HEALTHCARE MARKETING TRENDS IMPLEMENTING DISRUPTIVE TRENDS TO YOUR MEDICAL PRACTICE. HealthCareMarketingGroup.com

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1 2016 HEALTHCARE MARKETING TRENDS IMPLEMENTING DISRUPTIVE TRENDS TO YOUR MEDICAL PRACTICE

2 To continue to thrive in the competitive marketplace, you need to employ every tool at your command. Your current and prospective patients are looking for convenience, speed and quick answers to questions. If they can t find them at your practice, they ll choose someone else. Digital marketing is essential for your practice s success. Patients expect to be able to find out about practices in their local area and to be able to get information, make appointments and manage much of their relationship online. But, it just isn t possible for most practices to have a dedicated, in-house marketing department. And, office staff is often too busy to learn specialized marketing tasks and manage them day-to-day. Through branding, social media, marketing automation, marketing positioning and other efforts, we help your practice thrive in the competitive digital marketplace is the year that digital practices like personalization, automation, medical technology and others will become marketing essentials. 2

3 AUTOMATE FOR MORE PERSONAL MEDICAL MARKETING It seems counter-intuitive, but you can give more personalized marketing by setting some things on autopilot. Marketing automation allows you to create or commission marketing materials in advance that are conveyed to your current and prospective patients at exactly the right times for them. One example is a triggered series: Step One: Patient sets an appointment online. When a patient uses your website to set up an appointment, don t just send a confirmation. In the , include health tips and information about what to expect during treatment. Step Two: Patient gets a reminder . Cut no-shows down to nothing with a reminder the day before a scheduled appointment. Automating this function means that your staff is free for other functions and you have an opportunity to send useful, personalized information. Step Three: Patient gets an aftercare . The best businesses are founded on long relationships. Strengthen that relationship with a useful the day after an appointment. A dermatologist may send reminders to stay out of the sun. A bariatric doctor can send meal recommendations. Step Four: The follow-up appointment. Whether you will see them again in a year or in a month, schedule an to remind them. If it includes content about their health, they are more likely to open, read and schedule again. 3

4 CONTENT IS KING: RAISING THE BAR ON CONTENT QUALITY The best content works toward two goals: letting Google know that your site has high quality content relevant to searchers needs, and satisfying the needs of the surfers who arrive on your site. The first is met through frequent updates with posts optimized for the relevant keywords relevant to your practice. But, to truly benefit, you must supply high quality content that surfers actually want to read. This content can involve a combination of blog posts, articles, infographics, videos and other types. A dermatologist may publish a back-to-the-beach skin protection checklist. A cardiologist may choose to publish posts about common heart disease risks. By publishing information that answers the sorts of questions that patients bring to your practice, you show your expertise and better assure your chances of winning and keeping their business. 4

5 CAPTIVATE ONLINE AUDIENCES WITH VIDEO When considering content for marketing, don t forget video. Many potential patients who are looking for a local doctor will do their search from a mobile device. It can be much easier to watch a video than read a blog post mobile s smaller screens. Additionally, video can allow for visual references that can help potential patients recognize symptoms or perform tasks such as self-injections at home or even properly measuring medicine. To make the most of video: Make sure all videos use good lighting and high quality sound. Think of the questions patients ask and the demonstrations you most commonly perform. Keep content short. The longer a video is, the more likely the viewer will lose patience. Post to relevant networks that include Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook and Twitter. When posting videos on your blog, be sure to include social sharing buttons. 5

6 WHAT IS AGILE SEO? SEO is always changing; the tactics that got great results last week may be completely ineffective tomorrow. To ensure that you are always welloptimized and showing well in the SERPs, you need to bring in the practice of Agile SEO. The quickest and easiest way to perform Agile SEO is with a process known as DASEMRA: Step 1: Discover Define your goals. Identify the purpose of each element. A blog post may be geared toward signing people up for your newsletter; a checklist may be designed to get people to make appointments for check-ups. Step 2: Analyze Do manual and automated SEO audits. Examine your site s analytics. This can let you see your baseline traffic and conversions and know when your results are in need of tweaking. Step 3: Strategize Develop short and long term SEO plans. Figure out how you will achieve these ends. Step 4: Execute Perform SEO tasks such as blogging, backlinking from social media and others based on steps 1 through 3. Step 5: Measure Each time you execute a campaign, measure your results. Step 6: Report Create a report that shows what you learned in step 5. This can allow you to gauge the effectiveness of future campaigns and hone your techniques. Step 7: Adjust Learn from what you did in the past and create new campaigns going forward that build on what you learned. 6

7 BUILDING A SOLID REPUTATION WITH BRAND INTROSPECTION One of the things that can cement your success is a strong brand identity for your practice. Branding is a deliberate choice instead of an accidental building of reputation. By securing your brand in the public mind, you can become the go-to specialist in your field. What is branding? Branding has been described as the sum of your message and your client experience. Make everything you do, from the marketing that brings someone to your practice, to the greeting in your office, to the follow-up care, reflect the brand you want to project. Where brand introspection comes in. Effective branding means understanding where your practice is now, where you would like to be and what you need to do to achieve that. From there, you can create roadmaps that will help build your brand over time and secure your future success. 7

8 THE INTERNET OF THINGS New wireless technology has allowed more devices than ever to be connected to the web to allow smarter and more convenient uses than ever before. Refrigerators can sense when filters need to be replaced and automatically order them. Cars can alert you to needed maintenance and schedule the appointment. And, connected medical devices can allow you to improve your patients care. Connected pumps can deliver medicine to patients, allowing them to get needed doses sooner. Heart monitors and devices that measure blood pressure and other readings can help you keep a better eye on your patients health. There are multiple benefits to tying these devices into your practice. First, they can create potential new streams of revenue. They can improve your patients care. And, they can forge a stronger relationship that makes it easier to retain patients over time, significantly improving your return on your customer acquisition investment. 8

9 WEARABLES AND MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY Wearables are a special category in the Internet of Things that are especially useful for medical professionals. The FitBit is among the best known. This line of trackers interfaces with a mobile phone to count everything from pulse rate to steps in a day to sleep tracking. If you are helping clients deal with chronic issues like insomnia or simply helping them pursue a healthier lifestyle, medical wearables can be a powerful tool. By using these in your practice, you can increase compliance with recommended exercise and help them on their way toward better health. 9

10 ON DEMAND EVERYTHING The digital age is one of instant gratification. On Demand features mean that your practice can still be in touch with patients even outside office hours. Automated online appointment set-up means that patients can interface with your site even in the evenings and schedule a check-up while they are thinking about it. Secure connections allow them to look at lab results at their convenience, taking up less time during appointments. And, it means that they have all the relevant information when you refer them to specialists, which leads to a better patient experience. 10

11 REPUTATION MATTERS: MAKE REVIEW SITES WORK FOR YOU In the past, people usually got doctor recommendations from their friends and family. Today, they have the power of hundreds of reviews to help make decisions about their medical care providers on sites such as Yelp, Vitals, Healthgrades, ZocDoc, RateMDs, and UCompareHealthCare. When you optimize for online success, your reviews can act as your best advertisement. Set up alerts. Create Google alerts for the name of your practice. These can be delivered daily or weekly to help you keep tabs on how you are discussed online. You should also check your Facebook page frequently and search your name on Twitter and other social media networks such as LinkedIn, Instagram and even Snapchat. Respond quickly. If someone expresses dissatisfaction, deal with the issue as quickly as possible. This way, potential patients can see that you are responsive and caring. Consider an internal review system. If patients are able to come to you with a concern or issue, they are less likely to spread negative reviews on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and other social media outlets. This allows you to keep patients happy while maintaining your reputation on the web at large. Fill the search engine with positive content. By creating a website and profiles on every relevant social media site, you can fill as many of the top 10 results on Google with properties you control. By keeping a finger on your reputation online, you can ensure that your online representation puts your practice in a positive light and continues to attract new patients. 11

12 HOW SOCIAL MEDIA BUILDS RELATIONSHIPS Social media can be a powerful tool for building lasting relationships with your patients. But, to be effective, you need to keep a few rules of the road in mind: 1. Remember that it s a conversation. People find brands boring when they always talk but never listen. Search for relevant terms and see what people are saying and asking about your specialty. You can also use specialized social listening tools to learn what s being said online. 2. Be of use. It s okay to occasionally write promotional posts. But, the majority of what you post should be geared toward what your potential patients want to read. Link to blog posts and health articles. Start a healthcare Q&A Facebook post. If you aren t sure what to write, think about the questions you get most often from new patients. 3. Be part of a conversation. Answer questions on forums like Quora and Reddit. This shows your expertise and your willingness to be of assistance to potential patients. It can take awhile to learn which social media platforms are the best for your site and how to use each to the fullest. Through experimentation or working with HealthCare Marketing Group, you can raise your practice s visibility and strengthen your relationships with your patients to keep them coming back. 12

13 RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN When it comes to the design of your site, one of the most important considerations is to make sure that you use responsive design. Responsive design means that the site s layout will change depending on the size of the screen being used. A user on a desktop computer will see a different screen from someone on a large tablet or someone on a smartphone. Why is this important? First, responsive design means a more enjoyable browsing experience for people no matter what screen they are using. If a patient needs to look at your site on the go, they won t be frustrated by a hard to read page. Mobile browsing is becoming the most common way for people to search for local services. If your site is hard to use, they are likely to bounce and never come back. Second, Google has added mobile-friendliness to their list of qualities that makes a site index well. In an algorithm update commonly called Mobilegeddon sites that were not mobile-friendly saw themselves disappear from the front page. Since few people go further than that when they are seeking local services, any site not on that page may as well be invisible. Responsive design is an efficient way to ensure that every surfer has a good experience and your site stays visible. 13

14 GETTING PROSPECTS TO YOUR SITE You ve created content, ensured that your site is responsive and mobile-friendly and started building rapport with potential and current patients on social media. But, there is still more that s needed to make sure that people make it your site and your practice. Offsite Marketing Your multiple online presences should work in tandem to bring people to your practice. When you add a new triggered series, tell your social media fans where to sign up. Post links to new blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and wherever else you are online. Search Marketing Adding paid advertising to the mix is an effective way to get more people to your site. When people in your local area do a search for doctors in your area of practice, your site will show up at the top of the results. By carefully limiting results geographically, eliminating search terms that you have seen don t result in new patients and bidding cautiously, you will find that search marketing is a highly effective tool that provides a great return on your marketing investment. All of these tools work together to keep your practice visible, make it easier for patients to make and keep appointments and to build long and profitable relationships. But, it can be difficult and time consuming for a practice to try to manage all of this on their own. 14

15 We have years of experience marketing medical practices. Let us handle what we are best at, so that you and your office staff can do what you do best: taking care of your patients. Contact HealthCare Marketing Group today at for a free consultation on the latest trends for your medical practice! 2016 is just around the corner, and it is not too late to get started on your new digital marketing plan. Give us a call today at to schedule your FREE WEB AUDIT and COMPETITORS ANALYSIS. www.