Managing a medical practice is different from promoting your agency or brand. Medical practices are synonymous with professionalism and tact, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a way to utilize marketing strategies for business growth.
It’s all about understanding the style and tone of the practice, targeting the audience, and reaching your current and prospective patients. Following are marketing tips and tools for medical practices to consider:
Make sure your website is responsive and up to date. Before considering other strategies for boosting online visibility, you should focus on the main target: your website, the visual selling point of your medical practice. It won’t matter whether you’re the best practitioner in the country if your website is outdated and not user-friendly. Online users are visually stimulated, and they want their information at the touch of a button.
Invest in good web design that’s responsive on all devices: desk top, smart phone, tablet, etc. In the current e-commerce age, you should also incorporate an online appointment booking feature allowing patients to schedule their appointments online with no hassle.
Remember to remind them. Email and text message mobile marketing are brilliant tools to have in place. You already have your patient’s information, so continue communication via messages reminding them of appointments, or email newsletters sharing the latest information and events.
Show up in search results. According to the Pew Research Center, searches for online health information are the third most popular online activity, and 72% of Internet users looked online for health information in the past year. Therefore, search engine optimization (SEO) is important and, when it comes to medical practices, targeting local search terms is key. Keywords such as your city, suburb, and area should be included in both your web copy and through link-building.
You should also implement search engine marketing to increase your online visibility. This can be done via paid marketing options such as paid-per-click (PPC) advertising. Most importantly, don’t forget to list your medical practice on Google+ which allows Google to verify your business and show your location on a map in search results.
Put yourself out there. “Become the expert. Make yourself available to local and national news centers and online and print publications to comment on current health issues.” – PhysiciansPractice.com
Consider video marketing. Put yourself in the ‘mindset’ of your patients and their experience with your practice. Do they look agitated or bored in the waiting room? Do they ask a lot of questions or mention that they research their ailments on YouTube? Cure the boredom and control the narrative with video marketing. By investing in video production you can create promotional or informative video content that can play in the waiting room and uploaded to YouTube for reference.
It’s another way to show your patients that you care and will add credibility and professionalism to your brand as well. Video marketing content can also be used on your website and social media channels.
Isning Gamez is a television producer and web designer and can be reached at (760) 610.4106. For more information, visit www.isning.com.
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