With digital marketing more prevalent than ever, it’s vital to your medical practice that you are setup to grow in 2021. Take a look at our top 7 tools & tips to help ensure growth as we continue on into 2021 below!
1. Google My Business Profile
Google My Business (formerly known as Google Places) is a link between Google Maps and Google search. You can think of GMB as a digital address book. With it, businesses can list all of their business information, such as their phone, website, email, hours, and more. This makes it a vital tool for getting found, especially for certain industries, which we’ll get into next.
While everyone can benefit from Google My Business and should have their business profile claimed, those who benefit most from this the most are local businesses / businesses nearby. This is why it’s vital that your practice is listed. When a user searches for terms such as “podiatrist near me” or “dentists in *city* “, this makes you much more likely to appear if you have your profile both claimed and information updated. Patients can even schedule appointments or reach out to you for questions straight from GMB.
2. Generate Leads and Establish Trust With a Powerful Website
When looking to establish trust and wow potential clients, it’s important that your website stands out in order to garner as much attention from the visitor as possible before they decide whether to leave your site or not. You have seconds before they make this decision, so it’s crucial your site is designed in a way that makes it easy for users to get what they want and fast.
While there are many things that make a website great, a few vital things include mobile-friendly pages, a secure site, user-oriented site design, and great content. Anyone looking for practices of your type (podiatrist, physical therapy, chiropractors, etc.) in the area should be able to quickly and easily find what they want, right? If your site looks and performs like it was made before the last T-Rex went extinct, you might want to consider a new site.
3. Maintaining Proper Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization, otherwise commonly referred to as “SEO”, is another under-looked and undervalued aspect of driving traffic to your website. The list of factors that influence how high you rank in search engines is not only long and exhaustive, but it is also constantly updated. Some of the most basic things to pay extra special attention to are keywords, header text, alt tags, content, and user-friendliness. There are also several tools out there that allow you to spy on your competitors, such as SpyFu.
Copying success is a strategy that many turn to when trying to create a successful SEO campaign. For instance, if you search for “dentists near me” or “podiatrists in *your city*” and take a look at the top 3-5 results, you can start noting down what keywords they’re using in their H1 tags, the length and quality of their content, and so on. Proper SEO campaigns can seem costly, but when you consider the return on investment over time, it pays off greatly when done right.
Consider the lifetime value of a client. You may be paying $800 or even $1,500 a month or more for SEO services. However, every time you get a new client, you must consider that the lifetime value of a dental patient over a 20-year period can range from $20,000 to $40,000+! When you consider that ranking well for various keywords can land you multiple new customers a month, that’s not a bad return, right?
4. Show Potential Clients You’re Active With Social Media
Love it or hate it, social media has only continued to grow, seemingly exponentially, since its initial introduction. Posting consistently on social media is an important way to quickly update current, previous, and future clients as to the status of your practice. Even posting simple things that can trigger emotional responses, such as “Happy 3 year work anniversary to *name*” can help clients feel more connected with your practice. If blogging is one thing you use to help increase traffic to your website, it can be a great way to notify your followers of new posts as well.
Not only does consistent posting act as a form of advertising when people are seeing your business and following you, it also shows them that you’re still active and can act as a reminder to schedule their next check-up/appointment. Growing a following with proper social media management is also important, as often times people will see “Your friend X liked this post”, or things along that line, that can in turn make your practice show up in the timelines of friends of people following you (wow, that’s a lot!).
5. Using Analytics To Your Benefit
Do you know how many people interact with your website or social media page month over month? Do you know what pages a customer typically visits on your website, and what pages they spend the most and/or least amount of time on? If you answered “none of these,” you’re not taking advantage of tools you likely already have. Analytics may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of how to grow your practice, but it’s important to use them.
When someone thinks of analytics, their first thoughts might be of large corporations, accounting, software, etc. However, many of the tools you already likely have (such as a website, social media, etc.) can provide insights that you can factor into improving the experience of users viewing your business. Even if you don’t use the insights provided to make improvements, they are important to track and can be a great indicator of how you’re performing month-over-month.
6. Advertising: It Doesn’t Have to Cost a Fortune
Often times, when people are asked about how much advertising costs, they predict that it can cost tens of thousands of dollars or more. This simply isn’t the case for small businesses, such as your practice. Many people run Facebook ads for as little as $5 a day. Over time, the algorithm will start to pick up who is interacting with your ads most and will start to optimize and improve the results for each ad.
If you’re new to running any sort of advertising, consider making an ad with a special offer such as a free visitation or discounted teeth cleaning. Offers tend to get a much lower CPC, or cost per click, than generic ads. Some of the ads you run can run in the format of video, slideshows, images, and more. Inside of Facebook, there’s the option to optimize for web traffic, sign ups, and more! Of course, Facebook isn’t the only option out there. Other options include Yelp, Bing, Google, and more. Google PPC can be a great tool as well, as you’re able to target specific search inquiries, though the cost of running these ads is significantly higher.
7. Outsourcing your marketing
While a digital marketing specialist can easily make $50-$70K+ on salary, an agency is able to perform these tasks for you at a fraction of the cost. A social media manager alone can cost you another salary on your accounting records. Getting on a monthly plan with an agency for $1,000–$2,000 a month saves you thousands of dollars (that in-turn could actually be put towards a larger advertising budget, thus reaching more people) when compared to the cost of hiring a full-time employee. Talk to us today about your digital marketing needs!
