What do you need to do to successfully market your medical practice?
In a world where the internet plays a large role in patient and consumer decisions, medical doctors more than ever need to make sure their brand is properly represented. Today we would like to answer the top 5 frequently asked questions about marketing services. Let’s get it started shall we?
Why medical practice needs a robust online presence and what are its benefits of it?
Simply put, any doctor who would like to have an imprint online and be in control of their own name brand should own his or her online properties. Yes, there are millions of websites that will automatically populate your name and randomly assign it to themselves, and even worse, you have no say whatsoever. To address this issue, you as a physician can own properties that will rank higher (1st, 2nd, 3rd pages) on Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc… To do that, you need to make sure that your online properties are authoritative and fully SEO optimized by the rules dictated by major search engines.
The biggest point here is of course to get you the right patients to your doors, showcase your academic and technical expertise and have some sort of online legacy as a medical doctor.
What physicians can do to own a major stake in online properties with their own brand names?
The first step in any healthcare marketing strategy is to perform a simple Google search of yourself and see what you can find? One of the major websites that automatically populate your name are institutions you are affiliated with and medical biography websites such as Doximity, WebMD, HealthGrades, ZocDoc, and review websites. When it comes to your institutional websites, you can speak to content editors to optimize your biography to your liking, however, some institutions are extremely protective of that and will not add any information beyond what they already added, however you can try. What concerns other websites such as WebMD, HealthGrades, review websites, etc. then, you can register on their website and claim your profile and edit it to your liking and submit it for approval. Pay close attention to your review websites, if you have one of those common last names in the country, make sure reviews are truly about you and not some random physicians. So, you need to be vigilant about your online representation. To maximize your presence and have full control of the provided information, at Scientissimum we recommend building your own personal website. Physicians who work in academia or private practice can both rip the benefits of representing themselves the way they truly want! Plus we optimize each website to the maximum exposure and according to the latest evidence-based SEO and design practices.
The next step we recommend looking at - is your social media profiles. Social media has one of the largest online traffic in the world, therefore websites such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok usually rank very high with your name on them. Make sure your brand identity is unified with your website guidelines, the same graphics, the same color, wording, etc.
What is a typical process of building a brand new website?
At Scientissimum we start by survey and simple questions and answers. We understand each doctor or practice intimately. We, then move to quantitative and qualitative research to get the right data about your specialty, ideal patient, or your personal academic goals. We emphasize the word - “personalization” your website is all about you and we want to build a website that you could be proud of. If you are not sure what design to choose from, you can provide several examples of the websites that you really enjoy and the rest is up to us.
When looking for the right company or person to build your website, you need to make sure the person behind building your website has credentials and a proven track record of building websites. Too many times at Scientissimum we hear that “my relative just took a web design class and something happened to it and we don’t know how to fix it”. While we have nothing against the people who prefer to Do-It-Yourself kind of job, this is not our cup of tea and we will respectfully decline these kinds of projects. When we start the project our goal is to deliver a work of art that is technically, academically sound, and most importantly tasteful. What else, we will make sure the website is optimized to your end marketing and business development goals; let it be more patients, better brand recognition, or simply an authoritative/expert website in the field of your practice specialty.
Can healthcare marketing strategies be truly evidence-based?
Believe it or not, marketing history goes as early as 1500 BCE and as part of this history, science played a big role. Actual professional marketers started learning about human behavior, customer or patient reactions, color coding, and what triggers contribute to the behavior on and offline. Hence, the biggest technological and medical companies want to get hands-on data. The actual data will tell or predict the human’s behavior, decisions, and more. When implementing any marketing strategy whether for doctors, hospitals, or medical devices, at Scientissimum we make sure all our decisions are backed up by science and proven methods. We, at Scientissimum, publish papers and make sure our clients rip the benefits of our knowledge and expertise. We constantly update our knowledge in the medical and marketing industries to offer our clients the best of this world. So when you decide to commit to any marketing activities, especially in a strict industry such as healthcare, make sure each step is truly evidence-based and has a proven result.
What to do if you don’t have time to manage your presence online?
While committing to having your presence online takes some time out of your busy day, it’s essential to be present during the beginning and the end of the project. Additionally, it’s important to note when you are building your website, you need to maintain it. This kind of maintenance takes time and money out of your pocket. This is a very common scenario in many marketing agencies. At Scientissimum, however, we understand that online competency may not be your forte, therefore, we can build your online identity around your resources and needs. We can even build a website that doesn’t need maintenance. Now, we are not talking about a website that can update itself with fresh content monthly, but we will make sure that you don’t need to spend large money on the IT department to maintain your website. We can handle it all.
We hope you learned something new today and this article shined some light on how to approach your online marketing. Are you ready to get your brand to the next level? At Scientissimum we cover a full scope of marketing and business development services that can drastically elevate your medical marketing needs.