Today everybody has access to the internet and they can get any information about anything they want. Many searches on Google are about medical issues and treatments available. Therefore healthcare websites need to be prominently visible on the internet, which makes SEO for doctors crucial for medical practices looking to generate more patients.
Here are certain effective ways to attract more patients to your medical practice.
- Assess the current performance of your practice. You should have reliable data regarding the channels driving quality traffic and leads to your website. Calculating cost per lead will help understand the usage of your marketing dollars. You can compare the cost per dollar across various channels to find out where your marketing efforts are most effective. It is more difficult to measure the leads that call your office. It is important to find out how many leads are being lost via improper handling of calls such as unanswered calls, excessive hold time or less than exceptional customer service and so on.
- Identify your inefficiencies and see what you can do to improve.
- Low traffic or low call volume: This shows that your marketing strategy needs attention and may have to be revamped.
- High traffic but patients may not call: Maybe patients are not able to find what they want on your site. Consider whether your content is interesting and whether your website provides a good user experience.
- Patients contact you but low or no scheduled consultation: This indicates that patients are leaving maybe because they did not get the information they needed, or did not have a very good experience etc. Maybe another practice created a better impression on them. It is in this area that effective training and other processes may be needed.
- Scheduled consultations but no booked procedures: The patient’s experience in your office may not have been optimal. This usually happens if they don’t get answers to all their questions, or when they are feeling uncomfortable and hesitate to take the next step.
- You never hear or see the patient: They may have performed their procedures in another practice. To ascertain this, you must have a good follow-up plan.
- Practices fall short when the staffs are managing many different things simultaneously and this can lead to poor experiences. Assign duties and responsibilities to different people and thus create a good impression about your practice and offer a good experience to your patients.
- Train or outsource: You can train your staffs to ensure that the patient has a pleasant experience and keep them informed about their priorities. Schedule meetings to keep them updated about the changes. Another alternative is to outsource to trusted agencies that specialize in serving elective medical practices. You can save time on administrative tasks by utilizing payroll and billing services. When you have professional telephone staff to take care of call handling, you will never miss leads. Meanwhile your office staff can focus on patients in your office.
Social Media Channels for Healthcare Marketing
Social media has become an essential element of digital marketing but it is often overlooked when it comes to healthcare marketing. Social media is an ideal platform for healthcare digital marketing. It helps in targeting prospective healthcare customers and hence it is important for healthcare providers to focus on online marketing and have a strong media presence. As social media continues to evolve, healthcare professionals can seek the assistance of medical SEO services to use powerful tactics to maximize online engagement with healthcare consumers.
- Facebook live: Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms with around 1.59 billion users. It comprises various demographics and is an excellent medium to connect with prospective patients. It also has a feature called Facebook live that helps to create professional videos to get connected with thousands of people around the world.
- Network on LinkedIn: This platform mainly focuses on connecting with business professionals and helps you to target them by industry. But this platform can be one of the most powerful marketing tactics to generate actual booked consults. It helps you to engage in group conversations, provide examples of patient care and also share information among other medical professionals
- Instagram: This is a popular social media platform for sharing photos at events or healthcare shows. Using hashtags and posting photos will also increase the number of followers.
- Leverage influencer marketing: Rather than promoting your product directly on social media, hire or offer discount services to key influencers like popular bloggers, community influencers etc to promote your brand on social media. An influencer should keep the following things in mind:
- Do research to find out who would be a good fit
- A good number of followers is good but also focus on other metrics for better online engagement
- An influencer may not be a celebrity. You can start with small influencers.
The right digital marketing strategy is vital for medical professionals to generate more patients to their medical practice. A Long Island SEO company can offer relevant strategies and techniques and increase the visibility, traffic and exposure of your medical website.
