If your practice doesn’t spend a lot of time focusing on online marketing, you might think that if you have a website, do some SEO, and jump on social media now and then, you’re all set. Wouldn’t that be nice! The reality is that, like almost everything these days, digital marketing and attracting new patients from the web is more complicated than ever.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the essentials and also lay out some key services that more and more prospective patients are expecting you to offer.
The Essentials
Ya gotta have these to have any hope of real online marketing success.
- Optimized, responsive, cleanly coded website with a modern design: Gee, that’s a heck of a lot of adjectives in front of the word “website”! Thousands of people can build you a website, but to get a leg up, you need your site to be optimized for key search terms, display flawlessly in any device, and pass Google’s coding standards. Oh, and if your site design is older than the phrase “pandemic lockdowns,” the clock is ticking and it’s time to plan a refresh.
- Active and engaged social media presence: It’s not enough to be “on” Facebook or “on” Instagram. You have to work each week to portray your practice authentically online, which includes plenty of unique content. Keep an eye on being entertaining, but there’s still plenty of room (and plenty of audience) for more educational content. The key to success: let your personality and vision shine through.
- Ongoing content marketing: Your bread-and-butter SEO marketing fits here. Things like blogs, guest posts, infographics, link building and more can help tell your story and help prospective patients find you in search engines. Like your social media, your web content needs to be highly personalized and should clearly outline your advantages and differentiators at every opportunity.
- PPC: For better or for worse, Google, Facebook and Instagram ads are an essential component of online marketing. Embrace the suck and make sure your marketing team has a process in place to continually evaluate ad performance and update ad creative as needed to keep reaching your target audience in meaningful ways.
- Local listing management: People need to be able to find correct and complete information when they search for your practice online. Keeping your listings across the web in sync with the latest information is an ongoing effort that helps your brand prosper and makes your touchpoints across the web consistent.
- Performance tracking: While it’s not quite as easy as it used to be, there’s still plenty of ways to track the performance of your online marketing dollars. Conversion tracking in Google Analytics and other data sources such as can combine to give you a picture of which spends pay off the most.
The Darn-Near Essentials
We won’t tell you you have to do these things, but you really should. Wink wink nudge nudge poke poke!
- Email marketing: Your existing patient base is your most valuable marketing asset. One of the best ways to stay in touch with them is via a monthly or quarterly newsletter. Sure, not everyone will open it. But having your name pop into their Inboxes regularly is a great way to stay top-of-mind and make it easy for patients to schedule new visits or make you the go-to name when a friend is looking for a referral.
- Review management: Let’s be clear – managing your reviews and soliciting new patient reviews is essential. The only optional thing about it is how you pull it off. Some practices have a solid system of personal requests and reminders, coupled with notifications from the major review sites when a new review comes in. Go on, girl (or boy)! We also offer ways to automate these processes with a patient review tool, which can be a welcome add-on for busy front offices.
- ADA compliance monitoring: People with all kinds of abilities and disabilities come to your website. It pays to be as welcoming as possible, and that means coding and maintaining your site so it’s accessible on screen readers and other assistive devices. That’s the carrot. For the stick, you could get slapped with an ADA lawsuit if your site isn’t following the latest standards. Bite the carrot!
The Next Level
You’ve earned a solid B+ in Online Marketing Essentials 101. How do you get that coveted A? Read on!
- Website chat/text messaging: If you’re only offering phone or email to contact your office, you are a relic. Many, many patients prefer the more casual communication chat and texting offer. It may have been fine to ignore these prospects (rude!) when you had new surgery cases coming out of your ears, but as the economy softens, it’s more and more risky to dismiss this group.
- Online appointment scheduling and reminders: Cut through the back-and-forth required to schedule a consult or quick appointment at your office with an online appointment tool on your website. It’s a win for you and a win for patients who are looking for an easy way to check something off their to-do list.
- Mass text marketing: The benefits here are the same as an email newsletter, but you’re likely to connect with a whole lot more patients. Most people check their texts much more often than their email – 98% of texts are opened within 15 minutes of being received.
- Patient surveying: Sure, you have a process to get more online reviews, but why not take it to the next level and get more internal feedback about what your patients are liking and not liking? Some of the best ideas to improve your services will come from patients. Make it easy for them to share with regular online surveys.
- Patient referral program: You can run one of these completely offline, but why not leverage technology to make it easier on you and your patients? You can give them a personal referral link and keep track of referral rewards earned easily.
- Patient loyalty rewards: Broken record alert! Your existing patients are your best marketing asset. Encourage them to come back time and again with a robust loyalty or treatment club program.
- Online payment system: It’s super easy to take payments for consultation appointments, surgery deposits, and more right on your website. Plus, it’s more secure than taking payments over the phone, and can cut down on payment management time if your system is tied to your electronic medical record (EMR) system.
- Online patient intake: Many EMRs offer some type of online onboarding. Not all are created equal though, and if there are a few, um…janky…steps that make it a struggle for patients, talk with us. We’ve helped clients implement online paperwork that is easy to use and saves significant data entry time.
As a full-service digital marketing agency, we can help you with any and all of these tactics. We’re constantly testing new solutions and integrating apps and other software our clients come across. If you have a pain point, chances are we have a solution! Get in touch and let us help you stay on the leading edge.