Medical practices need to adjust to the new digital marketing dynamics in order to remain competitive. The days of relying solely on recommendations and word-of-mouth to draw in new clients are long gone. Most people use the internet these days to research medical professionals, read reviews, and make well-informed decisions regarding their care. This change highlights how important it is to have a strong online presence, which search engine optimization (SEO) can help you achieve. Working with an experienced search engine optimization company can greatly improve your practice’s visibility on Google and other popular search engines. Optimizing your website and content will help your practice will show up prominently in search results when prospective patients search for medical services online.
Preparing Your Website for SEO
- 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: 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.
- Delegate tasks: 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 your staff 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.
Tips to Attract More Patients to Your Practice
- Make the Most of Digital Marketing: These days, having a robust website is essential for any type of business. You can attract more patients to your clinic, differentiate yourself from the competition, and increase overall revenue with a good online presence.According to a Pew Research Center study, at least 72% of American adults who are single consult the internet for health-related information. This serves as more evidence of the importance of a strong online presence. That’s why you should focus on leveraging digital marketing strategies to draw in new customers.
Digital marketing involves using various techniques, such as:
- Content marketing: Develop informational content to educate your target audience on the ailment or symptoms they are experiencing.
- Search engine marketing: Run Google Search advertisements for keywords associated with your practice.
- Optimizing for search engines: Make sure your website is optimized to appear on the first page of search results for the term “medical clinic.”
- Social media marketing. Maintain a constant presence on social media, launching advertising initiatives, etc.
- Email marketing: Approach past patients with exclusive deals in an effort to keep them as clients of your clinic. Effective email marketing can also be used, particularly if you have direct email contacts for potential customers. You could extract emails from Google Maps if you’re looking for specific contact information or are targeting local businesses. This kind of extraction is made possible by tools that can greatly increase your outreach.
- Pay Attention to Website Design: It’s difficult to achieve a strong online presence without a professionally designed medical website. When properly maintained, a website can help you attract new patients to your practice by giving anybody who searches for you access to details about your qualifications and services, contact information, and expert advice on health-related topics. However, be sure that your website complies with current guidelines. Poor functionality, slow load times, and obsolete or clumsy designs can turn away patients and make them choose another clinic. Make sure that your website is modern, user-friendly, compatible with all devices, and has good content.
- Implement SEO: It is imperative that your website adheres to Google’s recommended practices for optimization to make it easier for patients to find your clinic when they search for local medical facilities. Implementing the right SEO strategies will make your website more compliant with search engine standards so that it appears higher in search results for a particular phrase on Google or other search engines.
- Mention the target keyword. There should be one mention of the target term in Heading 1, Heading 2, and multiple times in the body of the page material.
- Make sure that your website is responsive. Google rewards mobile-friendly websites.
- Develop a specific page for every target keyword. Aim to establish a specific page for every service you provide that targets the corresponding keyword.
- Create and optimize your Google My Business page. You can rank on Google Maps and increase the likelihood that locals will find your clinic by creating a GMB profile.
Here are some things to focus on:
- Make use of Social Media Platforms: Social media may be used by healthcare medical practices to improve patient numbers and strengthen their online presence. This is because businesses have long recognized the benefits of social media.The three finest social media sites to interact with potential customers are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.Here are a few strategies for using social media to advertise your medical clinic:
- Post relevant content: Posts, articles, and other types of content that educate your target audience about their health issues should be published.
- Promote your posts: To reach more people, you can advertise on the majority of social media networks or promote your content.
- Build up social proof: To increase your social proof, you might ask your current clients to post reviews on social media sites.
- Plan your giveaways: Social networking is a great tool to inform your consumer base about sweepstakes, promotions, and special deals.
- Provide Online Bookings: Nowadays, the majority of individuals prefer to conduct all of their tasks—including working, dating, and shopping—from their phones. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to you that they have similar tastes when it comes to scheduling their medical appointments. Set up an online patient portal. This will open up several capabilities, such as the ability for your patients to schedule or reschedule appointments via the internet, check their prescriptions, diagnoses, treatment plans, and more.The popularity of online booking has grown to the point that 64% of Gen Xers and 58% of millennials would switch to a healthcare provider that provides it. Other advantages of online booking include lower cancellation and no-show rates since people can schedule appointments at their convenience.
- Continually Engage Your Patients Through SMS and Email: While providing a first-rate patient experience is important, you also need to make sure that your patients are aware of your brand even when they aren’t receiving medical attention from you directly.Using a medical CRM and periodically following up with your previous (or present) patients is the easiest method to accomplish this.
- To reduce the number of no-shows, automatically send out email or SMS reminders for appointments.
- Use a newsletter to inform your patients about news from the clinic.
- Provide advice on general health or specific conditions to your patients in a newsletter to help them stay well.
- Direct patients with special offers toward particular demographics such as a free consultation, a 50% discount examination, and so on.
Here are a few methods you can try:
Reach out to us today and take the first step towards growing your medical practice.
Attracting more patients and developing your medical practice in today’s digital age requires a strategic approach that integrates SEO, social media, online reviews, and more. The right digital marketing strategy is vital for medical professionals to generate more patients to their medical practice. A search engine optimization company can offer relevant strategies and techniques to enhance the visibility, traffic and exposure of your medical website.
