Top 5 Social Media Healthcare Digital Marketing Strategies [Infographic]

Top 5 Social Media Healthcare Digital Marketing Strategies [Infographic]

In today’s digital age, healthcare entities need to maintain a proactive presence on social media to build patient engagement, loyalty, and satisfaction. Companies providing medical SEO services help hospitals, medical practices and other medical entities implement effective social media healthcare digital marketing strategies to improve traffic, visibility and ranking, and above all, to build social media engagement with their audience.

There really is no greater venue than social media platforms for healthcare practices to make their presence felt. If you’re a physician practice, hospital or medical equipment business, you need to get in touch with a company that provides digital marketing for healthcare businesses.
For our social media marketing services, just call (800) 941-5527!

Check out the infographic below

Healthcare Digital Marketing

Creating a Physician Review Strategy for Your Medical Practice – Tips

Creating a Physician Review Strategy for Your Medical Practice – Tips

The healthcare domain has become highly competitive with more healthcare providers and innovative medical technologies making their appearance. Physicians, hospitals and health systems overall have recognized the growing significance of medical SEO. Building strong online visibility is important for the success of any medical practice as it helps attract potential patients and healthcare consumers. Nowadays, before choosing a healthcare practice or consulting a physician, it is quite common for individuals to go online to know more about the physician or his/her services. The relevance of reviews becomes evident here. Reviews are important for any medical business. Whether online reviews, opinions or feedback, reviews are one of the most trusted and frequently used sources for patients. Online reviews are made by existing patients and these can help future patients to make an informed decision. Reviews can either be positive or negative. While positive reviews are encouraging and will help attract more patients, negative reviews are a sign that there is more room for improvement of services. Importantly, one cannot simply ignore negative reviews. It is important to acknowledge them and respond in the best way possible.

Importance of Online Reviews

Gathering patient reviews can be valuable for strengthening the online reputation of a medical practice. However, obtaining positive reviews is a real challenge. This is because patients are motivated by their own goals, so it is not their responsibility to provide your medical practice with feedback. In fact, many patients are reluctant to fill out surveys or respond to requests to provide reviews due to the inconveniences these activities can cause. Some others may be skeptical of the questions that may be asked and may not feel comfortable with providing honest feedback. This is where creativity and expert tips may come in to play.

Online reviews are a trust signal. More healthcare consumers than ever consider patient reviews as influential when looking for a provider. According to recent research reports, about 69.9 percent of consumers see positive patient reviews as “very” or “extremely” important. 72 percent use reviews as the first step to finding a new physician. It is estimated that 60.8 percent consumers avoid physicians based on negative reviews.

Why Are Many Healthcare Practices Skeptical About Online Reviews?

Generally, many healthcare practices struggle with reviews. One of the most common problems is that many healthcare practices are uncomfortable asking for reviews. Providers fear that it will strain the patient relationship. The second problem is that if at all these practices ask for reviews, they don’t get many. This means that they are not asking in the right way, at the right time and with the right tools.

Local Listings – The Foundation of Reviews

One of the initial steps before expanding your patient review collection is to ensure that your local location listings contain the correct information. Start with Google My Business – one of the top review platforms. The information generated via this platform can easily be syndicated to other directories beyond Google. This can be done using listing management tools which can be found online with a simple Google search. However, make sure to read the fine print to understand the key features and limitations of the listing tool selected. One common challenge with listing management is that healthcare practices often have listings for both the practice as well as the physician. As Google allows listings for both the physician and the practice for one single location, this can cause issues because review management platforms / directories may view them as conflicting locations as they share the same address.

So, it is highly recommended that business listings on review management platforms should be focused on the practice, not the physician. There are separate platforms just for physician reviews that can help you create and share those physician listings to the appropriate platforms. However, it is important to have a proper strategy to grow both the healthcare practice and physician reviews.

Why is Review Marketing Important for Physicians – Top Strategies

A patient review strategy helps improve the brand reputation, attract the interest of patients, increase revenue and create more buzz about the medical practice now and in the long run. In most cases, patient feedback can come in the form of reviews, private emails, star ratings and video testimonials. Patient feedback can be used to encourage prospects to visit your healthcare practice and avail your services. Patient reviews can also impact search engine optimization (SEO). A well-written review with the right keywords can make your healthcare practice appear in Google searches and increase your online footprint.

It is important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all approach for increasing patient reviews. No matter, you get reviews from multiples sources or from a handful of sites like Google, Facebook, Yelp and Healthgrades, it is important to devise a clear-cut strategy to get more patient reviews –

    • Set up profiles on top review sites – One of the initial steps is to select third-party review sites that are relevant within the healthcare industry, attract users and show up results when your medical practice is searched online. For most healthcare practices, a combination of Yelp, Facebook, and Healthgrades is more than enough. Once the review sites are shortlisted, set up accounts.
    • Ensure compliance – Some review sites, for instance, Yelp – disfavor healthcare providers asking patients for reviews. On the other hand, sites like Google are just the opposite, allowing marketers and providers to proactively ask for online reviews. When you try to reach out to patients to give reviews about your healthcare practice, make sure that your efforts are in compliance with each individual review site’s guidelines.
    • Ask patients – Asking patients is one of the best ways to increase reviews for your healthcare practice. Patients know the relative importance of reviews to your healthcare practice and as long as you provide excellent service, they may be glad to do a review. When patients compliment your service via phone, email or personally, make sure to tell them to leave their feedback via a review on your website, or Yelp, or the review website of their choice.
    • Selectively identify patients for reviews – One of the simplest strategies to increase reviews is to ask the patients in person about their experiences. If you know someone who had a positive experience, encourage them to share it for the benefit of other patients, as well as the growth of your practice. It is often best to ask them in person, with a follow-up email to remind them a day or two after their visit.
    • Automate Email requests for reviews – Automating email requests is one of the top ways for medical practices to collect reviews and it is the best strategy that is likely to have the most impact on generating a large number of reviews. To attract the best possible response, send a review request email within a week of the appointment to take advantage of the positive feelings. Timing can make a significant difference between positive and negative reviews, so it is important to establish rules. For instance, if you are a plastic surgeon performing a tummy tuck, never try to send out that request a few days after the surgery, but rather after a follow-up appointment. Ideally, this should be a completely hands-off process automated through your email system. One of the best ways to automate review collection via email is to use a customer relations management system to create a definite workflow that will send an email request to specific patients individually once they fulfill the conditions outlined.
    • Make it convenient for patients to leave a review – Make it easy and convenient for patients to leave reviews as this will help attract more patient reviews.
    • Consider taking reviews in your healthcare practice – Collecting reviews in your office before or after patient appointments is another important strategy. This can help attract reviews from the patients when your practice is top of mind.
    • Respond to existing reviews – When a patient leaves a review, he/she normally expects a response to their feedback. However, it is estimated that two-thirds of patients never get a response. Responding to patient reviews shows that you care for their opinion – which is extremely important for any healthcare organization. Patients, at most times want to know whether their reviews are valuable and can contribute or effect the way a provider perceives patient care and experience. While responding to reviews, organizations need to be aware of the existing HIPAA guidelines to protect patient data. One way to avoid this issue is to create pre-drafted responses. For instance, the marketing team at “Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, Miami FL, United States”, notifies the reviewer that the hospital is aware of their comments. They also encourage patients to take the conversation offline and provide more detailed feedback. With such carefully-worded responses, any healthcare organization can influence each review to improve the experience of patients and show them that their current and future feedback is important.

      nicklaus
      Source-https://www.google.com/search q=nicklaus+children%E2%80%99s+hospital&rlz=1C1GIWA_enIN868IN868&oq=&aqs=chrome.0.69i59l8.13575972j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#lrd=0x88d9b83e1752a3d1:0xb330b6a398f9af10,1,,,

 

    • Respond to negative reviews – Before responding to negative reviews, make sure to check your records to see whether the review posted is genuinely by one of your patients or customers. If not, it could well be a fake review. Whatever be the negativity conveyed in the review, make sure your responses are all positive. Address the complaint specifically. Your responses must address the following points –
      • Thank the reviewer for their genuine opinion
      • Point out your specific concern
      • Apologize for the trouble caused and be honest about any mistakes made by your practice
      • Acknowledge the reviewer’s concern as genuine, and if you feel it can’t be true, follow the next step
      • Explain the possible reasons for the person to have felt wronged
      • Provide a contact number to the concerned individual for the complaint to be fully redressed

      review
      Source-https://www.google.com/search?q=nicklaus+children%E2%80%99s+hospital&rlz=1C1GIWA_enIN868IN868&oq=&aqs=chrome.0.69i59l8.1176652j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#lrd=0x88d9b83e1752a3d1:0xb330b6a398f9af10,1

 

  • Publish reviews on your website – Publishing reviews on your healthcare website has several advantages. These include –
    • Patients can read reviews, ask questions, and mark reviews as helpful or unhelpful.
    • Other patients can see that people are happy with the services.
    • Original, user-generated content is great for ranking and SEO.

    If the reviews are generally positive, make sure to share them via social media channels and display them on your website.

  • Incentivize (if appropriate) – Consider incentivizing the patient review requests. However, it is important to do this carefully. No matter what specialty you are serving, you never want to let others know that you are paying patients to write positive reviews about your practice. For instance, healthcare practices can give offers to patients like anyone who writes a review in a specific month will be eligible for a free consultation.

Patient reviews are a powerful tool that every healthcare practice must utilize correctly to increase patient volume and strengthen online reputation. Obtaining positive reviews from patients and reducing the impact of negative reviews are the major considerations when it comes to healthcare digital marketing. Healthcare providers must ensure that reviews regarding their services are regularly monitored and identify any concerns patients may have and address them appropriately. By incorporating valuable reviews in the content strategy and using them as a channel to connect with patients, healthcare practices can establish an engaging brand. However, growing reviews doesn’t usually happen overnight and in most cases, patients may not take the time to write reviews. By carefully considering the above-mentioned strategies, healthcare practices can increase both the quantity and quality of the reviews they receive, and establish a brand that is engaging and trustworthy.

Why Dental Practices Should Continue with SEO during Covid 19

Why Dental Practices Should Continue with SEO during Covid 19

When COVID 19 hit America, several industries where forced to shut down to prevent the spread of the virus. This shutdown affected dental practices also. Almost all of the dental practices across the country became severely limited in how they could serve their patients and were instructed to postpone nonemergency and non-essential services. Dental practices that were open saw very few patients. Some practices began to question their SEO efforts and wanted to put it on hold as a means to minimize expenses. But it is important for dental practices to realize that putting a curb on SEO efforts can affect their current search engine ranking and it may be difficult to recover their position when they reopen. Here are the reasons why dental practices need to stick to their medical SEO strategies during the pandemic:

  • Be ready for a focused sprint: In this present difficult situation, maintaining your current business and having an eye on future opportunities is important to survive. Having a strong SEO strategy is essential to stay competitive. When you reopen your dental practice you may not see much ROI from your SEO that you used to get prior COVID 19. However, modifying your SEO strategy will help you to recover from your losses. Halting your SEO strategies will give your competitors the opportunity to get ahead of you.
  • Find a spot for first page: It’s a known fact that the first page of Google captures the majority of traffic. According to reports, 91.5% of web traffic goes to the first page (Search Engine Journal), 75.1% of traffic engagement goes to the top three spots (Backlinko), 75% of people never scroll past the first page (Forbes). So strive to get the top position in search engine page results to gain more traffic.
  • People are searching the web at a higher rate: The COVID 19 virus is keeping everyone at home and their main source of information is the Internet. Getting informative content out there is crucial to catch people’s attention. Investing time and money to produce informative content is vital to improve awareness about your practice and rank higher. Even though people look for content related to the virus, you can still create content about your practice and services and the steps your practice is taking to combat the pandemic. Incorporate strategies such as tele- health, online consultation etc. You can also convert your old blogs into e-books and turn articles into online courses on graphics.
  • Face the competition: Your competitors may or may not halt their SEO campaigns. If they have suspended their SEO efforts, then this is the right opportunity for you to improve your rankings. On the other hand, if you have stopped your SEO and they have not, your practice would be at a disadvantage when things get back to normal. So, make sure to make the most of the current situation.
  • SEO is a continuous process: Unlike pay per click, SEO is not a temporary strategy. It is an ongoing course of action which requires constant improvements to respond to external and internal factors. SEO strategies should be updated according to changes in Google algorithms. SEO is a continuous process and the results will be visible only after some time. A well-executed SEO campaign will improve your ranking, and help you secure a top position in the search engine results page, and attract targeted traffic. If you pause your SEO efforts, it will take considerable time to get back on track. This will give your competitors the chance to get ahead when everything is back to normal.

Marketing Your Dental Practice After The Crisis

Accepting the new normal will likely broaden your dental practice’s marketing tactics. Here are some tips to market your practice when things are back to normal.

  • Turn away from the trends: With the pandemic spreading across states, Facebook spiked slightly, peaking at 150% of the pre-COVID baseline at the end of March. Google spiked nearly 500% the same weekend. This shows that people were gathering more information from Google rather than any other social media platform. For time being, Google has disabled new reviews and question answers. This allowed Facebook to post more reviews and patient feedback. Make use of this opportunity to encourage your patients to leave reviews on Facebook to grab the attention of new patients.
  • Analyze your ad spend: if you had suspended your search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising efforts for 90 days, your new-patient acquisition will be lower than pre- pandemic levels. Make sure to capitalize in third quarter and invest in digital marketing techniques to promote your dental practice and attract new patients.
  • Stick to social media: Social media is strong channel that helps you to reach out to potential patients. Pay more attention to social media marketing to connect with your existing patients. Post valuable information consistently to keep your patients informed and post videos to educate them. Facilitate collaboration to create brand awareness.

Medical SEO helps dental practices reach more patients online. A well-optimized website, valuable content that answers your audience’s queries, and the right SEO strategies can drive more traffic to your website.

How Google AdWords Help Boost SEO Rankings – 7 Important Tips

How Google AdWords Help Boost SEO Rankings – 7 Important Tips

Now marketing has transitioned from traditional to digital, and most businesses rely on digital marketing services to stay competitive. Reports suggest that every second, about 2.3 million searches are conducted on Google. The race to reach the first page of Google search results is fierce. Trying to reach the first page, even with excellent SEO may easily take months or even a year. This is where paid ads (PPC) become an important consideration. Google Ads (formerly called Google AdWords) is Google’s advertising service that allows businesses to display their ads on Google’s search result pages. The ads usually appear at the top or bottom of a Google SERP (search engine result page). This is an effective, one-stop solution that helps reach out to the target audience immediately and drive relevant traffic to your website.

Google Ads and Its Impact on Your SEO Strategy

Google AdWords allows you to create, display and promote your products and services online. The AdWords platform runs on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising – which means you have to pay every time a visitor clicks your ad. As Google processes hundreds of millions of searches per day, it makes sense to create simple, effective ads and display them. AdWords offers precise targeting and measurability as well as tremendous reach to achieve high ROI. If managed properly, AdWords can help increase online traffic, in-store traffic, build brand recognition and generate sales while reducing marketing costs.

When you invest in SEO, one of the worst-case scenarios will be to rank #1 for a keyword that generates little to no sales. Businesses may invest considerable time (often months to even years), money, and resources to rank number one for a relevant keyword only to find that the traffic does not convert to sales. The role of keyword research for SEO becomes relevant at this point. It is important to optimize your website for the right keywords. Even with the best keyword research, there is still some level of risk that your selected list of keywords may not convert well. Perform a Google AdWords search campaign and within days or weeks you can determine which keywords are worth targeting for your SEO.

Here are some of the top benefits of using Google AdWords –

  • Increase brand awareness
  • Achieve faster results than SEO
  • Outrank your competitors’ Ads
  • Increase Ad visibility to high-quality audiences
  • Influence audiences to make purchase decisions

If you are using Google AdWords to build your business, here are 7 tips to consider –

  • Choose keywords carefully – Take time and effort to devise a specific list of keywords that potential customers may use. One of the most common AdWords mistakes is focusing all your attention on the positive keywords that bring you traffic. Apart from positive or high traffic keywords, also search for negative keywords (keywords you don’t want people finding you for) as well. For instance, if you are into the business of selling “gold watches”, you must also use the negative keyword “silver watches”. A comprehensive list of negative keywords can increase the quality of your traffic and improve your CTR (click-through-rate) significantly.
  • Support organic traffic with PPC – It could be risky to depend on free search engine traffic alone. Generally, it could take about 6-12 months to make an SEO campaign run successfully. However, an AdWords campaign, if set up and executed correctly can generate results immediately. You can also have control over the consistency of the traffic you get. Combining SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) is a great way to secure a robust presence on the web.
  • Make a list of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – Google ads key performance indicators are metrics that help you determine the success rate of the ads. KPIs may differ from one business to another and depend on what you want to gain from Google Ads. For instance, if you want to drive more traffic – focus on KPIs like clicks and click-through rates. For content downloading – it is better to focus on KPIs like conversion rate, and cost per conversion. Knowing what you want to derive from Google ads will let you know the important KPIs that you need to focus on. Create a list that shows which KPIs are important.
  • Include a Call-To-Action – Ad copy plays a prominent role in the success of your AdWords campaign. Ad Copy is far less complicated and tends to work best if kept plain and simple. A good call-to-action in your ad copy would enhance your campaign’s effectiveness. Give your prospective clients an extra push to get them over the line like – Buy Now, Call Now, etc.
  • Review search terms report – In AdWords, keywords are the phrases you are targeting, while search terms are the phrases that people are actually typing into Google. The search terms report in AdWords will show you the exact phrases that are triggering your ads so that you can target them with SEO. Understanding these trends will give you better insight into how searchers – and Google – respond to your PPC campaigns.
  • Test and test again – Google AdWords allows you to test new Ad text and landing pages, and let Google tell you which one works best for you. You can even test positions. Just because your website appears number 1 doesn’t necessarily mean you will get all the clicks. In some cases, number 2 and 3 may generate just as many clicks, but at a lower cost.
  • Never forget to track – The amount of data that can be retrieved about your campaign via AdWords reporting, Analytics and other tools is huge. You can precisely track the effectiveness of each search phrase – right from the most frequently searched to the highest converting and the most profitable one. This knowledge can help you begin your SEO campaign and get your website ranked highly in the organic results for the most profitable search terms.

The prominent role of Google AdWords in enhancing brand awareness and revenue cannot be overlooked. A well-designed and structured online strategy can offer good results. Selecting the right set of keywords is important. Healthcare businesses planning to improve their brand reputation can utilize a reliable medical SEO service to get their Google Ads ready and thereby enhance their digital marketing efforts.