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In the medical world, there is a vast amount of competition. As a patient, once I see who accepts my insurance policy, I need to search and find what I deem to be the best option to meet my medical needs. Whether I’m searching for a dentist, a medical doctor, a psychologist, a surgeon, or some other kind of specialist, the more easily found, better-reviewed doctors or practices will be included in my top list. A natural process medical patients use to find their provider after their insurance covers the procedures is to find someone quickly and of high-quality. In this post, we will review three medical marketing strategies your practice can use to find new patients for your practice.
Your Website Strategy
Your website is often overlooked when it comes to marketing. Many businesses simply feel they can have success on a separate platform without having a great website. The truth is, a website is your medical practices’ digital office.
When you purchased or built your medical practice, did you invest in the interior of the facility, the waiting room, the professional equipment, and the front desk? Of course, you did! First impressions make a big difference. According to a study at Stanford University, 75% of people have judged a company’s credibility based on how their website looks. While this may seem unfair or unlikely, but it is human nature to judge things on how they appear.
In addition to how your practice website looks, there is major strategy involved in creating a website. Many practice marketing strategies point to the website, so your website needs to be organized and structured in a way that provides your practice with the most success. Here are 5 general things your website should include:
Individual Pages for Each of your Services
It is crucial to create individual pages for each of your services. This is setting your medical practice up for success when it comes to Search Engine Optimization and Google Advertising. To rank for these services in Google, it is essential to have your services separated on different pages.
Call to Action buttons at the top and bottom of your pages
A general rule is to include a call to action, or CTA button, at the top and bottom of your pages. This is especially true on your services pages. Your goal is to get your potential client to contact you, so two CTAs are a must.
Your Office Location is Added to Your Footer with Schema Markup
Another general pointer is to include your office location in your footer exactly how it is listed on Google My Business. Your name, address, and phone number should be exact. Google has a free tool you can find by typing in “Google Schema Markup” in Google. Be sure to create a schema for your name, address, and phone, which you’ll add to the header or footer of your website.
Your Site Has Google Analytics Tracking
Tracking what your visitors do is very important so that you understand if your efforts are paying off. You can set up Google Analytics “Goals” to put on your “thank you” page after someone fills out your contact form. You can check Google Analytics to see when someone completes this, and then you’ll also be able to see where they came from (ex: Facebook).
You have Ways For Potential Patients to Speak to you Easily
A great website provides ways a potential client can reach you easily. You should think about things like a business phone number, contact forms, and even a live chat service.
The Words on Your Website Are Thorough and Original
This is an important factor. The words written on your website need to be original. Google will not rank your site higher if you copied or took words from another website. You should also aim to write at least 500 to 1000 words on your service pages. This will tell Google that your content is thorough on the subject.
The final two medical marketing strategies include both on and off-page elements. Let’s discuss some elements of SEO:
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization is a flashy term nowadays. In simple terms It means the process of optimizing your website so that it appears in search engines. You can write 10 novels on SEO, but I’ll provide best practices.
There are two main areas to be concerned with in regards to SEO: Search results and map results.
Google Search
Google search is the area that you can rank for both locally and non-locally. These are the results typically below map results. To rank for Google Search, it is crucial to have your website structured as we mentioned above.
It is also important to find the key terms that your patients are searching for. If you’re a dentist in Coral Gables, you’re going to want to try to rank for “dentist + Coral Gables” and other variations of that. Once you find the keywords your patients are searching for each of your services, be sure to include those keywords naturally in the words and titles on the page. Don’t focus 2 pages on the same keyword. For example, don’t write a page about “Coral Gables Dentist” and another page about “Dentist in Coral Gables”. This is overkill and Google may penalize you.
Google Maps
Google Maps is another very important area your medical practice needs to rank on. Similar to Google search, your customers will be finding your competitors listed with star rankings and reviews. It is crucial that you work on getting 5-star reviews, and a lot of them to show that you’re the best choice.
To rank highly on Google Maps, be sure to use schema markup on your website as we discussed earlier. Also, build-out citations. Citations are listings of your business across the web. Yelp is an example of a citation. Be sure to use the EXACT name, phone, and address across all of these sites. If you move your practice, you’ll need to correct all of the websites with your old address and phone.
Google Ads
The final medical marketing strategy I’m going to discuss is Google Ads. Google Ads is a very complementary strategy for SEO. Ideally, you’d be generating all of your patients leads through SEO, that is, not paying for your leads in advertising. However, while you’re building your SEO strategy (this can take 9-12+ months to rank well), Google Ads is a nice strategy to incorporate into your marketing mix. The great thing is, once you know the keywords your audience is searching for, you can use those same keywords to target ads to your patients. And after you advertise for a while and properly track leads that come in, you can have a great idea which keywords actually generate leads for your business. You can then heavily emphasize those keywords in your SEO strategy.
In conclusion, investing in the above medical marketing strategies takes time in resources. But it’s just that, an investment. I highly recommend that you pursue the above 3 medical marketing strategies for strong growth.
Get More Information
For dentists, read this complete guide: dental marketing strategies
For psychologists and therapists, read this complete guide: marketing strategies for psychologists.
To learn more about healthcare marketing, download our ebook: https://getreferralmd.com/medical-marketing-strategy-guide-for-doctors/
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