Over 80% of Americans are online daily, searching for various products and services – including searching for doctors. In fact, it is estimated that Google processes 6.75 billion healthcare-related queries per day. Connecting with today’s patients means meeting them where they make decisions – online. Digital marketing for medical practices is the vehicle to engage with both current and future patients and:
- Get noticed by patients by reaching the top of the rankings with medical SEO marketing
- Get results fast with paid search marketing for doctors
- Make a good first impression with online reputation management for doctors
- Foster patient engagement with social media
- Easily track your return on investment
SEO is an Important Part of a Medical Practice Digital Marketing Plan
Make sure your medical practice website is easily visible to patients who are searching for the services you offer! The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to ensure that your website will come up on the first page in relevant searches. That means those who are looking for your services will find you alongside your competitors – where Google places its top picks for local practices.
Because most online interactions start with search engines today, it is important that your medical practice website stands out from the many other medical websites competing for new patients. SEO as part of your online medical marketing strategy lets you build awareness of your practice and increases your visibility online by improving your ranking on popular search engines such as Google and Bing.
Your online rankings directly correlate to how much website traffic you receive. With the top five organic, unpaid search results accounting for more than 67% of clicks on Google, you can’t afford not to focus on a medical SEO marketing strategy. In short, to win new patients and grow your practice, you must get on page one of the results.
Leverage PPC to Ensure Your Website is Visible on the First Page of Important Search Results
Having a strong content marketing strategy and optimized blog posts will help your medical practice website climb the ranks, but it will take some time. However, if you want to quickly become a doctor’s website that shows up at the very top of search results, consider paid search marketing for doctors, or pay-per-click (PPC), advertising.
Healthcare PPC advertising allows your ad to be prominently displayed in Google’s sponsored search results – on page one. This way, you can instantly get in the top position for a variety of search terms based on a bidding framework and other ranking factors, such as ad and landing page relevancy.
By employing extensive keyword research and aggressive targeting of customers, your ads will be displayed within your target area and only to those individuals who are looking for the specific healthcare services you offer. Your ads will start being shown immediately once Google approves them. You can target your desired demographic and deliver quantifiable results – fast!
PPC for doctors is a very cost-effective advertising tool, and you only are charged when someone clicks on your ad, NOT whenever your ad is displayed. This is a different paradigm than advertising on TV and radio, because the internet is interactive.
Reputation Management is Crucial for Turning Online Searchers into New Patients
It used to be that we asked our neighbors and coworkers for recommendations to find new specialists and healthcare professionals, but now we turn to online resources to make healthcare decisions. In fact, over 70% of patients read online reviews to vet a new doctor.
Your success in attracting new patients depends on how positive your reputation is online. And since a steady flow of new patients is key to the success of a medical practice, you can see why doctor reputation management is so important! It is imperative that you ensure your digital impression is a good one if you wish to attract new patients.
So how exactly does online physician reputation management work for doctors? It starts by monitoring the reviews that reside on the various popular review sites online. There are tools available that will notify you of any new reviews posted about your practice.
Be sure to encourage your patients to leave new reviews to help you boost your ratings. This is important because patients will end up seeing your ratings even when they aren’t looking for it because they are displayed prominently in Google search and some of the most-visited directories.
But it doesn’t stop there. In order to engage with customers, you must respond – especially to negative reviews on your business listings – to assure them that you are listening and care about their experience. This also makes a real impression on potential patients who see that your practice responded in a positive and caring way. Even though you may receive a negative review, responding to it appropriately can turn a negative into a positive for your reputation and spell success for your marketing campaigns.
Your Medical Practice Needs a Social Media Presence
Social media is now the preferred method of communication for many people to stay in touch, so what better way to get your practice noticed than to be where they frequent? Healthcare social media ads and active posts are ideal to get you noticed. Plus, they help foster relationships with potential and current patients alike. Facebook is the current social media powerhouse, and the statistics prove it:
- Facebook has 2.9 billion global monthly active users
- The U.S. has 297.14 million monthly active users
- 93% of marketers use Facebook for advertising
- 93.7% of businesses are on Facebook
- 25- to 34-year-olds make up the largest share of Facebook users
Social media marketing for medical practices can be used as an information resource, a way to establish credibility, and a networking platform to market to potential patients through targeted ads. Leveraging these outlets, like Facebook and Instagram, enables you to engage on a personal level and build trust. You can also target those customers who are looking for your services and use the built-in tools to focus on specific attributes that hone in on certain demographics and interests, zeroing in on your target customer.
Easily Track Your ROI
With a medical digital marketing strategy, everything is measurable. You can easily track and find out which patients came to your doctor’s website from the various online channels, whereas traditional advertising (such as newspapers and billboards) does not provide such detailed and concrete results data. This provides a clear and measurable ROI for your healthcare organization, allowing you to track clicks to your website and conversions of website visitors into new patients as they request your services.
Google, Facebook, and many other sites have their own analytics capabilities to help monitor progress with your target audiences. However, there are also many other platforms available to help pull the data together so you can quickly and easily see how your online marketing is performing. This way you can confirm that you are getting results for your marketing efforts.
When to Partner with a Healthcare Digital Marketing Agency
Today, having a digital marketing strategy is critical to attracting and maintaining a steady flow of new patients. It may seem easy to implement, but there are so many pieces necessary to implement it effectively to get the optimum results. If any of the following scenarios apply to you, it is time to reach out to a healthcare digital marketing agency for help:
- You do not have time for, or expertise in, digital marketing
- Your practice is in a highly competitive market
- You are launching a new practice
- You lack access to tools and software for healthcare digital marketing
- You have determined that outsourcing is more cost-effective than hiring an in-house expert
iHealthSpot Interactive Can Help
Here at iHealthSpot Interactive, our experts are highly trained in digital marketing services for medical practices. We understand the inner workings and the best approach to getting your doctor’s website at the forefront of search results. We are a Google Certified Partner with the experience necessary to get your website in front of those patients who are looking for your medical services!
As a healthcare marketing agency, we specialize in medical website design and healthcare digital marketing solutions, and we have helped more than 4,000 medical professionals grow their practice. Contact us today at (877) 318-0703!
