The start of a new financial year is a good time for reflecting on your practice’s business performance. Marketing is a key part of driving patients to your door, yet we often hear from practices that they don’t know where to begin when it comes to measuring their return on investment. This, in turn, can make you hesitate when it comes to justifying further advertising spend.
We recently collated our Healthcare Marketing and ROI Guide. This simple reference outlines 8 proven ways to create measurable marketing campaigns – and, importantly, analyse their impact.
Digital advertising – everything from paid search to social – in particular can seem a daunting prospect to practice owners and managers. The good news is, there are key tips and tricks that can help you to succeed on each platform.
Whether you are looking to try a new marketing campaign for your practice, or reinvigorate your current marketing spend, here’s a recap of the most useful resources from our Marketing Masterclass series.
Building a good online foundation – the essentials
Your website
First things first, if you are going to drive people to your practice website, you’ll want to ensure it’s looking sharp.
If you are confident enough to try DIY, check out our practical guide for creating a website.
If you prefer outsourcing for specialised help, we share our thoughts on the pros and cons of choosing between a web agency or a freelance designer.
Once you’ve got your site structure in place, here’s our advice for 7 common pitfalls your website should avoid.
Social media marketing
With today’s connected digital economy, it’s also a good idea to have a presence for your practice on social media – provided you plan to update your page with posts, news, events or photos relatively often. Having a social media page that only gets updated a couple of times a year is not a good reflection on your business; in patients’ minds it’s akin to having a boarded-up shopfront with tumbleweed rolling past!
If you do decide to give it a try, we outline how to create a successful Facebook page for your business. You can even add an online booking plugin to enable you to accept appointments directly from your Facebook business page.
Once you are satisfied with your Facebook page and are feeling more confident with the platform, you can consider trying Facebook Ads to target potential new clients in your local area. Whilst the ad interface can seem daunting at first, our step-by-step guide to Facebook Ads Manager will help walk you through it.
Marketing your practice – online and traditional
Campaign design and measurement
We recently compiled a list of 8 proven ways to advertise your practice, including some local area marketing ideas you may not have considered.
Your proven guide to healthcare marketing - and how to measure it
Healthcare Marketing & ROI Guide
It’s important that no matter what marketing approach you choose, you are able to measure its impact afterwards. Whether it be booking numbers, or traffic to your website, as management guru Peter Drucker once said: “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
Our Marketing Masterclass blog on how to calculate your advertising return on investment will teach you how to measure the seemingly unmeasurable.
Word of mouth
You only get one chance to make a good first impression with patients, so be sure to make it count. There are 5 simple ways you can start to improve your chances of gaining positive word of mouth referrals at your practice.
Becoming more technical – Search Engine Marketing and Optimisation
Search Engine Marketing via Google Ads
Paid search activity (otherwise known as Search Engine Marketing or SEM) can be used to drive both brand awareness and attract new customers, making it one of the most important digital marketing channels a business can have in its advertising arsenal.
Simply put, SEM allows you to have advertisements for your practice appear right when the patients are searching or “googling” for medical practices in your area.
The key benefit of SEM is you only pay when people interact with your ad – by either clicking to visit your website or to call your practice.
Practices frequently ask us how paid search activity can work for their business. Knowing how to correctly run and optimise paid search ads to ensure you don’t waste budget is a specialised skill set in itself. Check out our introductory guide to cover the fundamentals you need to know, plus the 5 key benefits to using Google Ads.
Enhancing your website for SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), is the technical process of increasing the quantity and quality of visits you gain through to your website from organic (ie. unpaid) search results on Google. This differs from SEM, which (as outlined above) involves paying for your listing to appear higher on Google results when patients are searching online.
One of our recent blogs will help guide you through the sometimes murky waters of SEO.
In Summary
There are a range of resources available to help ensure your practice’s marketing is impactful this financial year. Now is the time to resolve to implement effective tracking, trial new platforms and monitor your performance. As always, if you’d like any advice or tips on how best to market your business, our HealthEngine Practice Consultants are more than happy to offer free advice and guidance.
Get in touch
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