Healthcare professionals can leverage online medical marketing to reach your target customers in their preferred channel. Over 80% of Americans are online daily, searching for various products and services – including searching for doctors.
Once a patient finds you, they are looking to engage with you and to seek specific information online about your services. This is why it is so important to improve your medical practice website and digital presence to build a new pipeline of patients who are doing their research now for the medical services you offer!
So how does building your online medical marketing strategy work? In this article, we’ll explore how to successfully accomplish the following:
- Get noticed 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
Get Noticed with Medical SEO Marketing as Part of Your Online Medical Marketing Strategy
Make sure your medical practice website is easily visible to those patients who are searching for the services you offer! Search engine optimization (SEO) ensures that your website will come up on the first page in relevant searches. That means those who are looking for your services can find you. Because most online interactions start with search engines today, it’s important that your medical practice website stand out from the many other medical websites competing for new patients. SEO as part of your online medical marketing 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 5 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. Get on page one of the results and grow your practice.
Search engines match search queries with the best authority on the topic. Shouldn’t that authority be you? Yes – and by using SEO strategies like new content generation and link-building, you can climb to the top of search results and be recognized as the authority within your specialty.
See Results Quickly with Pay-Per-Click
Having a strong SEO strategy will help your medical practice website climb the ranks, but it will take some time. What doesn’t take time if you want to quickly become the doctor’s website that shows up at the very top of search results is to adopt paid search marketing for doctors, or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Pay-per-click 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 display within your target area and only to those individuals who are looking for the specific healthcare services you offer. And, your ads will start being shown immediately once Google approves them. You can target your desired demographic and deliver quantifiable results – fast!
PPC is a very cost-effective advertising tool, and you are only 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.
Impress New Patients with Online Reputation Management for Doctors
Over 70% of patients read online reviews to vet a new doctor. 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 see how doctors measure up. So your success in attracting new patients depends on how positive your reputation is online. And, since a steady flow of new patients determines the continued viability of a medical practice, you can see why managing your online reputation is so important! It is imperative that you make sure your digital impression is a good one.
So how exactly does online reputation management work for doctors? It starts with 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.
But it doesn’t stop there. In order to engage with customers, you must respond – especially to negative reviews – to assure them that you are listening and hear what they have to say. This also makes a real impression on potential customers 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.
Engage New and Existing Patients with Social Media Online Medical Marketing
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! Healthcare social media ads and active posts are ideal to get you noticed. Plus, they help foster relationships with potential and current patients alike.
Social media can be used as an information resource, a credibility tool, 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 to hone in on certain demographics and interests to find your target customer.
With an increase of more than 300 million social media users over the past year alone, you can reach your target audience quickly and easily!
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. This provides a clear and measurable ROI, 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, but there are also many other platforms available to help pull the data together so you can quickly and easily see how your marketing is performing online.
Benefit from a Healthcare Digital Marketing Agency
Today, having a medical digital marketing strategy is critical to attracting and maintaining a steady flow of new patients. It may seem easy to implement theoretically, but there are so many pieces necessary to implement it effectively to get the optimum results. That’s where a healthcare digital marketing agency can help you!
Here at iHealthSpot Interactive, our experts are highly trained in each specific digital service we offer. 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!
We specialize in medical website design and healthcare digital marketing services, and we have helped more than 4,000 medical professionals grow their practice. Contact us for a free quote today at (877) 709-0999!
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