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Posted by Janna Vienca Cañezal
With today's modern, tech-savvy patients, no one can ignore the importance of digital medical marketing. A patient's healthcare journey starts online and involves extensive research before taking action. Sixty percent of patients depend on online reviews when choosing a provider, and 37% won't see a poorly rated doctor. Digital marketing delivers a cost-effective strategy to reach new patients across several platforms while still engaging your current ones. Techniques like optimizing your healthcare practice website, managing your online reputation, and hiring medical SEO services create a huge difference in ensuring your practice’s growth. Marketing done right can help you reach patients at the right time in their decision process.
Medical Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
The biggest mistake you can make regarding marketing is not doing it. Without digital marketing, you miss opportunities to demonstrate your expertise and grow your practice. You hurt your practice's future by ignoring trends and making yourself invisible to potential patients. Many businesses suffer from bad marketing from time to time, but that doesn't mean you always have to. Check out these five common medical marketing mistakes to ensure you are doing it effectively.
1. Waiting for Online Reviews Rather Than Asking For Them
Patients shop for medical services like they shop for products on Amazon; they read reviews and only screen those with top ratings. They want to see if others have had a good experience with you before booking an appointment. However, patients only leave reviews if they are motivated to do so or have suffered a terrible experience. Unless you ask for reviews at the point of care, you will miss an opportunity to get positive feedback from satisfied patients. Rather than waiting for a patient to leave a review, provide a device or a safe space where they can enter reviews right before check out.
2. Relying on Organic Social Media Only
Several healthcare organizations are now embracing social media as a marketing strategy. However, you shouldn’t stop there. How do you ensure patients see your content with millions of other businesses on social media promoting theirs? Rather than relying on organic traffic alone, boost your post through paid social media advertising.
Paid social media advertising means paying platforms to boost your posts to a specific and targeted set of audiences. It's a cost-effective way of expanding your reach to more audiences beyond your followers while still engaging your existing ones.
3. Creating Content Without Purpose
Don't just blog or create social media content for the sole purpose of creating. Build a content marketing strategy that educates your audience, establishes you as a thought leader, ranks you on Google's page one, and converts prospects into patients. Always end with a call-to-action in every piece of content, whether that's informing your audience to call your practice, set an appointment, or check out your services.
Sixty-six percent of internet users use search engines to look up information about a medical problem or disease. To move your website to the top of search engine results, you need to invest in medical SEO services. Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to strategies to get your website to rank high on search engines and receive more traffic. These strategies include setting up a Google My Business page and strategically creating content that answers patient queries.
4. Ignoring Website Optimization
Not optimizing your medical practice website for user experience is a capital sin in the digital marketing world. Visualize the path patients take upon landing on your website. Does it take them long to go to their selected page? Patients today are less willing to work with a slow website and will quickly leave for another. Can they easily reach your practice after browsing your website? Make your contact details and practice address highly visible. Do your website's images reflect a modern practice that keeps up with advances in healthcare? Ugly, outdated layouts turn patients off. Keep these questions in mind the next time you visit your practice's website.
Read More: 3 Useful Tips to Make Your Practice Website Attract More Patients
5. Avoiding Online Appointment Booking Options
Optimizing your website for the user experience and SEO doesn't guarantee that patients will take action. Integrating an online appointment booking system into your website helps you easily convert website visitors into new patients. If your practice only accepts appointments through calls, patients who work or have other commitments during office hours will get frustrated and put off making an appointment altogether. Long call hold times and waiting for a practice to open are patients' top scheduling pain points. Patients prefer convenience and accessibility, and an online appointment booking system provides precisely that.
Read More: Benefits of Direct Scheduling: How Online Appointment Booking Gets You More Patients
The Power of Medical Marketing
Implementing digital medical marketing strategies opens up endless opportunities for your practice's growth. Even if you're satisfied with your current patient volume, you are not guaranteed to keep it forever. Patients relocate, change insurance coverage, or can become dissatisfied with just one negative experience. It's better to implement a medical marketing strategy now than wait until you have more inactive patients than active ones.
Meditab offers marketing and web development services through DrCatalyst. We implement proven marketing strategies and create a custom, mobile-friendly website that ensures your practice’s growth. Having worked in the healthcare industry for years, we know how to reach your target audience and market your practice effectively. Partner with DrCatalyst today and watch your practice grow.
