Gone are days when patients used to rush to the nearby healthcare clinic in need of physical meetings between patients and health providers. As everything is moving to the digital realm, many patients are also switching to google to find the best healthcare practitioner. And in this case, if your website is appearing on the top of their search list, it means patients are interested in your services and are you’re more likely to get an appointment scheduled.
Seeing the ongoing situations, the world is witnessing a rapid surge in online traffic for everything health care. Not only the searches related to the pandemic have been increasing, but people are also becoming more concerned about general health. Thus, the internet is full of searches related to staying healthy, medications at home; if you’re giving them enough value, you can sell them on something.
However, medical companies these days use unethical marketing tactics to persuade consumers and doctors to prescribe their products, as a result, they end up losing their patients. So, when someone asks me…
“Jace, what are the core components of marketing for doctors or a medical company?”
I say, retain your existing customers for attracting new ones?
This may sound quite bizarre, but generally, content related to health care and medicines is highly sensitive and has to be 100% authentic to gain the credibility of the customers. To retain your existing customers, you need to keep presenting content vetted by doctors and add some value to their lives. This is where marketing for doctors and medical companies comes into play.
Amidst today’s constantly changing healthcare system, successful medical practitioners or companies are those that are skilled clinicians and savvy entrepreneurs who understand the importance of marketing for the healthcare sector.
However, Some doctors mistakenly consider marketing as an expense. Whereas marketing for doctors’ offices is the primary business fuel and dollars invested in marketing always comes back to the track in the form of Return-on-Investment.
This article will take you through the strategies and practices that will make your medical business stand head and shoulders above the competition in the next few minutes.
Optimize your Online Presence:
Your online presence will be the primary base for the efforts you’re putting into marketing. Increasing your online presence will make you available for those in need. Suppose patients haven’t heard about your practices through word of mouth; they can go online to learn more about you! This is why it is essential to optimize your website and other online platforms so that patients can find you. To attract new patients, you need to market yourself online, and having a website will serve as the central hub of information about your practice and services. Although just making a website is not enough, making your website mobile-friendly is even more critical. Why? Because most of the users search for medical practitioners on mobile phones. A well-optimized, user-friendly website should take about two seconds to load, but you should ideally aim for under half a second when it comes to opening your website on mobile devices. Believe it or not, Improving user’s experience on your website will significantly increase patient leads and retention.
Use High-Ranking medical keywords:
It is immensely important to use high-ranking target industry keywords in order to market your medical busines well. When patients visit your website, they should find all your services and treatments as per what they need to see. For this, use specific, long-tail keywords in your content in a relevant, readable, and natural way.
However, Making your content keyword-rich doesn’t mean that you should cram your content with an abundance of unnecessary keywords. Avoid stuffing your content with irrelevant keywords; that is why I have mentioned ‘target-industry based’ initially. Google can quickly understand and catch you on this tactic and, in a worst-case scenario, can even penalize your website.
Keep your Social Media game strong:
Social media is a powerful yet vibrant tool that can help you in marketing your medical practices. Imagine someone who needs your medical service comes across your medical company while scrolling through social media. From there, they reach out to your website and book an appointment. You appeared in front of your customer precisely when they needed you the most; thus, using social media platforms and getting it linked to your website, you’re tremendously increasing the traffic visiting your website.
Now, for keeping your social media game strong, build a conversation with your users around your services. Closely pay attention to your profile and cover photos. In addition to this, placing a logo is again a great way to create brand recognition. Apart from this, you can efficiently utilize the analytics tools to track your marketing strategies and modify your medical social media marketing campaigns.
For this, Instagram marketing for doctors can prove to be a win-win situation as Instagram analytics tells you exactly what times of day your followers are most active? And as per the analytics, you can reach out to them.
Similarly, spend some time evaluating the social media profiles that are the best fit for the medical practice’s marketing based on the target audience and then define your target audience for each platform targets.
Invest in Local SEO
Whenever someone asks me about SEO in the health care sector, I always say that medical marketing for doctors is turning local. When it comes to promoting medical services or companies, it is more useful to focus on a specific area. Employing Local SEO will attract more patients and help your practice to grow. Getting ranked on Google for Local keywords is much easier than getting ranked on global keywords. However, your patients will more within a radius of 15-20 miles around each location for your practice; thus- start investing in getting your website ranked for local keywords.
You’ll be amazed to know that the research study on understanding consumer’s local search behavior, created by Google, revealed that four out of five consumers use search engines to find local information. They look on Google for store addresses, business hours, products-services, and directions to local stores.
Now, here are some key points on how you can get ranked on Local SEO keywords:
- Make sure you mention the name of your city along with other keywords on your website.
- Make your business link to the Google Maps listings.
- Make sure that your website includes the full and correct address and phone number.
- Use as many local keywords as you can in your URLs, heading tags, and title tags.
- Make sure you have google reviews of your business over your website.
Make your Website Visually Appealing:
It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and when you use a color theme and relevant photos over your website, users resonate with different feelings and can trigger different responses. Medical business owners should include a variety of images and infographics on the website. Because, if truth to be told, the more interactive and engaging your site is, the more visitors you’ll be able to draw in. One significant way to optimize your website’s visual elements is using video content over your website. Using videos not only increase the users’ time over the website, but it also educates them more precisely about the medical practice you’re into. This way, when users spend more time over your website, it indicates to the search engines that something valuable is available on the page for users, resulting in increasing Google search ranking for your website.
Add more Content to your Website:
As a medical service provider, you can’t be wrong with your content. It is important to provide high-quality content to your customers, whether it’s a detailed description of your services or blog posts serving their information-related queries. You can even create custom content for your patients to inform them about your practices, procedures, services, and previous patient testimonials. Solving all the queries of your patients will help them better understand a topic and improve your chances of showing up in search results.
Keep in Touch with your Existing Patients:
Constantly keeping in touch with your existing patients is a great way to keep them retained. You can use various marketing tactics to keep them updated about your services. Sending emails to your patients can prove to be an amazing way to communicate with your patients and benefit your practice. Email marketing can be used to inform patients about health tips and events, newsletters, or even send out routine information like appointment reminders.
Final Wrap
The face of marketing in the medical sector is changing rapidly. With a growing consumer base, today’s health care sector is a consumer-based entity where medical business owners are shifting their mindsets to embrace a healthcare digital marketing strategy and make your medical company flourish. You need a marketing industry that helps you in doing the same. We have a proven medical marketing strategy and you can visit us at Marektingbyred.com. We are a performance-oriented digital marketing agency that understands the ins and outs of your medical company and provides your tailor-made services and extraordinary results.