" Healthcare organizations that strive to understand and build inclusive patient experiences will come out on top in 2023. Building operations around unique generational, cultural, or LGBTQ+ needs results in more humanized care and an individualized patient experience. " - Healthcare Success
How do you, as the marketer or owner, build a more inclusive, humanized, and individualized patient experience? Well, that was a mouthful!
When it comes down to it, you have to transition to a consumer-first style of doing business. Do what makes your customer more interested in your business rather than someone else's. Research can tell you what consumers are expecting today and it is all about user-friendly engaged inclusivity. There are 3 pieces of information needed to start your medical marketing check-up. Local SEO, a website, and social media.
Start off slow by giving them the ability to find you easily when searched. When new healthcare consumers are considering an office to visit, most searches end with near-me or close-by statements. Such as - "Doctor's offices near me", or "Mechanic close by." If this goes into a search you want to make sure that when they are in your proximity that your business appears in the query. This can be optimized using local SEO.
Local SEO is the optimization of factors that pertain to a business' geography with search queries. The top factor is the business' NAWP or name, address, website, and phone number. If this is incorrect in any directory or business listing, it will likely hurt your position in the search, even if you are the closest. Other metrics to watch for are reputation, citations, targeted directories, and page authority. Just like most concepts in the world, there are factors with a high, medium, and low impact. The same goes for local SEO. Here is a list of high-impact factors for Google Business Profiles:
Google is the search engine " Gate Keeper " and optimizing these metrics to improve your Google business listing will improve your local SEO greatly. There are other search engines you should invest some time into updating and optimizing profiles for as well such as Bing, Apple Business Connect, Facebook, and Yahoo. Keeping up-to-date information in these locations will ensure that local search traffic will find you; however, is all this search traffic going to lead to a site that speaks to your potential clients, or are we leading potential customers to a confusing site with hard-to-access crucial information needed to make a decision? That's the question.
Your website is a way for you to say everything you need to your audience to get them over the goal line and into your facility. It is a way for you to freely give valuable information to the audience that finds their way to your page. Make the website part of the experience. You can use videos to show them what to expect when visiting for the first, procedure explanations, the team, smiling patients, and more. If your office focuses on specific types of care rather than general, a website is perfect for establishing your brand’s expertise within the industry. Dentists, chiropractics, herbal alternative medicine, plastic surgery, and physical therapy are all different kinds of offices that can be confused with the wrong name, like the Medical offices of Dr. Abc. So when the consumers click the link they find through google to your website, it is then you can lead them to the answers they need to begin their journey. From this point, it's all about how much you understand the buyer's journey for your business.
Looking into how people decide on you, and the journey they took to solidify that decision, is vital. How else do you cater an experience to the customer without understanding what they went through to make that choice? The pages they visit, the information they search, and the links they click all are impactful behaviors that could tell you the factors of your current website your customer finds imperative. Use this data to better understand your target consumer, establish which pages are performing and which pages aren't, figure out why some of your audience abandoned the website, and what is pushing them to follow through. Examining user behavior analytics gives you a full picture of consumers’ preferences, and the challenges they come across on your website. Once you identify these content issues your audiences are facing, you can correct them and move on to adding functionality.
With technology today, the functionality we can put into a website can work for both sides equally, it's no longer just a brochure with a phone number and location. You can now make your website work for you as a 24-hour employee. Chat functionality for questions, payment gateways to accept payment at any time, calendars to schedule appointments, and videos or downloadables for onboarding new patients are all pieces of the puzzle to build a better experience for every client and prospective client. Are these options currently on your website? These options, in particular, have shown to be deciding factors that could be causes behind someone choosing you over the next medical facility.
With local SEO optimized so you can be found when searched and a website that turns prospects into patients, the last piece is Social Media.
Without social media and its billions of users, you are missing out on the largest free marketing tool on the planet. There are no start-up costs with healthcare social media marketing. Without a cost, the return on investment from social media marketing is enormous depending on efficiency and conversions. With a strong enough internet presence, you can educate your followers and post helpful information online. From there, these followers could either share, comment, or use the information to help themselves or others around them. While they are spreading the word about your medical practice, you should be engaging with your patients and developing the content that speaks to them best.
What is the best type of content to get people to engage? Based on a 2022 survey by Demandsage, in 2023, online video is expected to account for 82.5% of all web traffic, making it the most popular type of content on the internet.
With that in mind, developed a social media strategy that encompasses video creation to introduce, and put a face to your practice. You can even educate and include testimonials utilizing video content to build trust and authority in the area of medicine you practice. The public is becoming increasingly impressionable with social media for healthcare. Connect your practice with those potential patients and begin the growth of your social community.
Through medical practice marketing systems, current and prospective patients will receive quality care experiences from every aspect of your practice: the website, social media pages, and individualized physician attention. Furthermore, marketing your practice provides an opportunity for communication with your patient audience by building trust and piquing interest among the many healthcare options available for patients. You have all the basic building blocks to grow your business; however, it's never as simple as just having the pieces.
The job of a healthcare industry marketer is becoming increasingly more difficult. Healthcare Marketing in the 21st century presents a unique set of challenges for marketers. With a constantly changing regulatory environment, technological advancements, and increasing competition, healthcare marketers have to be able to improvise, veer, and innovate to stay ahead. Here are some of the biggest challenges facing healthcare marketing today and how they can be overcome.
In conclusion, the healthcare industry presents unique challenges for marketers. Still, by understanding and addressing these challenges, marketers can create successful and impactful campaigns that connect with patients and drive growth for their organizations. If you need assistance with overcoming the challenges set forth for Medical Practice Healthcare Marketers and Owners reach out via email, phone call, live chat on our webpage, or...