This is why it is more important now than ever to invest in marketing for your practice.
Even if you are not actively trying to grow your practice, the key to your success moving forward is an online presence that works.
There are so many strategies when it comes to marketing your practice that it can seem overwhelming. Following our top 10 recommendations below will produce the best ROI possible.
10 Marketing Strategies Proven To Grow Your Healthcare Practice
1. Invest in a High-Quality Website
Having a website is essentially like having an online "brick and mortar" location of your medical practice. It is a great place to not only gain new patients but nurture the ones you already have relationships with.
But simply having a website is not enough.
Your medical practice website must be user-friendly, fast to load, aesthetically pleasing, have high-quality content and so much more.
Many practices today are using their websites not only to benefit themselves, but also as patient portals where they can meet the doctors, read and give reviews, gain knowledge, access telehealth, check test results, ask questions, view records, and make appointments.
For these reasons and others discussed throughout this article, it is important to have a reputable digital marketing agency that has the right people for the job...who will go above and beyond in doing what you need.
2. Utilize Google My Business
Don't be fooled, Google My Business or GMB is not a replacement for a website, but it is another great way to have an online "location". GMB not only displays hours, locations, services, and contact information but also gives businesses the options to post updates, specials, and even post photos.
Not only will your practice begin to show up when potential patients search for your practice, but also when they search for practices like yours near them. With Google accounting for 95% of mobile searches in the US, it is vital to any practice to have GMB in order to show up in search results and on maps.
3. Consistent Branding
It is extremely important for your practice to invest in branding. What makes your practice different and more appealing to new patients than any other healthcare provider in your specialty?
Creating this branding can be as simple as picking colors for your logo, or as extravagant as putting your logo on promotional gifts to give to patients. Your practice not only needs to establish a brand but keep it consistent as time goes on.
With so many avenues to see a healthcare provider and many options and factors such as insurance that affect what practice a patient might choose, setting yours apart is dire to survive in 2022.
There is truly no guarantee in keeping patient volumes high forever, so you must do everything in your power to really make your practice outshine the competition.
4. Use Social Media, But Don't Rely on it
In today's day and age there really is no way we can tell a healthcare provider not to invest in social media for their practice. The benefits of using social media to promote your practice, educate the masses, and gain new clients are huge.
To utilize social media properly requires a lot of work. Unfortunately, that work can sometimes get passed off to an employee of the practice who has a lot of other responsibilities on their plate already.
This can be a recipe for disaster.
Where we see many practices go wrong time and time again is either they put in little effort and expect huge results, or they go all-in on social media and forget about the other strategies.
Let's just say, neither of those will work.
We suggest picking 2-3 platforms where your target audience spends their time. Social media is definitely beneficial.
Plus, digital marketing isn't just about the here and now, it is about setting your business up for future exponential growth, where you won't even have to lift a finger.
5. Don't Forget About The Power in Reviews
Did you know that 79% of consumers say they trust the reviews they read online as much as personal recommendations?
People are using online reviews more than their own friends and family's personal recommendations and that could either help make or break your practice going forward.
Now, hopefully, you don't have negative reviews for your practice, but a great way to guarantee that is by using a reviews system.
With a reviews system, patients are asked to first, rate their experience and if a low rating is given, they aren't pushed towards leaving a review. Rather, they are asked to leave a few comments about their experience and told someone from your practice will be reaching out shortly.
This is huge for healthcare providers like you as we move more and more into this digital era. A good review system helps keep your online presence in pristine condition.
6. Nurture Your Current Patients
While many people are mainly relying on online reviews these days, nurturing your current patients should not be completely taken out of your digital marketing strategy.
Word of mouth referrals are still alive, and calling after an appointment to check in on the patient, sending birthday cards, giving out promotional products, or even running specials are just a few ideas to keep your current patients feeling cared for and special.
7. Make The Spend On Web Hosting and Management
Earlier we discussed the importance of having a website for your practice, but we failed to mention the importance of spending the extra money on hosting and management.
Google evaluates various factors they use to rank your website in search results. Many ranking factors are too complex for most to fix themselves. These include things like changing site speed, managing updates, creating firewalls, and more.
Using a reliable hosting and web management company is vital to your success on Google and keeping your patient's information secure and safe. We all know there are many hackers out there. If your hosting is not strong enough, hackers will break into your website causing downtime and havoc.
It is important in healthcare for many reasons legal and ethically to protect your patient's privacy so top-level hosting must be a priority.
8. Perform Quarterly Audits
Digital marketing is not a "plug-and-chug, one works for all" type of thing. What works for your competition might not work for you, and that is okay.
By taking the time to create a digital marketing strategy and having a team perform quarterly audits for your practice, you're already winning.
When you work with bigger digital marketing agencies like ourselves, typically audits are included because they have the team, tools, and systems to track analytics and really see what is working and what isn't.
No business owner, whether in healthcare or not, likes to waste time and money. Performing quarterly audits and making updates is key to the future success of your practice.
9. Start Blogging
Blogging is something thought of as a digital marketing tactic of the past, but it's definitely not. In fact, our blogging and social posting tool helped generate one million website visitors to one of our team's urology clients in 2020.
For many people around the world, Googling their healthcare questions is a way to essentially diagnose themselves. Now, while you and I both know those people who get sucked into rabbit holes and search about one simple thing and suddenly think they have every disease they find online?
Well in a way, this is for them. Blogging not only helps educate the masses but also gives immense SEO benefits and helps to push new potential clients to your website.
10. Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (or SEO) is the process of optimizing all aspects of your online presence including many of the strategies we've already spoken about. This means doing extensive research and finding keywords, blogging, posting to social, optimizing URLs, page titles, updating online directories, focusing on local SEO, checking user experience, optimizing images, using GMB, looking at reviews and the list goes on.
Mastering SEO isn't going to happen overnight even with all the articles, overall SEO suggestions, and guides one might find online. This is why we suggest every healthcare practice needs to utilize an SEO service. After setting up a website, SEO is the next most important thing in our professional opinion.
Need More Than 10 Healthcare Marketing Strategies?
The time for healthcare providers to worry about their online presence is now. There is no time to wait.
With the digital era pressing on us with every step we take in our day-to-day lives, if your practice doesn't take the time to update and upgrade its marketing strategies to include proven digital strategies, you will get left behind.
Think about it.
When someone is looking for a specialty near them people aren't always relying on the recommendations or referrals given to them by friends or other doctors. They use Google to ensure they are seeing the best of the best, near them.
Don't waste time and be THAT doctor that doesn't get seen and struggles.
Use these proven marketing tips to keep your practice healthy, and be sure to focus your efforts on digital to grow your practice.
Click Here to schedule a time to talk to our team about what is right for your practice in 2022!
Guest Post by Reece Smith
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete