Another year (almost) down, and what’s likely to be a massively transformative year ahead. Let’s get right into it and share some trends and developments that impact our clients’ marketing efforts!
AI and Technology Transformation
You can (and should) check out a ton of resources on how the pace of technological change in healthcare is changing almost every aspect of the field. Specifically related to your online marketing, it’s all about delivering an effortless digital experience. Some technologies that can help you achieve this:
- Online appointment booking
- Automated review solicitation and management
- HIPAA-compliant patient texting
- EMR marketing integrations
- AI-customized patient communication automation
Many of these technologies are available through our partnership with BirdEye. We’re happy to demo some of these tools and show you how they can improve your operations and your patient experience.
Focusing More on Digital User Experience
Call it your digital calling card or your digital storefront, but either way, your website remains the homebase of your brand on the web. That means your website design is an essential aspect of your online marketing success. How your website looks and works is a strong indication to a prospective patient of the quality of experience they expect when they come to your office to see you in person.
With that in mind, it’s not surprising that Google closely ties website user experience to which sites it is most interested in recommending to its users (i.e. which sites rank better). User experience and expectations change over time, and the pace of change is increasing, just like everywhere else. Here are some of the most essential aspects of good website user experience:
- Provide easy navigation and understandable organization
- Interlink related items and content
- Minimize the number of clicks to access your most popular content
- Make it effortless to contact you and find your location
- Keep design simple
- User proper headings, bulleted and numbered lists, feature blocks and other aspects to make content easily scannable
- Regularly update your content to account for new techniques, trends and developments
- Offer visitors a way to provide feedback on their experience
Increasing Touchpoints in the Sales Funnel
As plastic surgery demand appears to be returning back to earth after several boom years, the buying cycle is getting longer. This means that you need to consider extending your marketing messages into more awareness and more persistence to earn the sale.
- Brand Awareness – Start embedding your brand name into the minds of prospects via advertising on social media and YouTube. Also see how you can get your name out into the community via TV coverage of volunteer work, sponsorship of local sports, and speaking engagements at area events.
- Brand Reinforcement – Reinforcement occurs when your brand saturates several different platforms, helping to make it extra sticky. Consider display ads, a billboard, or other channels that will complement your awareness campaigns.
- Customer Action – This is still where the main action remains. Items such as organic search (expanded service pages, blogs, checklists, and FAQs),organic social, local listings, and PPC advertising are essential to make sure your practice is an easy choice when a patient is ready to act.
- Persistence – As you know, you won’t book every prospect. But it is still an excellent idea to mine this set of prospects over time and keep in touch via email/text marketing automation, as well as social and display ads.
Delivering Authentic Content
King Content still wears the crown…but if you haven’t noticed, the king has had some makeovers in recent years, and his stylists now have to work overtime to keep him lookin’ good. Our top focus for content generation and our top advice for your content efforts:
- Watch how much AI you’re using – By now, you should be familiar with some of the drawbacks that come with too much content automation, and you may have even seen these firsthand in your office. We continue to use an honest-to-goodness human content team that understands our clients’ priorities and preferences.
- Focus on personal content for social – Stock photos and business-speak posts are DOA. If your personality doesn’t shine through, don’t post it. Period.
- Maintain a brand voice – Do you have a brand guide? Do you coach your internal team (and your marketing firm) on your priorities, your philosophy, and your voice? These items are critical for branding across an increasing number of platforms.
- Solidify your role as an expert – Google still strongly rewards expertise, authority and trustworthiness. Booking speaking engagements, authoring papers, presenting new research, and partnering on clinical trials are all ways you can demonstrate your expertise and strengthen your brand in Google’s eyes.
Digging into Patient Disengagement
All of our clients are focused on wowing their patients with amazing results. But we’ll be frank, not all of them, and certainly not all cosmetic practices, are really nailing the goal of delivering an unsurpassed experience.
Brand loyalty is exceptionally hard to maintain, and only getting harder as pressures such as increased competition and economic uncertainty make it harder to keep your patients coming back again and again. Stopping attrition and limiting no-shows and cancellations should be top of mind at your practice. Web technology can help through improved patient reminders, custom automation (such as sending a happy birthday text, or a good-old-fashioned card in the mail to celebrate a patient’s 1-year surgical anniversary), and improved internal workflows that focus more on patient communication and retention.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: email and text marketing remains an excellent way to stay in touch with your patients and maximize loyalty. Specific loyalty programs are another tool to consider, with several vendors offering ways to automate these and take the hassle out of keeping track of which rewards your patients have earned.
