In today’s digital world, it is essential for every practitioner to work on their online reputation and presence. But there are numerous self-proclaimed digital marketing experts who end up giving wrong advice on healthcare marketing. This results in a waste of investment or may even work against your practice. Instead of being swayed by incomplete or incorrect advice, you need to know the truth behind each marketing strategy for successful marketing of your practice.
No compromise with content quality
Your website is a knowledge hub for visitors. They come to your website to learn more about your practice and its reviews. Just a glimpse of basic information, as suggested by many, is a turn-off for patients. Instead, you need to attract your target audience with informative content for patient education. Consider your consumer’s profile when creating content. Personalized content (basis age, profession, gender, etc.) can appeal to the right people instead of vague content appeal to no one. Well-written content describing your specialty will grow consumers’ trust in your practice and help you rank high in the search engines.
Secured online patient forms
Online forms are very important for practice growth, but you cannot compromise with the security of forms as they fall under HIPAA regulations. Noncompliance with these can cause legal trouble for your practice. Security of patient data is your responsibility. An insecure form can mark you as an unsecured site by Google, and that will badly hit your website traffic. So you need to have support from a marketing agency that is well-versed with medical marketing and its criticalities.
Never ignore online reviews
A patient searching for your practice finds your website along with various review sites. This shows your online presence and builds an online reputation for your practice. But online reputation is not about just being present on review sites and receiving reviews. Instead, you need to focus on your reviewers. Ignoring reviews can hit badly on your ratings, thereby reducing visits to your website. So in order to combat negative reviews, it is important to gather more positive ones and thank all your patients for their time.
Presence on social media platforms
Undoubtedly you have a busy schedule, but you need to be present on social media sites. You might be advised to be present on all social media platforms, but that’s not a solution as you won’t be able to devote attention to all your profiles. It is better to research and analyze the social media channels used by your potential patients and build profiles on those.
Personalized emails
Email is one of the best ways to increase your leads, but that doesn’t mean you should email just anything to any of your patients. You need to create a personalized email to make your reader feel involved and cared for. In sending personalized emails, you first need to segregate the list based on the receivers’ age, gender, location, etc. Also, be conscious of the email frequency as to many emails can put you in the spam box.
Medical SEO
Yes, SEO is imperative for your practice’s online presence, but that does not mean you will do keyword stuffing. Instead of making your site rank high in the Google search, too many keywords can get you penalized. Keywords should be inserted in the page URL and in content; the number should be as instructed by Google.
What to ask of patients
You should ask your happy patients to post positive reviews for your practice online, but don’t hesitate to ask them to share or retweet an article or post of yours if they liked it. This will give you online popularity and provide some direction.
Bottom line, stay away from ill-informed and incomplete advice. A marketing company that does not understand medical business will only offer poor healthcare marketing strategies. The marketing team needs to understand the specific needs of healthcare marketing. Feel free to contact myPracticeReputation.com to build a strong online reputation or any other medical marketing assistance.