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SEO Tips For Medical Marketing Campaigns

7/26/2010

Even if a medical practice has a great web site, it’s pointless if no one can find it. To ensure that your medical web site has great search engine visibility, it’s essential to plan a medical marketing campaign that includes an effective SEO strategy. SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, consists of optimizing web sites through link building, content creation, and on-site optimization techniques so they rank better on the search engines.

According to statistics, approximately eight million Americans search for medical information online each day. To ensure that even a small portion of those eight million people make it to your medical web site, you need to increase your site’s search engine visibility with SEO. In order to develop an effective search engine optimization strategy for your medical marketing campaign, work with an Internet marketing entity, like BAC Medical Marketing, that specializes in the healthcare field. Medical SEO poses unique requirements that only expert marketing specialists can fulfill.

Keyword Research

SEO primarily starts with keyword research. To start, medical practices can list relevant keywords related to their specialization, treatments, services, geographical area, and diseases and conditions treated. After brainstorming a broad range of relevant terms, you can use web-based keyword research tools to determine specifically what relevant words and phrases your potential patients are actually searching for online. You can target as many keywords as pages that your website has. In general, it’s effective to optimize each page for one to two primary keywords. You can also use several other related terms on each page.

Link Building

Another important and effective way to bring traffic to your web site is through link building. Search engines judge the importance, authority, and relevancy of your web site based on the number of other web sites that link to your site. The more relevant the web sites are that link to you, the stronger those links are considered. In the early days of medical SEO, it was not uncommon for SEO companies to buy links and submit web sites to various directories in order to generate links. However, as search engines continue to evolve, they increasingly devalue directory links. They have gone as far as to blacklist web sites that pay for links.

In order to generate legitimate links for your web site, your best bet is to focus on a content marketing strategy. People are attracted to great content, so if you build great content throughout your site and on your blog, you’re bound to attract links eventually. However, content marketing is not a “build it and they will come” strategy. You have to write great content and then market it like crazy in order to spread the word. One great way to build links organically is through social media marketing. So, once you create a blog and web site content, you can market your content via social media networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Another way to accumulate links is through contacting other web sites in your field and asking them if they would post your link. You can ask big bloggers and webmasters in your field for links politely by telling them how much your content would benefit their readers. You can also ask bloggers to exchange links with you, but this practice is generally frowned upon in the blogosphere. Another way to get good links is by researching your competitors’ back links and finding out if you can get back links from the same sites.

It’s important to update your web site regularly in order to attract links and traffic. Furthermore, search engines tend to value web sites that are updated frequently. Keyword research should also be something that you make a constant effort to do to ensure that your site is optimized for the latest keywords in your niche. Keywords may also change depending on the season, so make sure you create content with seasonal trends in mind.

On-Site Optimization

To ensure that search engines can crawl and index your site properly, you have to use on-site optimization techniques. Some basics of on-site optimization include create a site map, alt tags, header tags, and internal anchor text links that contain target keywords. Another important aspect of on-site optimization is content creation. Your site must be content-rich in order to rank better on search engines. Hire a qualified search engine optimization entity to help you optimize your medical practice’s web site for target terms. Furthermore, make sure that your site is designed with SEO in mind. For example, avoid creating a site purely with Flash, because Flash web sites are very difficult to optimize.

An effective medical SEO strategy requires constant care and effort. Hire experienced medical marketing specialists to help you achieve and retain high search engine rankings. Search engine algorithms are constantly shifting, so it’s more important than ever to invest in an ongoing SEO strategy.

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Add Meaning Into Your Marketing

2/1/2010

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Do you often market according to a method or system which is well thought out and well planned? Do you market based on real data gathered methodically and systematically? Do you concentrate on results that you can measure and quantify? Or you often fall prey to marketing gimmicks that are made on impulse just because you feel the slowdown in practice performance?

Many practices often find themselves having marketing campaigns such as pamphlet printing or brochure printing that focus on getting instant results. They tend to concentrate on putting more emphasis on attracting their target audience and not on a lasting relationship with this audience. This then makes you very frustrated when your patients only come see you once and never go back for another visit. So you go back on relying on marketing gimmicks to attract the attention of other potential patients.

Sure, you can attract new patients every time with your fashionable and trendy marketing campaigns. But the thing is, you will not be able to have repeat patients that would mean a steady stream of income for your practice. Instead of capitalizing on your benefits to build and encourage stronger relationships with your patients, you lose them because you stop after just the attraction part – you do not work on making your offer stronger so as to keep these first time patients in your practice.

The key is to make your marketing campaigns more meaningful such as your pamphlets and brochures. Give them more value; not just instant magnets that carry your message. Striving for business growth by keeping your patients in your fold is better than having to try to attract new patients every time.

Here is how:

Do not contradict your own campaign. Make sure that everything works according to the game plan. From your in-office displays to the staff who answers your calls – all these should be able to carry the brand value you want for your practice. Do not let your limited budget make you look unprofessional and unappealing. Think and plan carefully to the minutest detail. Not only should your marketing collateral carry your brand image, it should be apparent in everything you have for your practice – from the moment your patients read your message in your pamphlets or brochures, to the time that they actually use your services.

Build relationships with your marketing campaigns. Stop making your campaigns as mere tactics to make a sale. Instead, aim to build relationships with your audience. Engage your target audience with your marketing collateral. Look for ways to have the trendy media aids help you build lasting bonds to ensure that your practice will be at the top of your field.

Do not get tied with the newest trend. Although they may work right now, trends usually dwindle away when newer ones come out. So do not become fashion rejects. Invest in marketing aids that can promote longer.

Finally, always bear in mind that marketing is never-ending work. It needs to evolve along with your practice. Be sure to keep your marketing campaigns up to date. Revitalize your data and goals every time with the objective of engaging your patients in growing your practice.

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Marketing Without The Frustration

1/25/2010

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Do you often get frustrated with the outcome of your marketing efforts? Most of the time, do you get lackluster results rather than what you expect? Even with a marketing campaign supported by real data gathered methodically and conscientiously, do you most often than not fall prey to promotional aids that are created on a whim? Instead of planning carefully and strategically, is your impulse to run promotions based on the latest media trend? If you answered yes to any or all of the above, you are not alone!

This is especially true nowadays when you are working on a limited budget for your marketing campaigns. Just because business is slow, you tend to go for media trends that may be offering a great rate or even those that are fashionable, hoping that these media aids will help get their practice out of the doldrums.

However, although these marketing activities can help you gain attention from your target audience, they lack what it takes to build brand value. Instead of focusing on giving more meaning to your marketing efforts, you tend to go for something that would give you instant attention for quick repair of your situation. It is like applying first-aid for temporary relief. Your pain would be taken care of for now, but it will not last very long.

So rather than go for instant marketing aids to attract attention, why not make your marketing campaigns more meaningful? Instead of putting more weight on instant sales, you have to work on creating stable relationships with your target audience.

Marketing campaigns such as pamphlets and brochures may mean immediate results that can increase your sales, but it should not stop there. Instead, aim on encouraging more repeat business from your patients so you can help your practice survive in your chosen field. You have to capitalize on what you have to offer and make sure that you build brand value from these benefits.

How do you do this then? By focusing your efforts on defining clearly your target market and the right message to give them. Your marketing campaign definitely would have more meaning to your target audience if the message you give them is what they are looking for. Having the right message for the right target audience goes a long way in having a meaningful and effective marketing strategy that would bring in a huge difference between having a successful practice and a failed one. By providing your target audience with the right message, you are able to help your patients make a wise decision whenever they engage your services.

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Contaminated Gene Pool

12/14/2009

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Recently, I came across an article on the BBC web site about Robert Klark Graham’s controversial repository of genius sperm. In case you haven’t heard of this project, it was a wealthy eugenicist’s scheme to breed Wunderkinder by using only the finest sperm, hand-produced by the intellectual elite of the 1980s and 1990s, implanted only into the ova of the married and affluent.

What drew my attention was the list of comments at the end of the article. I was expecting the usual range of indignant comments about millionaires/scientists/Americans trying to play God, with perhaps one or two people sticking up for the pariah. Surprisingly, not a single comment had been posted (at the time of my reading) that disapproved of Graham’s project. Evidently the BBC readership is content to accept favorable genetic constitutions as marketable commodities. This is truly a unique marketing strategy.

What surprised me more was that one reader had written:

"In Britain most sperm is donated by students, especially medical students, so in all probability your 'donor' is going to be much brighter than average anyway.”

This was news to me. I cannot say that I had previously put much thought into the exact provenance of banked sperm, but I can see how it might draw students. It’s money for tugging old rope. And I suppose that medical students would be more likely than other flavors of student to consider selling their sperm because (a) they’re used to handling their own bodily fluids, (b) they hang around the kind of places where fertility clinics are advertised, (c) they have a pragmatic approach to recombining genetic material and (d) they have six years of student debt to pay off. Also, they tend to be a bit weird. I can understand how they might have come to be the stereotype of impoverished sperm donors, but is there any truth to the cliché?

As it turns out, the answer is no. Despite casual assertions on various web pages, including another BBC article, that most sperm donors are students (particularly medical), the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority maintain that today most donors are aged over 30, with the most common age band being 36-40. However, 11 years ago nearly 70% of donors were under 30, with those aged 18-24 being the most seminally generous. The HFEA web site does not give a profile of the donors according to profession, so I cannot say how many of them were medical students.

However, I'd like to think that there are a disproportionate number of ten-year-olds running around today with unusual predispositions towards autopsying their dolls and palpating their playmates. These will be the doctors of 2020!

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Marketing Strategies For Your Medical Practice

9/29/2009

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Physicians that put out their shingle in the sixties and seventies have been through a lot. They enjoyed the golden years of private practice, endured the painful intrusion of managed care and have survived the somewhat tumultuous aftermath. They are strong, but some are dismayed and disenchanted with their current position. Many have reached a time when they expected to take it easy, yet they find themselves working harder than ever. Others are concerned about a continued decline in their patient base. With all their experience and still eager to work, the practice is shrinking and they don’t know what to do. Here are a few suggestions to help you jumpstart your practice.

First, take a look at the reasons you might be experiencing a dwindling practice. There are likely to be a number of reasons. Often the referral base you depend on today is the same one of 30 years ago, but not all of those physicians are still around, some have relocated and others have retired. At the same time, word of mouth referrals decline as your own patients age. You will lose some due to death and others move out of the area for various reasons. Add to this the patients that have switched to managed care plans you don’t belong to and the shrinkage becomes obvious. Solo practices are particularly vulnerable, as some managed care plans will only contract with group practices.

Once you look at the factors involved in the practice decline, you can explore various remedies.

Begin by developing relationships with young physicians that are entering your community. They need seasoned physicians to break into the medical community and to support them in the community at large. New primary care physicians want to know which specialists to send their patients to. They will gain confidence in your ability to treat their patients from both a personal and a clinical point of view once you open the lines of communication and strengthen the relationship. Younger specialists need to know as much as they can about the primary care physicians that serve the community, especially those that have been in practice for an extended period of time. They will appreciate your knowledge of the community and the politics of medicine.

Look to the medical staff office at your hospital for a roster of new staff members. Develop an approach to become familiar with the new doctors in town. If there are only a few, your job will be simple. If there are many, you will need to set a goal on how many you want to contact each month and what criteria you will use to prioritize the list.

Meet personally with each physician you have targeted, whether it be the specialty group or the primary care physicians. Invite them for a business lunch or perhaps to join you at a local Medical Society meeting to introduce them to other members of the medical community. Explore his or her personal and professional interests and begin to develop a profile on each physician.

For those that have a sports interest you share, invite them for a round of golf or to attend a sporting event of interest. For those with similar family interests, you may want to ask them to join you for a community picnic or annual event.

Your spouse may be helpful in nurturing relationships, as well. For example, both spouses may be interested in community service work, or education, or have their own private businesses. Whatever the commonality, be sure to make that connection active by introducing them and encouraging the relationship.

Stay actively involved in hospital activities and committee work, and use this as a source to work in tandem with some of the newer physicians. Hospital Grand Rounds and committee involvement can pay off big dividends in connecting with newer doctors.

It is also very effective to tap into the media. Contact the health and medicine editor of your local newspaper. Inquire about a possible by-line and invite the editors to call you for an interview whenever a hot health care topic is ready to hit the news.

It is also a good idea to develop a practice business portfolio. It should include a black and white press photo, your curriculum vitae, a copy of any recent by-line articles and a list of areas you have specialized expertise and knowledge in. You might also include a list of lectures you are willing to conduct for community groups. Such a portfolio is good for contacting both the media and community organizations.

The business portfolio is helpful in opening doors to get on a radio talk show, as well. We tend to think that they won’t be interested, but our experience proves they are most likely to welcome physicians who have something to say. It’s important to be prepared before you make the contact. Decide on a couple of relevant current health care issues you can speak about. Then set up an appointment or a telephone conference to discuss this. If it is a telephone conference, you should send your business portfolio in advance. If it is a meeting, bring it with you. Remember to be as personable as possible.

Use these tried and true tips and you will begin to see your practice reap the benefits. It can also help to encourage your office manager to be active in community organizations. Pay her fees to join a local service group as your representative and to volunteer you as a program speaker. Also encourage your office manager to become active in local chapters of practice management organizations such as the Professional Association of Health Care Office Managers (PAHCOM) or Medical Group Management Association (MGMA). If there aren’t chapters of the organizations in your community, by all means encourage your practice manager to establish one. Contact with other office managers is vital to keeping your practice alive.

If you need help into these ideas into action or exploring other ways to jump start your practice, call BAC Medical Marketing. We will make it a top priority and help you obtain the results you want.

The most important asset in your practice is the people. This includes you and your staff, as well as the patients. Be sure your service is superior and that you and everyone working for you are committed to making the patients feel important.

Do everything you can to take care of and attract patients of varying age ranges. Above all, be personable. That’s what patients really want and that’s what they will talk about among their friends and colleagues. It’s your practice; make the most of it!

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