Perhaps as a physician, you are part of a hospital system, and marketing isn’t on your radar. However, if you are a practice manager for a specialist or group practice and you don’t rely on a healthcare system to support your practice growth initiatives, then being in tune with how to attract new patients using digital marketing to maintain your practice growth goals in 2017 is critical.
What digital marketing trends should you incorporate in your plan?
Laser Focus
Trend: Zero in on the ideal patient you want to attract.
The traditional shot gun approach to trying to reach your ideal patient is simply a waste of money. Consumers are bombarded with over 5,000 forms of advertising and communication every day. Your marketing messages needs to cut through the clutter to target exactly the patient you want in your practice.
By creating personas and mapping out out the buyer’s journey of your ideal patient, in turn you’ll be able to identify the optimal digital marketing channels, messaging and campaigns that will reach prospective patients that are searching for your speciality services. With this approach, you can expect to experience a decrease in the size of your audience, however in turn, your laser focus will result in higher engagement with the quality audience you want to reach.
Video Across Multiple Channels
Trend: Creating video that engages, informs and builds trust
Video that connects emotionally with the prospective patient, and engages them to take action and elevates your brand over your competition will yield a big bang for your investment in 2017.
Where should
- Facebook -More people will be uploading, sharing and experiencing videos on this social platform.
- Live Video- Utilize Facebook Live or Twitter Periscope to interact real time with followers
- Video Apps- Consider Instagram and Snapchat for visual content for the 13-24 year olds.
- Email-Strategize on how to incorporate videos within your patient email communication
- Website-Discover avenues for humanizing your practice using videos and strategically placing them on your website.
- YouTube-This channel continues to be the 2nd largest search engine. Don’t overlook the opportunity to place your videos on this channel
- Landing Pages-Placing videos on your landing pages can increase your conversion rate by 83% (Hubspot.).
Reputation Informs Decisions
Trend: Reputations are driven by online reviews
On-line reviews are the new WOM (word-of-mouth marketing) and are changing the physician-patient relationship. With busy schedules and easy access to information, patients are turning to the internet to find a healthcare provider they trust.
Statistics worth considering:
- A staggering 94 percent of Internet users who have visited a doctor reviews site consider the reviews useful. (Institute for Healthcare Policy, 2014)
- 85 percent of patients are not comfortable choosing a physician if more than 10 percent of that physician’s reviews have a one-star rating. (Digital Assent, 2013)
- About 1 out of 3 patients use either industry-specific medical review sites or more general consumer review sites as tools for finding doctors or healthcare providers. (American Osteopathic Association, 2014)
- 47 percent of patients who look up a physician online feels differently about that physician after reading his or her profile and reviews. (Vitals, 2013)
Developing your online review strategy will not only help elevate your search engine ranking so prospective patients find you, but also help initiate a positive relationship built on trust and confidence.
A few review sites to consider include:
Yelp-http://www.yelp.com
Vitals-http://www.vitals.com/
Wellness.com-http://www.wellness.com
Google My Business-www.google.com/business
Technology Stacks & Big Data
Trend: Utilizing tools and systems to collect data and increase efficiency
With limited budgets and resources, ensuring that you are making decisions based on data requires tools and systems. Managing the entire patient experience, from the initial online or off-line search, to the appointment reminder and ongoing wellness education, requires varies forms of technology to ensure the right content is delivered in the right channel at the right time.
What marketing technology tools and systems should you consider?
Marketing Automation. This is software that automates repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, blogs, campaigns etc. and in turn collects behavior insights that reflect how your prospective and existing patients are finding and interacting with your channels and content. Systems to consider include: Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, Act-On and SharpSpring just to list a few.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management). This is software that practices use to keep track and monitor prospective and existing patient touchpoints through all points of their customer lifecycle. Sticky notes, spreadsheets and handwritten notes are not a substitute for a CRM. Systems to consider include: Salesforce, Hubspot and other healthcare specific CRM’s that might already existing within scheduling systems etc.
Website User Experience. Your website is the new front door of your practice, not a stagnant brochure updated occasionally. There are two customers you need to develop your digital marketing strategy around, the user (prospective patients) and search engines. Why?
One of the critical elements search engines use to determine ranking , is how users interact with your website. Therefore continually evaluating the performance of your website from the user’s point of view is critical to maintaining a high performing website that converts visitors to patients. Systems to consider include: Google Analytics, Hotjar, Lucky Orange or Crazy Egg.
SEO is Advancing
Trend: SEO will continue to advance ranking criteria based on user intent
The days of trying to rank for a group of keywords by repeatedly stuffing them in content are long gone. Welcome in the new and improved search engines that base ranking on how user’s interact with the search engines-data will continue to drive your digital marketing strategy.
What SEO tactics should you use in 2017?
AMP-Your online users are impatient and want the information they seek in lightening speed. AMP is a way to build web pages to support static content render faster.
Organic Link Building-Organic or natural links refer to those links that are put on websites without a direct intention of influencing the rankings of Google. These are called natural links because they haven’t been elicited in any way.
Content-Content that is unique and focused on the persona and buyer’s personal journey will continue to drive SEO ranking. Focus on developing long-form content (i.e., content that is 2,000-4,000+ words), combined with a promotional strategy, will yield greater online visibility, as it will lead to more social shares and links, which will influence the organic growth
Mobile-Ensuring that your website delivers a positive mobile responsive experience is one of the top elements for SEO ranking. In addition, the use of vocal search is becoming essential as prospective patients utilize search services such as Siri and Alexa for answers. According to a Google report, 20% of all mobile queries are vocal search queries and voice command search is three times more likely to be location-based than text search. The means that keyword strategies need to shift to “how people talk.”
Keywords-Simply creating a list of words or phrases you want to rank for in the search engines won’t result in the search engine ranking you hope for. Keywords need to be focused on user interest and intent-what a user may be actually looking for when they use a search engine. In turn, shoring a user the right content for the appropriate buying stage they are in is essential for improving your conversion rates.
Final Thoughts
Many factors continually drive changes that affect the brand reputation, patient experience and profitability of your healthcare practice. The same is true of the many elements associated with your digital marketing plan--change is the new norm. Not the exception to the rule.
Taking a strategic approach to developing a digital marketing plan for 2017 focused on patient centric user intent personalization within various digital channels, the utilization of technology stacks that provide behavioral data for sound decision making and a proactive approach to applying sound SEO tactics will result in consistent positive practice growth.
