Why Every Practice Should Leverage Digital Marketing


Digital marketing isn’t optional. 

The fact remains, though, that only 84% of practices have a content marketing strategy as of early 2021. 

16% don’t.

If you’re one of the people who has put off digital marketing or done it haphazardly, it’s time to get serious about it. 

You may have claimed your Google My Business listing – and that counts as digital marketing. It’s also the bare minimum you can do.

So, with that in mind, let’s talk about why every practice – including yours – needs digital marketing, and which marketing strategies we recommend.

What is Digital Marketing?  

Some healthcare business owners don’t understand what digital marketing is and that’s part of the problem, so, let’s explain a little more about what it is.

Digital marketing is the sum of any efforts you make to promote your practice online. It may include:

  • Email marketing
  • Blogging
  • Search engine advertising (PPC)
  • Social media posting
  • Social media advertising
  • Practice listings
  • SEO
  • Video marketing

The key to making the most of digital marketing is choosing the strategies that are most likely to deliver the results you want.

Target Local Keywords  

The first thing you need to recognize is that in the world of digital marketing, everything is local. If you try to compete for the same keywords used by big corporations with huge marketing budgets, you’re going to lose. You’ll get far more bang for your buck if you think local.

Local keywords should be a combination of industry-specific words that identify what your practice does and local words that let people know where you are. For example, a massage therapist in Minneapolis might target words such as:

  • Minneapolis massage therapy business
  • Twin Cities massage
  • Emergency massage care Minneapolis

You get the idea. You want the words you target to be specific to both your practice and your location. Google prioritizes local search already and optimizing your website and ads for local keywords will give you the best possible chance of connecting with people in your area.

Claim Your Local Listings 

A big part of digital marketing is creating a consistent online presence. A person who finds you on Yelp should have access to the same basic information about your practice as someone who searches for you on Google or someone who navigates directly to your website thanks to a referral from a friend.

Local listings such as Google My Busines, Yelp, Angie’s List, and others act as online directories. They’re there to help people find the practices they need. If you haven’t already done so, you should claim every listing for your practice. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to update and standardize all information to create a seamless presence.

Use Social Media Wisely

Social media should be part of your digital marketing strategy. As of 2020, 3.8 billion people worldwide use social media. Your patients use social media.

The trick, of course, is to know which social media options your patients prefer. 

B2B companies should focus on LinkedIn. Any company with a visual or aspirational service would do well to invest in Instagram and Pinterest marketing. Most practices can benefit from having a Facebook presence.

Once you’ve decided which social media accounts to create, you still need to use them wisely. That means using both organic posts and advertising to connect with your target audience. A practice can focus on local patients by using carefully-chosen hashtags and participating in community events such as Throwback Thursday.

Don’t Forget Email Marketing 

Email marketing isn’t the new kid on the block, but it is still one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies around. It’s particularly effective for keeping existing patients engaged and coming back to your practice.

If you don’t already have an email list, you can build one by creating content to give away and advertising it on Google or social media. If people want to download the content, they’ll need to provide you with their email address.

You can get the most from your email marketing by creating unique content for the people on your list and combining it with special coupons and giveaways.

Advertise on YouTube

YouTube advertising is something that a lot of practices miss out on because they don’t understand how effective it is. Fully 90% of patients say they have learned about a new service from seeing an ad on YouTube.

Marketers agree that pre-roll skippable ads are the most effective format for YouTube ads. However – and this is anecdotal – we’ve noticed an increase in the number of short, non-skippable pre-roll ads we’re seeing. Patients are less likely to mind sitting through a 15-second ad they can’t skip than an ad that’s longer and not skippable. 

YouTube is owned by Google and that’s one reason that YouTube is a great option for retargeting patients who have visited your site without buying anything. 

Encourage Reviews

You already know that reviews are important. You should consider them an essential part of your digital marketing strategy.

If you’re not already doing so, start encouraging patients to write online reviews. You can ask them in person either during or after treatment or, if you have an email list or Facebook account, ask them to leave a review and link to your preferred review site. 

Optimize for Mobile 

It’s safe to say that in 2021, all digital marketing is mobile marketing. We don’t mean that nobody accesses a website or social media on a computer but it’s a fact that mobile search has surpassed desktop search and almost everybody has a smartphone.

In practical terms, that means you’ve got to be sure that your website is optimized for mobile. Ideally, you should have:

  • A mobile responsive design that looks equally good on any device
  • Mobile-friendly content
  • Clickable buttons

No mobile user should need to zoom in to hit your call to action button or scroll horizontally to read your blog posts. There’s no excuse for ignoring mobile users – so don’t do it.

Digital marketing is here to stay – and it’s time to take it seriously. By focusing on the marketing strategies we’ve mentioned here, you’ll be able to differentiate your practice from competitors and attract a steady stream of new patients.

So… if you are a private practice healthcare business owner and you are looking to grow and scale your practice or generate more new patients for the practice – we are here for you!  Drop a comment below if you have questions or if you’d like to set up a call with us go here: https://bit.ly/PIE-FB-Triage-Call 


How to Identify Your Audience and Find YOUR future patients Online


We’ve all had the experience of looking for something and not being able to find it. It’s frustrating and time consuming and can feel like a pointless exercise if we’re forced to keep at it for long.

For a healthcare business owner, there’s nothing more frustrating than knowing there’s an audience for your service and not knowing who they are – or where to find them. 

In this article, I’ll break down the process to help you first identify and then locate your audience, so you can fine-tune your marketing and get the leads you need.

Let’s dig in!

Identifying Your Audience

We can look to social media for some guidance in how to identify an audience. If you have an existing patient base, you can begin by analyzing it using two categories of information: demographics and psychographics. From there, you can use information about the problems your service solves to narrow your search.

Demographics

Demographics are easy, so let’s start there. Demographics are facts about your patients (and your target audience) that can help you identify them. They include:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Geographical location
  • Education level
  • Income level
  • Marital status
  • Employment/industry

Having basic information about who your patients are can help you identify the right target audience for your service. 

Psychographics

Psychographics illustrate your target audience’s interests and preferences. 

For example, if you run a gym inside of your practice, some interests to consider might include the following.

  • Health
  • Fitness
  • Weight loss
  • Running

You could also consider pop culture interests. If you own a clothing boutique, you might target people who watch fashion shows such as Project Runway or Say Yes to the Dress, or who follow fashion designers such as Christian Siriano or Ralph Lauren.

Benefits/Problem Solving

Finally, you should give some thought to what problems your service solves, or what benefits it provides to the people who are likely to buy it. Here are some questions to ask yourself.

  • What types of people might have the problem I’m trying to solve?
  • What solutions are they looking for?
  • Why do they need a solution – that is, what are their pain points?
  • What am I offering that’s different from my competitors?

Asking these questions may help you fine-tune your demographic and psychographic requirements. By the time you have worked your way through all three categories here, you should have a good idea of who is in your target audience.

How to Find Your Audience Online

After you have identified your target audience, it’s time to think about where to find them online. Here again, there are multiple methods you can use, alone or in combination, to find your audience.

Let’s start with social media, which can be extremely useful for connecting with your target audience. You can use demographics to identify the sites where your audience is most likely to be, so let’s start there.

  • Facebook is the largest social media site and skews the oldest. 69% of Americans have a Facebook account and with the exception of people age 65 and over, a majority in every age group use Facebook.
  • Instagram users skew much younger than Facebook users, with approximately two-thirds of Americans under the age of 30 active on the platform. There are more women than men who use Instagram.
  • Twitter users encompass only about 22% of the US adult population and more men than women use the platform. Twitter users tend to be urban and educated when compared to other social media platforms.
  • Users of Pinterest skew heavily female and tend to be affluent and educated. They encompass every age group, although it’s worth noting that the smallest demographic is people over the age of 65.
  • LinkedIn users tend to be under the age of 65 and highly educated. They mostly live in cities and suburbs and are more likely to be looking for professional services than consumer goods.

You should also consider the type of service you sell and where people are likely to look for it. We’ll talk about Google later, but on social media, here are some general guidelines. 

It’s also worth mentioning if you have a locally based practice, Facebook is really good at getting in front of users based on geolocation. Sometimes we run ads and only use zip codes as our qualifying targeting criteria if we are interested in reaching everyone that lives, works and plays within our targeted areas.

 

  • Facebook users look for all types of services, ranging from consumer goods to services at every level.
  • Instagram is likely to be most useful for selling services although some services can lend themselves to Instagram as well. For example, any service where you can show before and after photos is a good match for Instagram.
  • Pinterest users are accustomed to finding services on the site and often “Pin” services for later purchase.
  • LinkedIn users tend to be professionals and are most likely to search for services.
  • YouTube can also be leveraged! Tapping into YouTube Ads makes sense if you are a national, international or even a practice. Their ads via Google are compelling!

For example, if you have a clothing store, it probably makes sense to find your audience on Instagram and Pinterest. If you own a law firm, LinkedIn and Facebook might be the best choices.

Search Engine Marketing

In addition to finding your audience online, you must make it easy for your audience to find you. Search engine optimization and marketing are designed to help people in search of your services find you.

SEO comes down to having a properly optimized website and a well-established online presence. You’ll need to target the right keywords and identify the search terms that people in your target audience will use when searching for a practice like yours. You’ll need to make sure that your site is mobile-friendly and optimized for voice search.

At the same time, you should standardize your online listings and claim your listings on review sites such as Yelp and Google. Most consumers search for practices online before they decide where to obtain a service. Having reliable information about your practice and good reviews will make your practice more visible on Google and other search engines.

Understanding who your audience is and where to find them is a must for every practice. Once you have identified who you’re selling to, you’ll be able to fine-tune your marketing campaigns and you’ll spend less to attract new patients.

So… if you are a private practice healthcare business owner and you are looking to grow and scale your practice or generate more new patients for the practice – we are here for you!  Drop a comment below if you have questions or if you’d like to set up a call with us go here: https://bit.ly/PIE-FB-Triage-Call