How to Market Your Medical Practice:
1. Incorporate SEO Best Practices into Your Website
As you likely know, most Americans utilize Google for Internet research. Still, only 29 percent of consumers go beyond the first page of Google results. Therefore, it’s very important that your practice’s website shows up on the first page of Google results when people search for keywords relating to your specialty and the area in which you’re located. By convincing Google that your website has the information that users are searching for, search engine optimization (SEO) helps accomplish that goal. Below you’ll find the three of the most important SEO best practices that you should follow when marketing your medical practice:
- Optimize Your Site for Google’s Search Engine: Your website should be very easy for Google’s search engine to examine. To accomplish this, you must utilize simple URLs that contain relevant keywords, show internal links you want Google to highlight, and provide a site menu.
- Effectively Incorporate Keywords: As we mentioned earlier, it’s very important for your website to appear on the first page of Google results when people search for your specialty and the area in which you’re located. To accomplish that goal, you must incorporate keywords that describe your specialty and geographic area into your website’s text and HTML. If you want to rank high on Google for other search terms, you should also utilize those terms in your content as well.
- Get High Quality Websites to Link to Your Content: One of the most important standards that Google uses to evaluate articles is the number of high quality websites that link to them. To accomplish this, you should submit your content to blog directories and ask other relevant websites to link to your website so that you can obtain high-quality links to satisfy Google.
2. Sign Up for Business Listings
When users search for any type of business on Google, the names and contact information of four or five businesses are displayed above the results generated by the search engine. Known as Google’s “local pack,” these listings are developed primarily from information on Google My Business. Of course, you should ensure that the information on your Google My Business page is accurate and complete.
If your business is featured on numerous reputable business listing websites, Google will be more certain about the accuracy of the information. Therefore, registering for other business listings, including those on Facebook and Yelp, will increase the chances of your website showing up on the first page of Google results. In addition, you should try to register for medical-specific business listing sites, which will also help you gain exposure.
3. Pay for Sponsored Social Media Posts
Earlier this year, Facebook took steps that reduced the effectiveness of free, or organic, marketing that you can conduct on its website. Other major social websites will probably soon follow suit, greatly limiting the effectiveness of organic social media marketing.
Paid social media ads offer important benefits compared to organic marketing campaigns. With paid social media marketing, you can target specific groups of users. For example, if you’re a pediatrician, you can use Facebook to present your ads only to users between the ages of 25 and 40 who have children and live within 15 miles of your office. Or, if you’re a plastic surgeon, you can target your ads to people who live within 30 miles of your office and whose household income exceeds $150,000. Furthermore, your paid social media ads will reach more people in total than organic campaigns and will be shown to users who’re more likely to become patients.
4. Send Out Email Newsletters
Sending email newsletters is a cheap but effective way of engaging your target market. This is because you can send newsletters to your existing patients, which will remind them about your practice, increasing the likelihood of them utilizing it again.
In addition, email newsletters are an effective means of targeting leads. If you speak at a local health seminar or other types of events, you should ask the audience members to provide you with their email addresses.
Also, utilizing a technique called email capture, you should post interesting, relevant articles on social media and require people to provide you with their email addresses before they can read the articles. Then, you can send newsletters to all the individuals whose email addresses you obtain. Hopefully, after reading your email newsletters, these people will become your patients.
5. Write Guest Posts and Articles for Medical Publications
To promote your medical practice and demonstrate your expertise, you should write articles for medical publications or guest posts for reputable medical blogs. By writing this type of content, you can introduce your practice to potential patients. This is a particularly effective method for specialist doctors, as guest blogging can attract patients to your practice who conduct research about their conditions.
Conclusion: Marketing Your Medical Practice Matters!
As you can see, the Internet is a powerful tool for marketing your medical practice. If you follow the blueprint we laid out above, your practice will attract more patients going forward.
Editorial Note: Any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author's alone, and have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.
