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Ty Allen SocialClimb Interview

Ty Allen Social Climb Interview

Today we’re going to be joined by Ty Allen, the CEO of SocialClimb. SocialClimb is Ty’s fourth successful business in the marketing and technology space. He is passionate about building systems that actually grow practices and improve patient experiences.

SocialClimb enables thousands of physicians to automatically attract new patients to their practices by building their online social reputations and automatically targeting ideal new patients. Delivering more than one million patient per customer interactions every month, SocialClimb helps practices transform themselves inside and out.

Ty and his wife have five beautiful daughters and live in Alpine, Utah. Ty enjoys golfing, and mountain biking, and we’re so excited for him to be joining us today as he shares insights into how your medical practice can benefit from reputation management, and reviews, and directory listings online.

In this interview we discuss:

  • Why reviews are so important for a medical practice
  • Where reviews should be posted (what directories are most important for healthcare)?
  • How can office administrators solicit reviews?
  • What technology exists for getting reviews?
  • Once you get a review, what should you do?

 Listen to the Medical Marketing Podcast:


Caitlin McDonald: Wonderful, thank you so much, Ty for joining us on our podcast today. To get started, we’d love to learn a little bit more about your story, and SocialClimb’s story.

Ty Allen: Great, thanks, Caitlin, I really appreciate the opportunity to participate in the podcast today, and maybe just to share a little bit about why we started SocialClimb and the reasons we’re so passionate about what we do for practices, is I think a great way to start.

So, my personal story behind this is six years ago, I was involved in an accident wherein I fractured my neck and at C4, and had a spinal cord injury. At the time of the injury, of course, I didn’t know what had really happened in my neck. The ambulance took me to the hospital, and the emergency room doctors did a great job, they quickly diagnosed my issue, and they knew that the fracture was there, and that I also had what is called a central cord syndrome.

And at that level in the neck, I was pretty lucky that I was still able to breathe. But when I first had been injured, I actually felt like I was a quadriplegic and then over the next half an hour, I started getting some sensation back and some functionality back, but I was actually in a lot of pain by the time they got me to the emergency room. So I remember vividly laying on a backboard after the doctors had gotten the diagnosis, and they came to me and said that my case was too complex for the small hospital that I’d been taken to and that I needed to either go to a larger hospital north of me or a larger hospital south of me, and the ER doctor said, “These are the names of the two physicians, spine surgeons, who are on call, one at each of the hospitals. I need you to choose which hospital, therefore which spine surgeon is going to do your surgery. You have five minutes to make that decision.”

And my wife was at the hospital at that time and I remember looking at her and neither of us had any idea how to make that decision. Eventually, we made the decision by asking a few other providers who were very reticent to give us any information, but we had to make a decision so we did. And in my process of rehab, so I had surgery, I went into a rehab process that… I was in the hospital for about a month, and went through inpatient and outpatient rehab and… And I’m doing very well today, in a large part to the great care that I received from a lot of providers

But there were probably eight to 10 decisions I had to make during that process about who would be my occupational therapist, who’d be my physical therapist, what inpatient facility would I have myself go to, what outpatient facilities would I use for rehab, who my rehab doctor would be, and just a lot of decisions that I just, as a consumer of Medical care, I did not have the data to make that decision.

So I realized, while, going through this process that there was a problem, that a lot of these practices and physicians don’t know how to tell their story in a way that consumers of medical care today can use it to find the right provider for them. So that’s where the genesis of SocialClimb came from.

We’re really passionate about helping providers, great providers, tell their story, and attract patients in the way that patients seek to find providers today. And that is the story behind SocialClimb. And again, it’s not a story I always tell every potential customer, or every person I talk to, but it is the reason that I personally am so passionate about what we do.

 

Caitlin McDonald: What a powerful story, and thank you for sharing such a personal story about why you started SocialClimb. And as a consumer of healthcare and a marketing agency that helps healthcare practices, we know how important reputation management and reviews are as a way to build trust and really showcase your own medical practice story as a way to bring new patients in the door. Can you talk a little bit about why reviews and reputation management is so important for healthcare centers?

Why are Reviews and Reputation Management so Important for Healthcare Centers?

Ty Allen: Sure, yeah. One of the things that I learned pretty quickly is that I’m not unique in the way that I seek for care, when I wanna buy a product, I take my phone out and do a search. I go to Amazon or Google and I do a search. And I do the same thing for medical care. Today, it’s a great thing that now we have a lot of this data available to us online. But it wasn’t the case even six years ago, a lot of it wasn’t available

So getting a physician or practice’s data online in the right way, so getting the listings, the optimization of those listings, and the reviews from real patients out there is super critical because the next potential patient is simply gonna take their phone out and do a search, they’re gonna ask Google in most cases, “Where can I get help with problem X? Or where can I find a provider that can help me with problem Y?

And if those reviews from patients are not out there, and if those pages are not owned by you as a physician, you are not gonna show up. Even five or six years ago, most practices and physicians thought, “Look, all I gotta do is get a website set up. My website has to be great, it’s gotta be optimized.” And it’s not to say that websites are not still valuable, it’s just that so many patients today do a search, find a physician because of their reputation online, choose that physician, even make the call to the practice straight from that listing, having never gone to the practice’s website. So a website is still valuable. It’s just that there are so many other ways to now tell the story of the practice, and the physician online in ways that patients actually find… Help find your practice.

 

Caitlin McDonald: And then where should these reviews be posted? What types of directories should a medical practice make sure that they are on?

What Directories Should a Medical Practice Use?

Ty Allen: Great, great question. So four years ago, when we first started this, we saw a lot of emphasis on a lot of different platforms, right. You’d hear people say, “There’s 70 different platforms that you should put your listings on and make sure they’re all correct.” And at the time that may have been a bit true. But today it’s coalescing. So we really think that Google is 80% of the value for a practice. Google is the focus. So, Google My Business pages for each doctor and each office location. In fact, if a physician practices in multiple locations, they really should have a Google My Business page in each location where they practice if they’re more than five miles apart, because local search is what’s going on here. When Google does a local search, it’s very first local.

So a great reputation downtown for a physician does not help somebody in the suburbs find that physician, but if that physician works two days a week out in the suburbs, having a strong reputation out there is really important on Google. Now, Google used to kind of be just the judge.

By that I mean you would do a search and Google would say, “Well, HealthGrades ranks this physician this way, and Facebook does this, and Vitals says this, and RateMDs says this, and Facebook says, or Yelp says this.”

And so, that summation of data from all those other areas would pull into the search for Google. We’ve seen a trend over the last few months, or… Sorry, a year, year and a half that Google is now the judge and the jury. So, Google seems to trust its own data on its own listing’s pages for doctors and practices, more than it trusts that third party data. So when a practice has done a good job helping Google understand that it does find work for patients by getting reviews from patients and optimizing pages on Google, then the Google results reflect that.

So we would say Google, number one. Facebook has some really interesting ways, with Facebook… The way that your patients can go on and they don’t necessarily leave reviews in a traditional way, that they are kind of recommendations. Yelp is often important. HealthGrades is very important. So, probably Google, Facebook, HealthGrades, Vitals and Yelp are the top platforms, that we see really having an influence on how patients find physicians.

 

Caitlin McDonald: So you mentioned Google has become judge and the jury for their own organization of those listings, do you feel as though they take a look at on­site SEO or is it really just looking at your Google My Business listing, seeing if that’s optimized and kind of seeing what reviews you have there?

What Do You Need to Have on Google My Business Listing to Stand Out as a Medical Center?

Ty Allen: Yeah, we see that they do both, actually. So we see that the link from your Google My Business page where you’re connecting basically to a doctor’s profile or to a practice’s profile on the website, if that link goes to a page, that has the same keywords that are in the doctor’s profile and in the doctor’s category on the Google My Business page, we see those pages rank more highly. So it is still very important to have a highly ranking website that you can link to from the Google My Business pages, so that the page, the Google page ranks higher, and if you get those keyword… Kind of that keyword triangle set up correctly, if the category chosen on the Google My Business page, those same keywords from that category on the physician’s profile page on the website, and those keywords also included in the business description on the physician’s Google My Business page, we see a nice synergy there that causes Google My Business pages to rank higher.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Okay, that makes sense. I can see how it all works together there. Now, are you recommending that in addition to having the medical practice have a Google My Business page, that each of the physicians have their own Google My Business page, as well?

Physician Google My Business Listings

Ty Allen: We do recommend that, yes. We’ve seen policy change from Google on that, and we’ve seen it become a really valuable way for a practice to attract patients. Now sometimes a practice doesn’t wanna do that and they wanna just promote their practice as a brand and they don’t really want their physicians to be front and center, and sometimes they’re worried that those physicians will then take that reputation and leave, and it doesn’t strengthen the partnership in the practice, but honestly, it’s more valuable in the search process if a practice will embrace the concept of each of the providers, each of the doctors, we don’t typically recommend this for PAs or nurse practitioners or even PTs, but the doctors themselves, having their own Google My business page, as well as the practice having a Google My Business page, that gives that practice more footprint in the market to attract patients and making those pages highly optimized is also very important.

So when we say that, we believe there are 10 key components on a Google My Business page that really help it rank highly, so when our platform actually sinks a Google page in, it runs a scorecard analysis on each of those components, so the optimization score, and that is completely independent of the number of reviews. We actually see that a page can ranks more highly without any reviews if all the components on a Google My business page are properly configured. Then, of course, you add reviews to that, you add postings, you answer and respond to questions that get posted by patients, you reply to reviews, you do all those great things on a Google My Business page, and it just moves it higher and higher and higher, but the first step is claim a page for each doc in each location, optimize those pages, and then start the process of building a reputation.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Great, so it sounds as though an office administrator has quite a bit of work or they can turn to a service like yours to help them with this. So, what could an office administrator do to make sure that that they are soliciting reviews from patients?

How to Solicit Reviews from Patients

Ty Allen: Yeah, so the basics, and as you said, this can all be done manually. If an administrator has the time, they can go and claim the pages, go through each of the pages and get the pictures, the configuration, the hours, the description, the links to the website, get all of that stuff done, that’s all very doable. You can use Google’s interfaces to do that, to manage these Google My Business pages. And then once you’ve done that, you can say print a little card and hand it out to each of the patients. And on that card it has a link that they could type into their phone or into their computer and click that link and go out and leave a review for the doctor.

All very doable, and something that we highly recommend practices consider doing. Typically what we find is most practice managers or marketing people, or front desk people, and these practices are already overworked. So our approach to this is to automate all of that process. So I’ve already talked through claiming the page, optimizing the page, all those things, but let’s talk about how the best way to get patients to leave feedback.

So we’ve seen groups do everything from putting a computer in the lobby and asking patients to walk up to that computer, log in to their personal accounts on that computer and then leave a review for a doctor, to some groups, even as I said, handing out a card and hoping patients will take the card home and type that long URL in, and then get to a review page. So, most of those things can work, they’re just not as effective as actually sending a message, automated message, via text to each of the patients. So we actually recommend a text message that goes to the patients that has a nice link on it, a picture from the doctor, and an invitation for the patient to easily click the link, leave a review, typically a patient can do that in about 30 seconds.

The beauty of that process versus the other two that I just talked about, is those patients receive that text message or email on their phone typically, and when they click the link to leave feedback on Google or Facebook or one of these platforms they’re typically are already authenticated to Google, maybe they already have the Facebook app on their phone, that it opens into Facebook. So make it so that it’s so easy that they could do it in less than one minute, and then you actually get in a high enough response rate that you can really move the needle on the reputation.

There’s a couple of other problems I would point out when you try to do it more manually, is you hand somebody a card. It’s a complex URL, the chances of them actually doing it go way down, they’re not gonna type that in and go through that process. And if you ask them to do it in your lobby on a computer, they’ve gotta remember their passwords to log in, then you’ve gotta remember to make sure that that thing gets logged out so you’re not sharing personal data, so the next patient who might walk up to it. But then the worst thing about that option is if you’re making those reviews, many of them from the same computer, on the same IP address, the platforms start to throw those away, the review platforms start to ignore those because they know they’re coming from one IP address and they think they’re fraudulent. So, the most efficient thing to do is to get a message to a patient, on their phone that they can easily click and move through the review process as quickly as possible.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Now SocialClimb as a platform, this is exactly what you do. We have some clients who utilize SocialClimb and it is very straightforward, and very easy for patients to leave those reviews. Honestly, within a couple of hours of turning on the packages with you, we have as marketing managers of Google My Business pages, we have seen reviews come in, when prior to that, maybe one per month would come in.

And it really is making that process easy and simple for the patients as they’re leaving the practice, they get that text message notification. It’s top of mind and that ease of use is just right in their face. So it does make it very easy and streamlined to get those reviews.

 

Ty Allen: Well that’s great to hear that it’s worked well for your client like that. We see that with a lot of groups and as you pointed out, previous to making an effort like this, to invite patients, you typically only get one or two reviews, very few a month, and really unfortunately, they’re often the patient who wants to complain. So, what we’re really doing is enabling that silent majority of happy patients who walk away from a cycle of care with a practice, or a physician, who are very happy, right, they’re the happiest of the patients, but they don’t turn around and say thank you.

They don’t think about it, they’re not passionate about saying, “Thank you,” like a person who’s mad is passionate about saying they’re mad. So what we’re really trying to do is get 10%, that’s the goal, 10% of the happy patients, and we’re asking every patient whether they’re happy or not. Let’s talk about that in just a second. But, get 10% of those happy patients to turn around and say thank you by leaving a social media review for that practice or that doctor. And that adds up really fast and really makes a practice look… Or a physician look great online, because they typically are making 99% of their patients extremely happy.

And we ask those questions, when we invite a patient, we do not gate them. We don’t say, “Hey if you’re happy, leave a public review, if you’re unhappy, don’t do anything or leave a private review.” We ask the question per the policy of most of these review platforms to just invite everyone to leave feedback. The reality is most unhappy patients, given a chance, if you’re asking them how their experience was, they’ll actually turn around and wanna tell you without giving you a bad name online.

So, our process is, “Would you please leave feedback at these public review sites?” If they say yes, they’re taken to the public review sites, if they say no, they’re given an opportunity to say something that comes right back to the practice. So that’s the way to appropriately invite patients to leave feedback, and we typically see that great care providers get great reputations online through this process.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Now, one thing that across all industries, by opening up yourself to getting reviews online do is that you are opening yourself to get bad reviews. And one thing that’s always good to do, especially in the medical industry, is to think about what those responses are going to be for those negative reviews as well as positive reviews as commenting back on any review that you get can help show that you are also an active participant, and really care about your patients. Do you have any tips or insights about how to go about formulating those responses to negative reviews specifically?

 

Ty Allen: Yes. So your point is very, very accurate from my opinion. You wanna respond to any and all reviews. Really, we recommend that a practice responds to all the positive reviews, thank those patients. That is a courteous thing to do in normal human interactions. It’s also a very positive thing to do from Google’s perspective. If you’re getting lots of reviews and you’re actually responding to the reviews, you actually then rank higher. Getting a lot of reviews is great but getting a lot of reviews, that you respond to seems to cause your pages to rank even higher. So, our positive reviews, it’s an easy thing. We actually have a suite of replies, both positive and negative, that are built into our platform that are HIPAA compliant, that we recommend that a practice use.

So now let’s talk about negative feedback. So when you do get negative feedback, our suggestion is to think of it in two ways. First off, you wanna get this conversation offline. So you wanna reply in a respectful way that asks the patient to contact you privately so you can have that conversation offline, and you wanna do that so that everyone can see that you’re proactively and quickly responding to negative feedback. So, you don’t wanna wait a month, you don’t even wanna wait a day. If you get a negative review, you wanna reply within minutes to hours, and then you wanna get that conversation offline, and that helps the next patient who comes along that looks at your feedback then understands that sometimes things do happen

Something out of your control can happen but you care as a practice, and so you respond quickly. And then when you get that patient into a service recovery opportunity, which is what we recommend how you think of these, we actually have a process in our platform that makes it easy for you to track what you’ve done there, make notes on it, share it with your team and even build a little process around it, so that everybody in the organization understands what you got feedback on that didn’t work and that kind of socializes within your organization and also shows how many of those have been resolved.

So when the physician looks through all the feedback, positive and negative, that’s come in for them throughout that month or that week, they can see that anything negative has actually been dealt with or is in the process of being dealt with. So you have several different constituents you’re worried about here. Of course, you are worried about the patient, and responding to them, but as an administrator, you also want to make sure that your physician understands what’s going on, the feedback that’s being brought in, and that you’re actually dealing with it, and kind of solving those issues for them.

 

Caitlin McDonald: That’s such great insights and information there. Ty I see that we are running short on time. Are there any other tips or pieces of advice that you would like to give to our listeners today?

 

Ty Allen: Yeah, actually there is. So we’ve spent this time, it’s been great talking about the importance of building a practice or a physician’s ratings and reviews, and how that can then help them be found more easily online, and that that data is clear. We have thousands of physicians using our platform who see a significant uptick in their visibility and inbound calls and clicks. But to me, the most exciting thing is once a physician or a practice has built a great reputation online, there’s now a new emerging option that lets you take that reputation and easily leverage it to target more specifically, the patient types that you want in the areas where you want them.

That might be a topic of conversation for another podcast at some point, but what I’m really talking about is the ability that Google has recently made available to take a Google My Business page and convert it into an ad that carries that doctor’s great reputation into a targeted ad campaign that can easily be delivered into certain zip codes, or certain cities to go get the patients that a physician wants as they grow their practice.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Yes, and that actually would make an excellent future podcast. We truly believe in the Google Ads interface, and their ability to optimize on the different ad sets and utilizing Smart Campaigns to really tie into the the Google My Business listing. So I would love to tap into your insights and your mind on that as well, and to hear how SocialClimb is able to utilize Google Ads campaigns as a way to further reach the right people online. I think that that’s very powerful for medical practices, and again, it shows how you can get all of these different tools working together to reach new patients and get new patients in the door.

 

Ty Allen: Yeah, awesome, let’s find a time to have that discussion at another time. I really appreciate the opportunity to have been here today, though.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Wonderful, well, Ty, you have shared such great insight talking about why it’s important to be on different directories and solicit reviews, what tools and technologies are out there, as well as what to do once you do get a positive and a negative review. So we really appreciate your time today. Listeners, if you are interested in learning how SocialClimb can benefit your practice, head on over to their website, SocialClimb.com. Ty, you have social media sites as well so I’m sure they can jump on over to Facebook to learn more about your business and the great work that you’re doing.

 

Ty Allen: Great, thank you.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Wonderful thank you so much!

 

Ty Allen Social Climb Interview

 

 

Ty Allen Social Climb Interview

Ty Allen Social Climb Interview

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6 Strategies to Increase Patient Referrals

6 Killer Strategies to Increase Patient Referral

In today’s competitive healthcare environment, it is important to have a strong patient referral base. As a healthcare provider, you are probably aware of how powerful referrals can be for generating new patients and growing your practice.

When done right, a patient referral program can add years of income to your practice. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices your office should maintain to get new patients through the door.

Listen to the Medical Marketing Podcast

Build a strong relationship with referring practices

Professional referrals are the lifeblood of every healthcare organization. Building and nurturing those relationships is essential for bringing in new patients.

Always keep the communication lines open with the referring practice and let them know what steps you will take to address the patient’s condition. Email them, call them from time to time, or arrange lunch appointments with them. Quick updates to the referring physician about the condition and progress of the patient tells them that you are committed to patient care.

Don’t forget to thank anyone who refers a patient to your practice. This will motivate your colleague to refer you more often.

Improve customer experience

Not all referrals come from other practices. Happy patients are more likely to give you good feedback as well as refer you to their family and friends.

To create a memorable experience, it’s important to get your internal house in order so it’s ready to welcome new patients to the practice. You want to ensure that patients feel comfortable and cared for, both in the reception area and exam room. You and your staff should pay close attention to the concerns and queries of your patients and make sure that they are cared for.

A percentage of your new patients should come from referrals by existing patients. If not, then you may need to address your customer service policies. Remember, unhappy patients won’t refer you to their family and friends. Worse, they’ll tell them to stay away.

Reach out on social media

Many patients turn to social networking sites to establish an ongoing relationship with their primary care physician.

The point of social media is to effectively reach your target audience and connect with them. It gives you a tremendous opportunity to interact with patients in ways that are not possible during appointments and consultations. This is your chance to talk to them and have a friendly relation with them.

Promote engagement by starting conversations on various health topics, providing healthcare tips, and alerting patients to new services and discounts you offer. Sharing your blog posts on social media is a great way to provide valuable healthcare information while driving patients to your website to learn more.

When done right, social media marketing can help you enhance your online reputation, solidify your brand, and bolster your authority among patients.

Be a thought leader

Most doctors go into medicine to help patients, not bask in the spotlight. But there is no denying that being a thought leader can help you attract new patients.

Being a thought leader in the healthcare industry requires lots of knowledge, effort, time, and desire to impact change. To achieve this status, you need to make your expertise and ideas known.

Write blog posts that are relevant to your practice, but don’t just write just to have content out there. Make sure that you produce quality content. But it shouldn’t stop at blogging. You can educate existing and potential patients on your healthcare practice by creating videos, podcasts, and newsletters. You can also offer speaking engagements at local hospitals.

Have a web presence

Many healthcare professionals feel as though their practice should be able to thrive on its own through referrals. But given the certainty of change in healthcare, it is important for healthcare providers to have a strong online presence.

Many patients will go online to acquaint themselves with the practice prior to making an appointment. Making a good first impression starts with a well-designed, patient-friendly website. Not only will it give potential patients an easy way to get to know you, but it also makes your practice look and feels engaging.

By having your credentials, education, services, and procedures on your website, you can help instill a sense of trust in your future patients.

Get more mileage from patient testimonials

Patients want to make sure that they receive care from the best doctors in their field. Testimonials can help build trust in your practice and offer validation for the quality of your services.

Tell your patients’ success stories in a way that people will take notice. Quotes and written testimonials can be powerful marketing tools, but videos can bring testimonials to life.

Short two-minute video testimonials will capture the attention of potential patients and drive more patients through the door. To get higher-impact testimonials, you can guide patients by asking leading questions. If you are an eye doctor, you may ask questions like “How has LASIK impacted your life?” or “Are you happy with the results?”

6 Killer Strategies to Increase Patient Referral

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Website Development For Medical Clinics

Website Development For Medical Clinics

On today’s episode of The Social Speak podcast, we’re going to be talking a little bit about website development and specifically our process for website development for your healthcare clinic.

We specialize in creating websites that capture your brand, your voice, your expertise and best position yourself in your medical practice to be found by prospects. Now, when we build a website, we don’t view it as a one-and-done sort of thing. It’s not a brochure that you print out and then you have thousands of copies to hand out.

Healthcare Website Design and Development

A website is an ever growing and changing, and shifting presence online, where we recommend you are continually adding blogposts, uploading videos, creating resources and interviews to engage your prospects and engage your current patients.

So the reason why I want to do this today, is we just finished up a website for one of our clients and our main contact, the office manager sent over such a fabulous note. She writes, “I am beyond thrilled with how everything has turned out so far, and want to thank you so much for all of the hard work. Prior to starting this project, I heard horror stories from some friends and colleagues who have been in charge of website redesigns and had been dreading the process. You and your team made it so easy on us and we could not be happier with the way things have gone. We really look forward to our continued partnership moving forward.”

So this is just one of the many testimonials that we have from a local clinic who had an old website that frankly, they just weren’t thrilled about. The pages were hard to update, they did not include current information, and it was hard to really adjust the functionality, so that it attracted the right people to their organization.

Listen to the Podcast

 

How we create websites for clients

Now, the process that we follow for creating websites for our clients tries to make it as fun and simple as possible. I got a kick out of designing these websites because really I’m able to visualize what that end goal is.

Analyze your current website

Oftentimes, you start with the website and potentially you just can’t stand the look and feel of it. However if we go into the backend and we look and we see that everything really is set up very strongly for Google and you are getting patients and prospects from the website, we might actually tell you, “You know what, there are better ways to spend your budget rather than doing the website redesign.”

Now, if we look in the back end and things are just as messy as they are on the front end, we’ll let you know and we will help you work through a process that we follow for creating the new websites.

Initial conversation

So the first thing that we do is we have an initial conversation, they’ll be with myself, potentially, my business partner will be on the call as well or one of our account managers, and we ask questions,

  • Do you currently have a website, what are websites you like the look and feel of and what are some that you don’t?

This allows us to see if there are similarities between the ones that you like and the ones that you don’t like so that we can replicate by using your own branding and values and purpose and goals, though with items that you do like compared to the ones that you don’t.

  • What are the top concerns about your current website, what are the top goals for your new website?
  • How will you measure if the site is performing, what is the main call to action?

So new consultations booked, appointments scheduled, email sign ups, increased traffic, things like that, so we can track all of that as well as where they’re coming from.

  • Additional functionality that you’d like to see in your new website

Let us know if there are functionalities you’d like to expand on and carry on from your old website.

  • Questions about your current brand standards

Oftentimes, our clients already do have their branding all set and solidified. They have their logos, their fonts, their colors. However, if you are a newer healthcare clinic or want to go through a complete rebranding of your healthcare clinic, we can definitely help with that as well.

We have a few partners that depending on your niche will make a great fit for that branding side. However, a lot of times our clients come to us, their website is just not performing as it should, they’re all set with their branding, all set with their value selection, things like that and we just take that and move it into the 21st century.

  • What is your target market?

So in order to create a website that attracts this target, we need to understand:

  1. Who they are –  so we wanna know who your ideal patient is and understand some of those success stories.
  2. What were they struggling with beforehand and where did they come out the other side, once they were done working with your physicians, your doctors?
  3. What about you, what about your brand?– We wanna know the values and the passions of the doctors, as well as the admin, the administration, so that we can really understand how to capture your unique voice through the website.

We have some websites that we work through where we are rewriting all of the copy on the website, and running it through your medical director to make sure it’s all approved, and then we have other clients who write the content, or already have the content written and they just wanna make sure that it’s displayed the best on a new website.

We find that branding and layout and content really have to all work together in order to have a seamless website. It can’t just have images, and then content built separately. You need to pull them together. We also love to talk about the benefits of working with you. So what are some of those most impactful transformations that your clients realize with working with you?

Plan website’s structure

So once we have all of this information and we have our website kick-off call, we get to work. And the first thing that our team does and I am actually going to hold up a workbook, right here.

So, if you’re listening to the podcast, you can kind of visualize this basically, it’s just very rough sketches of what pages could look like. And this one right here, it has a header. It has icons, events, kinda scrolling testimonials. And so what we do is we take elements that we see on other websites that you have noted that you like the look and feel of, and we see how we can then incorporate similar items into your website.

We typically have a page layout for the home page, then another page layout for the top level services pages, so let’s say you have one service page for all of the different… Oh goodness, thinking of too many different industries [chuckle] for all of the different dental care options that you have. So that page would have one layout, however all of the sub-pages, that go into dental cleaning surgeries, cavity extractions, and things like that, would have a different layout. So those are three layouts there, a layout for your contact page and probably a layout for your about page. And so each of these pages, they’re going to have a similar look and feel, however we’ve found by differentiating them by layout a little bit helps to make sure that somebody can move smoothly through the website.

As we’re building the site, we also make sure that we really understand your page hierarchy. So, this means how do all of your pages and services relate to one another? How should Google be ranking them and how can we link between the pages to get that best search engine optimization for you?

Search Engine Optimization

While we’re doing that and putting the content on the pages, we’re doing keyword research. Potentially the wording and the language that you use within your practice isn’t what people are actually looking for on Google.

So we wanna make sure that we are writing for search engines, writing to showcase your expertise and then also writing to best position your practice to be the one that clients and prospects then choose to become a patient.

Web design and content approval

Now this whole process, we like to move through it actually fairly quickly, at least that design element. We recognize that it does take time for content to be approved, messaging to be approved. However, our process is typically a one-month turnaround, for smaller website projects.

Turnaround time

Within the first two weeks, we wanna get you a working design, a working layout that you can poke around and see where we’re going for that look and feel. Typically, at this point, we’ll have that home page, about page, main services page, sub-services page and contact page. If I haven’t said that, contact page, all kind of set, ready to go.

Then, if you already have the content and you have minimal additional functionality, maybe a blog on potentially lead capture form and we utilize Influx MD for most of our healthcare clinic websites. If you need that, again, typically a month, we can get most of the site all set ready to go and then just that approval process might take another month.

So we like to have a website started and completed within that same quarter. If you want additional functionality, such as payment center, maybe a more robust directory listing for your physicians, scheduling tools and things like that, might take a little bit longer.

Integrating Influx MD

If we are integrating Influx MD in there, they do have an onboarding process as well to make sure that we are tapping into the systems and processes that you already have and really bringing those to help your administration through the whole process of that initial scheduling.

Influx MD is a HIPAA compliant form system so that it really taps into your current processes, keeps everything secure and allows us to then, moving forward after the website’s done, move into lead collection for your healthcare clinic. And that’s where our ongoing marketing really ties in with search engine optimization as well as running sponsored advertising, writing blog posts, doing doctor interviews and posting to social media, all of which tie into how people that interact and utilize your website to achieve their goals.

Conclusion

So if you have any questions about how your website currently is working, I’d love to do an audit on your website, so we can talk about what your goals are and see if it’s actually accomplishing them. Or a small tweak might be able to better align your website with what you’re hoping to do.

If we find in that process that a new website is going to be the best course of action, I’ll send over that website onboarding form and we’ll schedule a call from there to really dive into what those goals are and that look and feel that you’re going for that website. So I can’t wait to talk with you about your medical marketing website, and I hope that this has been insightful about some of what that process looks like for working with our team.

If you like this episode, and you want to learn more about healthcare marketing, please subscribe to our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel and jump on over to our website to check out the additional blog posts that we have over there.

Website Development For Medical Clinics

 

Website Development For Medical Clinics

Website Development For Medical Clinics

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Why Medical Practices Need to Invest in SEO and How to do Keyword Research

Today, we’re going to be talking about search engine optimization for healthcare clinics, for medical practices, and why this is so important.

In our blog post, we also have a video that specifically is about how to do keyword research, and the ins and outs of search engine optimization so that you can actually do it, but this podcast is mostly geared towards why you need search engine optimization and the benefits of it.

To start off, why is Search Engine Optimization for Medical Practices important?

  • One-third of patients today are using their telephones or tablets to research and to book appointments. You need to make sure that you’re being found online.
  • 58% of healthcare marketers are using blogs and that’s compared to 74% of all marketers. This means that there is room for you to grow in that space.
  • And 62% of smartphone owners use their phones to search for health information. So it gives you a chance to actually answer those questions.

What Does Search Engine Optimization Do for Health Care Practice?

Search engine optimization does more that just get your website ranking higher on Google and other search engines. SEO has other ways that it is useful. SEO as a piece of medical marketing allows you to:

  • Build trust with prospects
  • Share valuable and education content
  • Make sure you are appearing in Mobile search results

Additionally, there are different types of search engine optimization that you can pursue in your digital marketing strategy. SEO is not a one-and-done thing. There are tactics you can implement to make sure you continually are increasing your SEO. Search Engine Optimization is made of two main strategies – On-site and Off-site. Below is a list of the Social Speak recommendations for how to boost website traffic and grow your network of prospects online.

Types of SEO for Medical Practices

Off-Site SEO for Medical Practices: This includes building links from referring domains, backlinks, directory listings, and submitting your website and blog posts to syndication websites. Typical 1st-page listings on Google have exponentially more backlinks than those on the 2nd or 3rd page of search listings. These referring in-bound links need to be high-quality, as well. 10,000 links from websites with a low domain authority can be less valuable than 1 link from a well-established domain. Activities we recommend are:

  • Research your competition at NeilPatel.com. This is a free keyword research tool that allows you to see what websites are ranking for select keywords, their domain authority, and how many backlinks they have into their website.
  • Write high-quality blog posts (see on-page SEO below) and reach out to webmasters of websites in your industry to pitch adding a link to your resources.
  • Find websites in your niche that accept Guest Blog Posts. Write an article with a link back to your website.
  • Add your website to directories and optimize the content.
  • Comment with a link back to a resource on your website in forums and on other blogs

 

On-Site SEO for your Health care website: On-site SEO includes making sure your website is both up to date and that you are consistently producing keyworded content.

Starting with Keyword Research

How to find topics and keywords to use in Medical Marketing?

Why your medical practice, why as a doctor, you need to be focusing on search engine optimization.

In the video above, I show some of the tools that we utilize to find what keywords to focus on for your medical practice to build up that search engine optimization. So I’m going to share my screen and the first thing that you are going to see here is a tool Ubersuggest. Now Ubersuggest is Neil Patel’s tool, and it is a free tool that you can utilize. I am signed in right now, but this is free. It’s something that you just sign in with your Google account. And then by doing that, you can hook it up to your website so that you can measure things like traffic and the number of backlinks you have, any new backlinks that are showing up and things like that. It takes all of Google’s tools and compresses them into reports that you should be taking a look at for search engine optimization.

We utilize Ubersuggest as a way to find really specific content that you can include on your website and then also to get a sense of how many things like backlinks or the page rank of your competition. So I did a search already for pediatrician. We worked with a lot of pediatrics offices, and so I thought this might be a great thing to start with. So as you can see, when we do a search for “pediatrician,” we have a list of keywords over here and these are just suggested keywords that are similar to “pediatrician.”

The volume of the searches, cost per click if you were to bid on this using Google ads, page difficulty and then the SEO difficulty. So for most websites, if you’re seeing competition having a SEO difficulty here of 62, 65, 46, these are going to be pretty difficult for you to rank for, especially if you haven’t built that foundation of keywords that Google is already ranking you for. So we recommend scrolling down on the list until you find that SEO difficulty that’s a little bit lower.

Using Filters to Narrow Keywords

Now, you can use this filters technique. And so here, you can set what you want the search volume to be as well as the SEO difficulty. And so we actually utilize that, but for the purpose of this video, I want to show you kind of all the keywords that show up here. Then, over on the right hand side of the screen, you’re going to see the actual results that show up in Google. So for “pediatrician” for example, we only see a lot of WebMD, HealthyChildren.org, Verywell Health etcetera, pediatrics – a lot of very highly ranked websites with high domain scores. The domain score is how positively Google sees you. Most likely, trying to rank for the word “pediatrician” probably isn’t going to be good for you to start.

Build a foundation of keywords to then rank for more difficult keywords

However, as you build up that foundation of keywords below that, you can slowly work up over time for a top keyword like pediatrician. So let’s see what keywords we should be focusing on. So if you scroll down, there are quite a few for pediatric urgent care or for specialties that you might have.

“Pediatric urgent care near me,” for example, that has 20. And so this is the type of search that people do when they’re on their phones, so they’ll rather than typing in, they’ll actually say, “Pediatrician,” or “Pediatric urgent care near me.” So you want to make sure that you’re including language like that on a blog post or on a page on your website. Here we’ve got “urologist.” So that’s a different one. Even “pediatric clinic” has a lower SEO difficulty score. So rather than just going after pediatrician, you could have “pediatric clinic near me,” “pediatric urologist.” So again those specialties are good to highlight as well. I saw it down here on… Let’s see. Pediatrician for kids.

These are called long term keyword phrases. And so as you’re writing content, again, don’t just focus on that top keyword. Think about those secondary and third keywords that make up phrases for you to write content around.

Here we go, “pediatrician near me that accepts Medicaid.”

So if you accept Medicaid, this could be something to make sure to put in a blog post or on your website at somewhere just because it is absolutely something that is getting quite a few searches.

And yes, these are national numbers. But still, it ranks up here and that has that lower SEO difficulty. Now, one of the things that I like about this table here is the tool Ubersuggest also allows you to look at related keywords, questions, propositions and comparisons all of these make fantastic blog posts because they are really answering the questions that people have.

Specific Keywords for Pediatricians:
  • “pediatrician when you are pregnant” – you could have a blog post specifically about how to find a pediatrician when you’re pregnant or when to start talking to a pediatrician. Even answering things like, “Will a pediatrician prescribe birth control?” I am assuming that you probably aren’t, however, this is a question that people are asking and it’s something that you’d be able to rank in the eyes of Google for and start building up that foundation. So over time, you can start focusing on those keywords that 100% you need to be ranking for.
  • “Pediatrician accept Medicaid”  – if you do accept Medicaid, this may be a great topic to rank for and write about. Describe the process, have a doctor interview, etc.
  • “Pediatrition for ADHD” – you could have a post that’s specifically on why your pediatrics office, the pediatrician office near them, is the right fit if your child has ADHD and you’d want to make sure to include this exact phrase right here.

Let’s say you do end up writing a blog post on Pediatrician for ADHD. You would then be able to come over here to see who else is ranking for that keyword. Now, if we take a look here, these domain scores all also do have… They are all fairly high as well. So what you can do is you can reach out to the author of, let’s see what’s this, everyday health protocol is, ‘Find the right ADHD specialist,’ and you could email the webmaster or the editor of this article and see if your article, if it is educational and provides great information you can actually email them to see if they wouldn’t mind adding you as a resource that they link to within their blog post. Now, getting these high-quality links back to your site are incredibly important for search engine optimization. We do see, for example, right here. So this person eastbaypediatrics.com. They don’t have any links. They are on the second page, so you can see the number of visits does go down, but their domain score is seven. So if you have the right content that’s related to Pediatrician for ADHD and you start building backlinks from these higher articles here in higher websites, you’re going to be showing Google that your content is very well written and it’s relevant and that people want to read it.

Pediatrician for ADHD could be a great topic to talk about.

Another option on Ubbersuggest Keyword Tool is comparisons. I love writing articles with comparisons. I think that this is a great way to stand apart from your competition, to provide great value.

A recommendation here could be for pediatrician writing one about “pediatrician or family doctor.”

What’s the difference? Why would you choose one versus the other? If you are a family doctor, this is a great topic to talk about as well. Other examples are: family medicine versus family doctor. With pediatrician or family doctor, for example, it only has 90 searches. However, that means combined with this page difficulty of five and the SEO difficulty seven, most likely you’re going to make an impact by writing about this topic or having one of your doctors answering this question, and you would be more likely to be able to place on the top pages of Google fairly quickly for this, especially if you then go out and get those backlinks.

Read the rest of the transcript for the video on How to Do Keyword Research with Ubersuggest for Healthcare SEO

11:26 CM: So one thing, once you have a topic or a handful of questions that you’ve found that people are asking about your specialty, you can then write up an interview for your doctor. And we love doing this just because it allows you to get multiple media at one time. So you have the audio if you ever want to start a podcast. You have the visual component through the video. And then you also easily get a transcript of this keyworded content of questions that people are actually asking that then you can put on your website. We have a full blog post. I’ll link to it down here that is about how to utilize interviews or videos in order to make transcripts that can then be turned into a blog post. You’ll see even with this video, we had that podcast. The podcast is the intro to this blog post and then this tutorial is really the bulk of that blog post. So we’ve talked about Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest tool. This is a free tool. There are plenty of paid tools that are very similar. Keyword Finder is one that we’ve talked about in the past and that is just kwfinder.com. The problem with this is they now are… And you’ll see it’s a very similar layout to Neil Patel’s.

12:46 CM: However they restrict the number of searches that you can do on the free account whereas Neil Patel’s tool really is a free tool. Yes, if you are linking up your website, they are probably collecting data on the number of visitors and the backlinks and everything. However this is a great free option.

13:27 CM: So, there is that Keyword Finder. Moz has a SEO tool, I think. HubSpot has a website grader. That’s always good to look at. But this again, the Neil Patel one, it is a great way to dive into how well the backbones of your website are even performing. Are there pages that don’t have Header 1 tags? Are their pages that are missing Alt tags on images? Can you improve the number of pages that are linking together kind of things like that? Neil Patel’s tool really showcases that very well. The last thing that we do, however, when we are doing keyword research is we actually turn over to Google and we take a look to see what other people are actually writing and to see if Google has any other recommended search results. So I’m going to do this. The pediatrician or family doctor, and I just go right over here to Google. Now oftentimes, I will be in the incognito mode, and that’s just so that I can really see everything that they have. But you can take a look to see what other people are talking about. So, you’ll notice a lot of these folks are using that keyword that we just searched for, “pediatrician” or “family doctor” in the title of the website or of the article.

15:00 CM: And here, if you don’t see that happening then make sure 100% that you are writing on that topic, ’cause you would, by having keywords, that phrase, in the title of the page as well as in the URL, it can be a great way to show Google right away, “Hey look, I’m actually talking about this whereas my competition isn’t necessarily talking about it.” But you can get a sense of what other people are writing about. So, how to decide, how to decide? So this one is “choosing a pediatrician for your new baby.” I’m sure in here, in this kid’s health article somewhere in there, it has “pediatrician versus family doctor.” Oh, this a… This looks like a forum. So forums can be great places to then get more backlinks into your website. So if you write an article “Pediatrician versus Family Doctor,” absolutely post it. This from 2011. So it’s not too current, but post it as, “Hey, we just wrote this great resource that it might be helpful for you as you’re deciding whether to utilize a pediatrician or a family doctor,” and add the link into a forum. Quora is another great place, Q-U-O-R-A, for you to do things like that as well.

16:26 CM: So if you see somebody asking a question “pediatrician versus family doctor” there, you can add your content and a link there as well, and that counts as a good backlink too. Let’s see, Revere Health, so they have “pediatrician versus family care doctor.” So they have just, “Pediatricians, family physicians, how to search?” So this is a very short article. Imagine if you had this article and then three videos of different doctors answering specific questions about when to utilize a pediatrician when family physicians are appropriate and then comparing the two of them. So by having that multi-media, it allows you to have much more content very easily on your website. Additionally, right here, we’re not seeing any videos popping up. However, there would be a chance that your video would be able to show up. Let’s see, so there are some folks who have talked a little bit about “pediatrician, family doctor, pediatrician,” “the difference between family medicine and internal medicine.” So, no one specifically, at least on this first page, has answered the pediatrician versus family care doctor or family doctor.

 

17:48 CM: This’s one, like another forum. So this could be a great one to talk about. Just going to keep on going down this rabbit hole. [laughter] People are asking their peers for their insights about whether they should utilize a pediatrician or a family doctor or go to one specialist or another. This is an excellent opportunity to jump in and see if you can also write content or have your doctors film content about the topic. So it’s important to have your website again ranked on Google, just because most folks, most prospects that you have are looking for your specialty online or they’re researching the referrals that they get. They want to make sure that you are the correct choice for them and for their family. And by doing keyword research, you can start to understand what language they’re actually utilizing and what questions they actually have as they’re going through this decision-making process? Search engine optimization has the ability to drastically increase the ROI that you get from digital marketing, just because it gets you shown more frequently on Google as well as increases the brand recognition and quickly increases the fact that people will know, like and trust you and that you’ll become more of a household name.

19:22 CM: So, we highly recommend utilizing search engine optimization. And when you’re going through and first starting out, please take a look at Neil Patel’s tool. You can do a Google search for Ubersuggest or its app, neilpatel.com/ubersuggest. And you’ll be able to get there. From here, type in that top-level keyword that ultimately you do want to make sure that your website ranks for and then take a look at the related, the questions, prepositions and comparisons to see if there are any sub-topics that are going to be more likely that you will rank for quickly. And as you start growing that baseline, you’ll be able to target those higher and higher-difficulty keywords in the future

Read the Medical Marketing Podcast Transcript on Why SEO should be a part of your Digital Marketing for Healthcare Strategy

00:00 Caitlin McDonald: Hello everybody, my name is Caitlin McDonald, and I’m here with the Social Speak Network on the Social Speak Network podcast. Today, we’re gonna be talking about search engine optimization for healthcare clinics, for medical practices and why this is so important in our blog post, we also have a video that specifically is about how to do keyword research, and the ins and outs of search engine optimization so that you can actually do it, but this blog post is, or excuse this podcast is mostly geared towards why you need search engine optimization and the benefits of it so to start off, why is it important? So, one-third of patients today are using their telephones or tablets to research and to book appointments. So you need to make sure that you’re being found online. 58% of healthcare marketers are using blogs and that’s compared to 74% of all marketers. So, this means that there is room for you to grow in that space. And 62% of smartphone owners use their phones to search for health information. So it gives you a chance to actually answer those questions.

 

01:30 CM: Additionally, 75% of patients use search engines prior to scheduling a visit. So we view search engine optimization as being incredibly important for your medical practice. Number one, it increase your online visibility. So, blogging is a huge part of search engine optimization, it’s your ability to create content but then is answering questions that folks are looking for online so increases your online visibility, you wanna make sure that you are actually found online. So without that content, let’s say your page just has doctor Profiles on it, information about some of the services that you offer your specialties, and then has the scheduling people are wanting more information. And so again, that second part of this, we’re actually gonna be diving into how to do that research, but for now, just know that if you weren’t found on the first page of Google most likely you’re not going to be found online. Search engine optimization, and being found organically online allows you to bring in more valuable visitors. So the reason why this is, is because of, being found first on Google, and having a presence on Google on Facebook, on LinkedIn and really on all of these other directories helps to boost consumer confidence in your facility in your clinic.

 

03:09 CM: And so you want to make sure that people know, like, and trust you, let’s say it’s the first time that they’ve dealt with the symptom they’re looking for answers about it. And you come up time and time again, they’re already going to start trusting you before they give you a call for that initial consultation. The third thing is that being optimized online helps to reduce your other digital marketing cost. So typically when we’re working with a healthcare center, we are running ads for them. This is a great way to reach people talking about top-of-funnel right when they’re searching for your specialty however, when you rank online as well, they’re more likely to click your listing down below, rather than the ad so it allows you to transfer some of that budget that you would be spending on clicks to people who are clicking on your free listing anyways, so it allows you to transfer some of those clicks as well as reach people who are just searching for lots of different things and they are wanting to make sure that you are legitimate and also to be able to find you and also positioned you above your competition if you’re showing up higher than them online as well.

 

04:35 CM: We have seen this to have a great return on investment and so traffic that you are getting from organic searches tends to be a little bit easier to convert. They aren’t seeing an ad and then wanting to do more research. You are the research that they are finding. So it’s a very cost-effective solution that has a high return on investment, and there are a few things to keep in mind as you are doing search engine optimization.

 

05:12 CM: One is you wanna make sure that you are thinking about mobile users. So about 62% of folks who are doing these searches are on their mobile phones. Often times, we even see search traffic up in the 80% for some of our clinics that we’re working for. And so you want to make sure if somebody’s doing a mobile search for your clinic, you’re also showing up there. Typically, people are starting to use voice searches. So rather than typing in a keyword, or two or service that they want, they are literally searching for a orthodontist near me or a pediatric office near me. And so you wanna make sure that you’re showing up for mobile users, and most importantly, for local mobile users, so put your clinic name, your location, and information like that in there so that people know that you are the one to visit.

06:13 CM: Let’s see, there are a few different ways that you can make your website stand out for search engines in 2020. And the first alluded to this with the blogging and how there is the gap for healthcare with blogging and a gap that you can fill by creating content that people are looking for. And so this is called on-page SEO, this is creating new content with keywords in it. Another thing that’s very valuable is building backlinks, so this is getting other websites, other directories to link into your website and having backlinks is one of the key indicators that Google is currently, looking for because it’s showing that other people want to link to your site. There’s a whole strategy behind this.

 

07:12 CM: I’m gonna be talking more about keyword research in the second part of this and how you can utilize that blog post, however if you are interested in the backlinking strategy, please just reach out to us schedule a consultation, we would love to chat with you in more detail about how to pursue backlinking for your healthcare center. However, this blog post is focused more on the front end of keyword research, creating content, things like that, then there is building links between pages. This is very easy to do if you are creating new content for your website basically on a blog post, if you mention a doctor’s name, link to their profile on your website if you are mentioning a service or a specialty, link to that specialty page. And so, just to wrap things up, in this part it is just very important to have search engine optimization as one of the key elements to your digital marketing strategy for your medical center because people are searching for medical practices and for specialists online if you want to meet them. Yes, you can create a referring partner relationships. However, a lot of folks are doing research themselves, and trying to figure out who’s gonna be the best person or best medical center to that they can trust to help heal them.

 

08:52 CM: So if you have any questions, please again jump over to that blog post, you’ll be able to read the full tutorial over there as well as watch our tutorial video and do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions on how your practice can utilize Search Engine Optimization and keyword research and backlinking to boost the number of new appointments that you are seeing. Thanks so much for tuning in and I will see you next time on The Social Speak Network podcast.

Why Medical Practices Need to Invest in SEO and How to do Keyword Research

Why Medical Practices Need to Invest in SEO and How to do Keyword ResearchWhy Medical Practices Need to Invest in SEO and How to do Keyword Research

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Creating Your Content Calendar for 2020

Having a content calendar in place for your overall marketing strategy is key, having a plan will allow you to stay consistent and top of your content. In this video, we go over 4 different types of content calendars, the key here is to find one or pull components from each that you like and would work best for you and your team.

Social Speak Content Calendar
Hootsuite’s Content Calendar
Hubspot Content Calendar
CoSchedule Content Calendar

00:00 Amber Irwin: Hello. I am Amber Irwin and co-founder of Social Speak Network. I’m your host today on the Social Speak podcast. It is January of 2020, and we’re almost to the middle of the month already. So, you’re either in one of two positions. Number one, you have all your content planned out for the year, you are on track and have your content strategy put together. Woo-hoo. Number two, not there quite yet. This video and podcast are for the people that are number two that are still struggling to put together that content calendar. I want to talk about content calendars today, because it is the most important piece of your digital marketing strategy, and it is something… Usually, we have our clients do these content calendars beginning of December, planning out for the new year because once the holidays come, it’s just crazy. Time goes by so fast, and then it’s the new year, back to business, and it gets crazy.

01:07 AI: So having a content calendar is really about being able to have a really good overview of what your year looks like. What are the national observance days that you need to pay attention to? What are the seasons? So for medical practices, if you are a pediatrician, you need to pay attention to flu season, summertime, back to school. What are the other sicknesses that kids are dealing with? You may wanna be talking about just tips of handwashing and nutrition. So looking at what you are talking to your patients about. And that’s really the biggest thing is it’s changing that mindset from having these conversations in the office with your patients and taking that… Those conversations and turning them into content and implementing them into your content calendar.

02:04 AI: So, I always recommend having a sticky note, a pad of paper, your phone. Something where, you know, once that patient’s done taking a few minutes and either jotting down questions they had or giving it to a nurse to write down and then being able to take those questions and incorporate them into your content strategy. Because if this patient had that client like’s are, you’re gonna have more patients that have that question, and you wanna be able to be a resource for them. So, I’m gonna give you four different examples of content calendars. There’s no right or wrong way to a content calendar. It’s really what works for you and your team. So if you have a marketing team in-house that’s doing all of your social media, great. You guys are gonna figure out a plan together of what works, what works for them, what’s easy for… Maybe it’s the office manager, the practice manager that’s looking over everything, maybe it’s the head doctor. Whoever that person in charge is that wants to see the overview of everything, what format works for them?

03:13 AI: If you’re working with a marketing team, such as Social Speak, we have an intro call with you. We show you the different content calendars. And then, the last one I’m gonna show you today that we’re gonna talk about is the one that we put together. And we’ve taken bits and pieces from content calendars that we’ve used and the pieces that work for us. So, we have one with everything on there. So, the first two I’m gonna talk to you about are from CoSchedule and HubSpot. And these are more focused around your social media, which is great because a lot of your content that you’re doing for digital marketing is going to be social media, blog posts video marketing. So, these are a great way to just keep everything organized.

04:00 AI: So, I’m gonna go ahead and show you these two. So, this first one is from, let’s see, this one is… This one here is the one that is from CoSchedule, I believe. And this is outlined very nicely. It breaks it up by platform. So, obviously, you’re only gonna be putting the platforms on here that you’re using. So if you’re not using Twitter, you’re not going to have this Twitter section here. Google Plus doesn’t exist anymore, so you would have Instagram on here instead. Pinterest, we use a tool called Tailwind, and I’ll put a link below for that. But that’s really where all of our Pinterest scheduling goes, through Tailwind. So, I wouldn’t have Pinterest on here, but Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook. So, here you’re gonna have the post copy, the image, so you know what image is going with what post. The hashtags, the destination URL. So is this going to a curated content unit, outside articles? Is this going to a blog, a YouTube video? And then, on this one, one thing I liked was that this actually measures… Each week, you could come back and look at how those posts did. So, how many likes were there? How many shares? How many comments? So, this one is a great way to just get started for social media.

05:42 AI: The other one, this one here, is one that is from HubSpot, I believe. And this one has your overview schedule, what account, the date and time, message link campaign. And then, this one is your monthly calendar. Now, I really like it when… Having this monthly calendar. And this is something that we implement into our content calendar because I like seeing that overview. So again, if it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month or Diabetes Awareness Month, I wanna make sure that I’m talking about that topic each week and in different ways. So maybe we do a video around Diabetes Awareness Month. We’re writing a blog on it. We are getting testimonials. So figuring out how that National Observance Day ties into your practice and your clients, and then how can you deliver that information?

06:47 AI: I tend to be very visual, and same with our social media marketing team, they’re very visual, so we really like when we have this color-coded key, because, as we look at this, we can say, “Okay this is going to a blog post, this is going to a video, this is going to a holiday campaign,” or whatever it may be. But this helps break it down so we can attach that color to that topic. So, overview, we say, “Okay, this week I’m gonna do… Create two videos on this topic.” So it helps us and our team stay organized. The one thing I really like about this content calendar is it has tabs for each platform. Now, if you’re using one of the awesome tools like Sprout Social, Buffer, or HootSuite, it’s easy to put your content in there and share it to all the platforms at one time, which makes it really simple. At the same time, we recommend not doing that.

07:49 AI: So if people are following you on Instagram and Facebook, they’re usually checking both of those every day, and you don’t want them to get on Instagram and see your post and then head over to Facebook and then that exact same post shows up at the same time in their newsfeed. There’s no value there. So why would they follow you on both platforms if there isn’t value? So I like this platform here where it breaks it into each network. So you can see, “Okay, this is what we’re doing for this network.” And even if you have a blog post that you are promoting, you can have that blog post, you can pull different sections from that blog for each platform, it can link back to the same blog, but maybe you have a different image for each post.

08:43 AI: The other thing that you can do is, we are all about reusing content, so what you write for your Facebook posts one week, you can use the following week, or the next week, for Instagram and LinkedIn. So it’s really about writing the social media posts for the month and then organizing them to the different platforms. With Twitter and Instagram, it’s really important that you have those hashtags that you are implementing into the content. With Facebook and LinkedIn, and even Pinterest, it’s not as important. But here you can see what day it’s going out, that you may have two or three posts going out per day on one network depending on how many likes and followers you have.

09:35 AI: So this is the link it’s going to. Now, the next two templates I’m gonna show you, you can actually… With Google Sheets, and I’m pretty sure with Excel as well… You can insert the image into a cell. So we actually put the image in here and then we create all of our images in Canva, and so we can then put the link there too. So, as you’re scheduling them, everything is in one spot, it’s easy to pull from. The head person that wants to look over this, they can see, “Okay, this is the message. That looks good. This is the link. This is what the campaign,” if it’s linking back to a certain campaign. “This is the image. Okay, let’s go with this.”

10:15 AI: So, the other one I want to share is this one. And… Oops. So, here… So this is the one from HootSuite, and I really like this template. Because, again, it… Outlines by the network, which is really important, because, again, that social copy should be different for each platform, especially depending on your audience. So sometimes our clients get a lot more engagement on Facebook than they do LinkedIn or Twitter. So on Facebook and maybe even Instagram, we wanna make sure that we are asking questions, doing posts that are engaging our audience, because that’s where we see the most interaction. So this one here kinda takes that monthly calendar and puts it right into kind of a weekly column.

11:21 AI: And so if you are doing five posts per week onto Facebook, this post is gonna be the new blog post, curated content, evergreen blog post, a live video. So, with Facebook, doing live videos, if that’s what works for your practice, maybe it’s a weekly FAQ with a doctor, maybe it is a weekly kind of a health tip and one of the nurses can just jump on and do that. So I think it’s a great idea to implement those live videos, and then your promotion if you are running a promotion. Now, these content types will change based on what topics you and your practice wanna be talking about, but when you move down to Instagram, you wanna make sure that you’re implementing stories, sharing content, creating those images because it is visual. So this content calendar is great. Now, this just has one sheet, and this is just for social media. So each week you would put the date here and then have your content on here. So, this is another great way to stay organized. You have noted here, image links, where you need to pull that image from, but this is a great way to stay organized for your social media.

12:44 AI: The last content calendar that I want to show you is our content calendar. So, we’ve taken a piece of, as I said, different content calendars that we’ve used, different needs that our clients have had, and what we’ve done is, the first tab is that full content calendar. So we have our color-coded key here, so we can see each month what this looks like. Now, what we may do is I may duplicate this, so this may be the January content calendar. So I may do one for January, February, March, April, May, or I may have this due January and then copy below here for February. So it’s all on one sheet, but sometimes you wanna go back and look, “Okay, what did we talk about in January?” So then when you’re coming up for the following year, you know, “Okay, this is what really worked. These are topics that we talked about what we need to implement again.” And then what we do is here…

13:48 AI: Here are our social media topics. So, this is the little notes I told you to keep track of. This is where you can say in here like, FAQ and then the questions that people had asked. So, you know, “Okay, this is what we need to be talking about. We need to create social media posts or blog posts or videos around this topic, and then also like a link.” So, if you are on, let’s say, WebMD’s newsletter, and they send out a really good newsletter with some great tips that you wanna implement into your social media strategy as curated content. You can put that topic, you can even put the title of the article and then the link so as you need content, you can come back to here and pull from there. And you can also add it to what we have is the content resources and this just builds that list for curated content.

14:45 AI: Sometimes, it’s easier just to go to Facebook and share from WebMD’s Facebook page or American Heart Association’s Facebook page to your Facebook page and the same thing with Facebook, but you also may wanna use their blogs as resources or other… They may have other tips and tools on their websites that you wanna share. So, just having one place where you come in, put the name of the source and the link, so when you are writing that social media content every week, it’s right here. And then, the next sheet would be the blog topic, so you could tie in the month, the blog title, the topic, the due date, when you published it and the link. So, you can pull from here, come back to your overview of the content calendar and be able to say, “Okay, on this week, this blog post is… ” And then, the title so you know.

15:47 AI: Now, one thing you do not see on our content calendar is the place to actually write your content. So, the way we do our social media is we have found that it is much easier to have a content calendar like this as an overview that you can refer to, look at. “Okay, what do we have coming up? What videos do we need to make? What blogs do we need to write? What social media posts are we gonna be talking about?” And then, what we do for our social media posts is we actually then create a Google Doc. So, our content calendar is in Google, and our weekly social media posts are in Google. I like it better because Google Docs works like a Word doc or like pages on Mac, but everyone that has access to that article or to that document can look at those posts. So if you have… This is just kind of a side note, but if you have a Mac and you don’t have Microsoft, then that Word document gets translated into a page and then vice-versa. So using Google Drive and Google Docs is just kind of a universal way. Anyone that has that link that you share it with can open it, can make edits, can see it. It also checks for grammar, spelling. And so, I like to put all of the social media posts into there.

17:16 AI: I think that makes it look very clean, you know what the content is, the hashtags. So on the content calendar, we are very clear on what day, what that needs to be, what hashtags we need to use, so then we can just transfer that to our Google Sheet, have the image on there, and then be able to put that into whether it’s Buffer or HootSuite. If you are… I will always recommend our clients scheduling all of their posts through Facebook rather than using a third-party app like Buffer or HootSuite or Sprout Social. Facebook likes when you use them. And then using those tools for LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. HootSuite does Instagram so that’s great. Tailwind, it does Pinterest and Instagram. So, it’s just important to figure out what works best for you.

18:15 AI: Sometimes we have a few clients where we just have an open document, and we put our post on there, but they like the format of a sheet better. Like an Excel sheet where they can see the post, they can see the link. It’s all right there. So again, it’s just really figuring out what works best for you and your team. And if you are working with an agency like us, like Social Speak, then being able to know, okay, what system does that agency have in place and is it easy for you to understand? So you know what posts are going out for your practice because you wanna know what’s going on and you wanna know how to make edits. And if you say, “Okay, let’s use this instead of that.” So just making sure that when you are creating this content calendar that you and your team are on the same page.

19:05 AI: So, I will add each of these as links below, so you can make sure you can see each of them and see which ones work best for you. And if you want help putting together the content strategy for your practice and really understanding how to implement that, let us know. We are here to help you. You can head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and do the free consultation. That’s a 30 minutes free consultation that we can walk you through this. We can answer questions for you. And if you are looking for more help from having an agency manage this for you, we would love to have that conversation as well. So, I hope that this helped and really got you on the track of being organized. Even if you do it quarterly, but quarters go by just as fast as weeks. By the end… By the snap of the fingers, it’s gonna be the end of quarter one.

19:46 AI: So, it’s important to have that year even if you just have the topics and your blogs, because the blogs turn into social media content. If you do one cornerstone blog of 3000 words, and you have maybe two videos in there and each blog has 10 images, there is social media content for a month. So, it’s really about maximizing your content and where it needs to go in organizing it. So, hopefully, this gave you some good insights on a content calendar and how it can work for your practice. And if you have any questions, please let us know. We are here to help. Have a great day.

Schedule your 30-minute FREE Consultation today! 

https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Content-Calendar-Pinterest2.png https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Content-Calendar-Pinterest3.png”
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Medical Marketing Strategy in 2020

Increase patients wiht digital marketing strategy

In this podcast we review the exact strategy Social Speak uses with their healthcare practices to boost new consultations and build brand loyalty online.

Please view the video at Youtube if you would like to see the screen share – click here to access.

The Social Speak Digital Strategy for Medical Marketing (our Roadmap to Digital Marketing) includes:

  • Social Media
  • Blogging
  • SEO and Physician Interviews
  • Landing Page
  • Automated Email Follow-Up

The tools discussed in the podcast include:

If you are looking to increase the ROI from your digital marketing in 2020, please reach out to schedule a consultation today! We can’t wait to learn more about your practice.

Listen to the Podcast

Watch the Video

Read the medical marketing transcript

00:01 Caitlin McDonald: Hello and welcome to the Social Speak Network podcast. My name is Caitlin McDonald and I am one of the co-owners over here at Social Speak. So today, we were gonna wrap up the year talking about SEO as we’re moving into 2020. But I’m kind of pulling an audible and I really want to take the time to share the exact strategy that is working right now for our healthcare clinics. Now, this strategy is one that we’ve been utilizing for quite a while. However, it’s really working right now, so I want to make sure that moving into 2020, you’ll be able to implement this for your healthcare practice. Now, we also are available to help out as well. This is our specialty, managing the marketing campaigns for clinics and hospitals across the country. So if you do wanna schedule a free consultation, we’d love to chat with you, see if we’re a good fit, and I give you a couple of tips and pointers to get you moving in the right direction.

 

01:08 CM: So this strategy really utilizes a lot of different marketing techniques, but it is pretty straight forward. So I’m gonna be… If you’re on our podcast, I’ll be talking through everything. If you jump over to our YouTube channel, you’ll be able to follow along and I’ll be able to show you some of the tools that we do utilize for our clinics and if you prefer reading, the transcript will be on our blog probably next week.

 

01:42 CM: So let’s get started. Let me share my screen here. And as I mentioned, the first part of our process really begins with the strategy. So when we’re taking a look at the strategy, we want to focus on a few different things. First and foremost, we do still utilize social media marketing. Social media is there to expand your reach and spread your authentic brand voice online. If you’re targeting younger individuals, older individuals, it really doesn’t matter, you need to prove that you are active online and a legitimate business. One of the ways to do this is by posting to social media accounts.

 

02:28 CM: So doing this builds brand loyalty by staying true to your values. It also helps you stay top of mind. Yes, your posts won’t necessarily reach everybody who’s following you online. In fact, it’ll probably only reach a couple of people, so we utilize ads to help with this as well. However, if somebody is actively looking for you, most likely your Facebook page will show up high in the search results so you wanna make sure that you are active there. And then, Facebook and social media also help you cultivate relationships and attract clients.

 

03:03 CM: The second piece of the strategy that we follow is blogging and SEO. Creating content, any content isn’t gonna work anymore, it’s creating the right content at the right time for your target market. So what does this actually mean for you? It means creating timely information so that you are found online, and it helps to build trust with your audience. For a couple of practices, what we are doing is doing physician interviews or interviews with your staff and transcribing those in a Q/A format, so that you are answering the questions that people are actually looking for online in a way that’s easy to digest and where they can really start building trust with the physicians in your practice.

 

03:55 CM: And then the last way is through lead generation. So with lead generation, really, our goal is to capture prospect information. Yes, you have to be aware of being HIPAA compliant, but we’ll dive into that. So here, you need a strategy to boost your new leads, to shorten the sales cycle, or that cycle for actually getting a prospect in the door, booking a consultation, and then also to increase your recurring revenue. So if you know somebody who typically comes in for one procedure, then ends up coming in for follow-up visits for something else, it might be good to focus on that first procedure and getting leads for that so that you can then share information through email marketing or in the office itself to get them booking those follow-up appointments as well.

 

04:52 CM: So this is where it gets really fun and it’s actually putting together that plan and diving in to do what you need to be doing for your marketing. So this is our roadmap to digital marketing and really goes through all of the different steps. Today, I’m gonna be focusing mostly on this lead generation piece. So, in lead generation, we’re really reaching people during their patient journey. So, as I mentioned, we’re figuring out what symptoms they have, what problems they’re experiencing and how they want to live their life differently if they come in and see you.

 

05:33 CM: So when we’re doing this, we’re utilizing Facebook ads for brand awareness and to get leads, Google AdWords for search targeting, and this is a great way to get people when they’re making that decision about who they’re gonna work with, and Facebook ads for re-targeting. So here, Facebook and Google really are the ad networks that we are utilizing for this. So I’m gonna jump on over here and I have up Google AdWords. Most of you probably already have an AdWords account. However, if you call… This is kind of a nice little tip, if you’re just getting started, tipping your toes in the water, you can actually call up this number here in the top of the page and a representative can help you set up your first campaign. If you don’t have someone on staff who knows how to set up AdWords, I do recommend utilizing Google’s own network of consultants who can set that up because it’s complementary. And again, a great way just to get started. Now, as you’re building more in-depth campaign, setting up conversion tracking and things like that, I do recommend working with an expert. Our team has a team of experts on staff who can help out with setting up campaigns, restructuring them from what Google originally sets up or what a previous agency has set up to make sure that they’re actually working for you.

 

07:08 CM: We oftentimes come into clinics and see that the geographic area isn’t quite right, or maybe a mixture of different services are piled into one ad group. All of these things can be detrimental for your practice. So an example of this, I just did a search for “pediatrician, Marlborough, Mass” and there are three that come up. But if you take a look, there’s no ads here. So if you are a pediatrician around there, it’s a great thing, [chuckle] a great opportunity for you. But what you’ll see is there are oftentimes fewer ads than there are doctors and other listings that come up. So that’s a great way to make sure as you are creating your campaign, that you’re showing up up here at the top. I don’t have Facebook up, but Facebook is very similar as well. Oftentimes, a health clinic will come on in… Or, excuse me, a marketing agency will come on in, they’ll set up a Facebook account and, or even someone on your staff. And one problem that we’ve seen is that oftentimes, these ads aren’t targeted for your audience correctly. So you want to make sure that you are being very specific in your targeting at least at the beginning, so that you can learn who’s responding to your messages and who isn’t.

 

08:42 CM: For Facebook, for example, let’s say you are working with individuals who have non-healing foot ulcers. Typically, this is caused by diabetes, so you can actually target people who have shown an interest in the National Diabetes Association, for example. They’re not gonna say on their profile that they have a foot ulcer, but they are going to be following, or most likely going to be following or have expressed interest in a national organization or a magazine, or another coach or something like that who has targeted them already. So this is a great way to kind of refine your messaging.

 

09:26 CM: Additionally, let’s say, your practice focuses on, I had pediatrics before, what you can do is you can target people, potentially, who just got married, or who have a toddler or have a… Or following other parenting pages. And this might be a great way to narrow down your target market there. Now, within those ads themselves, there are a few things that you need to really do in order to see a return on your investment. So one of the first things that we utilize is lead pages. Now, lead pages is not HIPAA compliant, however, you can embed a form on here that is HIPAA compliant so that the leads go into your system, the lead capture system, and the landing pages are just hosted on your website, built by lead pages.

 

10:30 CM: The reason why we do this is because we want them to be very specific and tailored towards that one service and towards that one target audience. So if you’re targeting a, I don’t know, a family member of somebody, who has somebody else in the family who’s suffering from addiction, you’re running ads to raise awareness about the support and resources that are out there, that landing page is gonna be different than what you want to appear or the language that you want to have that’s geared towards that person who’s suffering themselves. So here, lead pages is just the tool that we utilize. You can build a landing page just through WordPress, but we love lead pages because it is very easy to alter the page style, it allows you to do AB testing, so create two different versions of the same landing page, and have lead pages automatically show which one, whichever one, and then over time, you can tell which one is performing better. It also has great graphs. So typically for healthcare centers, we utilize conversion tracking a few different ways on lead pages itself. We want to optimize the number of people who are clicking on a link.

 

11:51 CM: Here’s a little example right here to schedule a consultation. That will then open up a pop-up, on that pop-up is the form that you create through that third party. So, on lead pages itself, we can’t tell how many people have then filled out the form, but that’s why we use the Facebook Pixel and Google Tag Manager. So here, lead pages, again, it’s just a great, easy way to set up those landing pages and test them. And have it be where it’s just a single page rather than going to… And I’ll just click on, I don’t know, one of these… So let’s say this is your website, this is the UMass Memorial Health Care Center. So if somebody goes to this page from an ad, there are so many other places to click. So we found that that is not good for increasing your ROI and conversion rates. So having a page that they go to where it’s just that single page with the call to action of scheduling a consultation, it works really well. Then there’s a question of what content should you utilize on that page and in the ads. So we actually have a form on our website, and I’ll put this in the description, socialspeaknetwork.com, work with us, onboarding lead generation.

 

13:27 CM: And this is geared towards kind of a broader audience than just healthcare centers. But you can fill it out and here you can select free consultation is what you’re trying to get. But then we have questions here that really will help you identify those key concerns, key questions, key fears of your patients, your target patients, and we have the questions so that they lead you through exactly sort of what you need in order to create the ad text as well as the text for the landing page. And so, we help you kind of really identify and nail down your target market and then create a story around it. So, in this story, we often do actually start with a sentence or two that’s somebody’s story. It could be your own story, a patient testimonial, or even just a made-up story that fits in with the benefits that you can provide for your clients, for your patients. From there, we go into the benefits of actually coming in to see your practice, and finally, the call to action to schedule a consultation. Creating a doctor video around this as well is also a great way to increase brand awareness.

 

14:56 CM: So again, work with us, onboarding lead generation, the link is down below. But you can just go through this exercise, and at the end, I believe that we do have, even go through an email sequence that you can utilize at the end, when you click submit, we will send you in an email those answers that you put in there so that you can then copy and paste or utilize them, you could also print out that form if you don’t wanna submit the information. However, we’re happy to chat with you about the process as well. So those story ads work really well on Facebook. And then, on Google, we’re utilizing headlines and short calls to action to contact you.

 

15:52 CM: Now, once somebody clicks on an ad, they go to lead pages, then what happens to them? If you don’t have to be HIPAA compliant, we recommend utilizing MailChimp. It’s very cost-effective, it’s a great way to get started, and it has wonderful bells and whistles that a lot of the big boys have. So it’s a great way to create those welcome series, as well as quick follow-up emails and everything.

 

16:22 CM: Now, if you are HIPAA complaint, we highly recommend utilizing Influx MD. It looks like not all the images have loaded on here, however, we have a great relationship with them. And so, a lot of our clients utilize us to help facilitate the creation of emails and everything, and basically, Influx MD takes somebody from being a prospect to scheduling their first consult. From there we’re really able to track the ROI. Influx MD is able to tell through our tracking where the patient or the prospect originally came from. It can automate and systematize the process of sending those initial questionnaires and forms that somebody needs to fill out. And then it can directly sync up with your patient management system. We really like it, just because it helps with the customer relationship as well as the lead management and then it has that sales and email marketing automation as well. So it really reduces the burden on your staff and helps prove how effective the marketing is. So, we utilize this a lot. We utilize Google analytics and we utilize Facebook Pixels as well, just to see where leads are coming from, see the cost per lead and everything like that. So, let me just jump back over here, see if there was anything else. Okay, and this is… It’s actually just a health coach, but it kind of shows you that process with the landing page, they click the button, here’s the form, and then they get a drip sequence of emails.

 

18:13 CM: So if you have been wondering if your marketing is working for your healthcare practice, maybe you didn’t quite have as good of a year in 2019 as you had projected and hoped. This process is really what we’re seeing to work right now. So we start with the Facebook just having information going out to your accounts to build trust in your brand, then we utilize blogging as one piece, and a physician interviews as another piece of your SEO strategy. What we’ve really been seeing work well for SEO is building back links. And so, submitting your website to different directories, different websites to have the link added to content. We have a whole team that’s working on that. It is a very manual process, but we have seen tremendous results there because you do wanna make sure your organic listing or your website is showing up organically as well as the ads and the map listing and everything. And another piece of that SEO is building reviews on Google and on Facebook, just so that you can have that social proof. So those reviews work really well to make sure that your map listing is showing up higher, as well as social proof.

 

19:42 CM: And then, it’s running the ads. So we run ads based on interest targeting on Facebook, keywords on Google, and then retargeting ads on both Facebook and Google, to make sure that if we’ve already paid for somebody to get to the site or landing page, we are recouping some of that cost by showing them repeat ads. Of course, we haven’t collected any information about them, it’s just based on the cookie on their website, that Facebook and Google are in charge of. [chuckle]

 

20:16 CM: From here, we utilize or we recommend utilizing a tool like Influx MD to make sure that you are remaining HIPAA compliant as you are emailing and creating relationships with these prospects who have become leads. And throughout this whole process make sure that you have the Google Webmaster tool… Excuse me, Google Tag Manager, so that you can track conversions, as well as clicks for phone numbers, or map clicks. And the Facebook Pixel installed on your site so that you can really track the ROI from Facebook ads.

 

20:53 CM: So I hope that this has been helpful leading through the actual techniques and strategies that we utilize for our clients. If you do want to schedule a consultation, we are more than happy to schedule a time for you. And we’d love to learn more about your practice, your target market and what you’re currently working on and struggling with right now. Thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you in the New Year on the Social Speak Network podcast

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5 Holiday Marketing Ideas for Your Medical Practice

5 Holiday Marketing Ideas for Your Medical Practice

Patient’s interest and behavior change during the holiday season. During this time of year, people are usually focused on shopping, office parties, and family gatherings. There may be a significant decrease in the number of patients, but that doesn’t mean that there’s less interest in health towards the rest of the year.

Stand out in marketing your practice and boost patient engagement with these holiday marketing tips. 

“12 days” email series 

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is one of the most popular Christmas songs. During the holiday season, it is heard everywhere – TV commercials, shopping malls, school programs, and even church functions. Why not use it as an inspiration for your holiday email marketing campaign? 

Email marketing is one of the best channels to help you stay top of mind and build a lasting relationship with your patients. During the holidays, it would be a great idea to create a “12 days” email series and send them to people on your email list. 

You can create countdowns with a different daily message – remind people to book an appointment before the year ends, share healthy holiday recipes, and offer tips for staying healthy through the holidays. 

Shine light on a worthy cause

The holiday season is the perfect time to focus on giving and gratitude. Aligning with a charitable cause will put your practice in a positive light and show your community what you value. 

One of the best ways for you to get noticed this season is to turn the spotlight away from you and highlight a charity that you support. Participate in volunteer efforts that are relevant to your target patients. It helps you cast a wide net and position you as an expert. 

Spread some holiday cheer by sponsoring a local charity event or a fundraiser. Encourage your audience to participate in the holiday giving campaign. You can offer a discount of a particular product or service in exchange for a gift donation. Your patients give back, needy kids get some gifts, and your practice gets more patients. It’s a win-win. 

Hold a social media photo contest 

Social media contests are great because they accomplish several marketing goals at once. When done properly and effectively, they can help you build a strong following, increase engagement, and really connect with your audience. With Christmas in the offing, it would be a great idea to run a contest that encapsulates this joyful festival. 

If you’re a dentist, host a “show us your smile” photo contest with a holiday twist. Have participants submit pictures of their smiling kids on social media. Don’t forget to create a branded hashtag that you can use to collect all those photos. 

The prize should be something that is relevant to your practice. For instance, you can offer free cleaning or teeth whitening. 

By adding a bit of fun to your marketing campaign, you can convince your clients that they don’t have to dread a visit to your practice. 

Film a holiday video 

Humans are very visually oriented. Studies suggest that people find video content more interesting, more engaging, and more memorable as compared to other types of content. 

Patients like healthcare providers who come across as gentle, kind, and human. Videos are a great way to show your human side and showcase your personality. The holidays are a great time to show off your holiday spirit and capture that cheer on video. You can create a short video to send your patients a warm, heartfelt message. If you are a pediatrician, you can dress up like Santa. Kids will love it. 

Get creative and don’t forget to share your video on different social media channels. 

Write holiday-related blog posts 

This holiday season, you might want to share some tips and information that your audience would find valuable. 

If you treat patients with diabetes, it is a good idea to provide tips on how to keep their weight and blood sugar levels under control during the holidays. If you’re a dermatologist, you can offer some skincare tips for winter or how to achieve healthy, glowing skin in time for their office party.  

Since the majority of people check on their social media accounts on a daily basis, we highly recommend that you share them on your pages. Creating timely and relevant content increases the likelihood that your blog posts will be shared.

Video Marketing Tools:

Shortcuts
iMovie

The 20 Best Video Editing Apps for 2019

Subscribe to our Podcast here

 

5 Holiday Marketing Ideas for Your Medical Practice

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5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Healthcare Professionals

5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Healthcare Professionals

As socially inclined creatures, humans have embraced technology that allowed us to connect with our family and friends. Today, social has become a prominent part of people’s lives.

With over half of the world’s population now active on social media, it’s not surprising that more and more businesses are using social media to reach their audience. Healthcare is no exception.

As a healthcare professional or organization, you need to step up your social media strategy in order to reach your target audience, boost patient engagement, and improve health outcomes.

Here are 5 tips to get you started.

Choose the right platform

There are lots of social media platforms out there other than Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn. While social media can help you drive new patient leads and grow your practice, you can’t be active on all of them all the time. You need to be strategic where you spend your resources.

A great way to plan and begin your social media campaign is to identify your ideal outlets. To do that, you need to focus on your core target audience. Find out where they spend most of their time online. Build your primary social media presence around your audience’s platforms of choice. It only makes sense to fish where the fishes are.

Narrowing down your choice to just a select few platforms will not only save you time, but it will also help you get the best return on your investment.

Jump into existing conversations

Take the initiative to be a part of a social media conversation. Join existing chats and groups that offer relevant discussions. See what you can add to the conversation and what you can learn about the current topics. Inspire discussions, ask questions, and air your opinion.

In addition to taking part in the discussions, it is important to track conversations relevant to your field. This raw and unfiltered conversation can provide you with insights from your audience. You may even get new ideas that you can use on your social media marketing campaign.

Don’t make it all about you

Social media is a great place to promote your practice and get more patients through the door. But if that’s the only reason why you signed up, then it won’t be beneficial.

People hate ads. They are turned off by businesses that throw ads but do not engage with their clients. If you want to build a solid social media presence, then you need to really get on there and interact with your audience.

Go back to your core audience. Learn as much as you can about them: demographics, what they are interested in, what they need, what their pain points are, etc. Getting to know your audience will help you interact with them on a more intimate level. Once you start conversing with them, you’ll know how you can help them.

Show them that you care about them and they will feel more connected with you.

Raise awareness and counter misinformation

Social media has become an important health resource. Studies suggest that more and more people are seeking health information on social media. With the amount of information we are bombarded with each day, it is not surprising to find a lot of medical misinformation out there. As a healthcare professional, you can capitalize on social media by providing your audience with accurate, science-backed facts.

Give people a reason to follow and engage with you. Pull from your unique expertise and share relevant, valuable information about your field. Don’t get stuck sharing links to blog posts. Share infographics, videos, interactive pieces, podcasts, and other types of content.

Provide your audience with content they can’t find elsewhere. Sharing fresh and unique content will not only keep your audience engaged, but they’ll also see you as a thought leader or industry expert.

Automate social media posts

You reap what you sow is a well-known idiom. While the phrase is biblical in origin, it also applies to social media marketing.
You can’t expect great results if your page is inactive. The key is to stay active on social media and consistently provide your followers with high-quality content. How can you do that when you spend the majority of your working hours seeing patients? Social media automation holds the solution to this problem.

Automating your social media posts allows you to schedule and optimize posts for maximum engagement. Scheduling several posts in advance helps you save time while achieving consistency in your marketing efforts. Plus, it gives you control over the content you share and how you share it.

Ultimately, it also helps you get more results with less effort. Keep in mind, though, that automation can only help you save time and effort, it is not meant to make social media marketing a completely hands-off process.

Automation tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer, AgoraPulse, and CoSchedule will make things easier for you. Whether you’re looking to find new patients or engage existing ones, you need to employ social media strategies that will help you sustain and grow your practice. Contact us today and let us put together a social media plan for you and your practice.

 

5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Healthcare Professionals Pinterest

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5 Reasons Why Doctors Should be on Social Media

Why doctors need to be on social media

Having an active social media presence has become mandatory across different industries, even the healthcare industry. Unfortunately, many physicians find social media marketing intimidating.

The way patients approach healthcare today is different than it was a decade ago. Today, social media is the most relevant advertising channel for you and your practice. It is a cost-effective way to increase reach, build credibility, and attract new patients.

Still on the social media fence?

Here are 5 reasons why you should include social media in your marketing campaign.

Increase reach

With over 3 billion social media users, it is almost inevitable that the majority of your target audience has a presence on popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The majority of them log in on their accounts on a daily basis.

While social media was originally created to cultivate personal relationships, you can use it to get you and your practice in front of your target audience. Your existing patients are probably already following you, but social media allows you to reach more than just the patients you see in your clinic or office.

With the right strategies, it can help you broaden your audience and bring more patients through the door. Don’t be one of the many practices that are missing out on the opportunity to reach millions of people on social media.

Build a relationship with your audience

According to a study that was published in the Annals of Family Medicine, doctors spend an average of 17 minutes with each patient. That is not enough to address the patient’s immediate concerns, much less to build a relationship. Social media gives you an opportunity to connect with your audience and communicate with them outside the office.

As a healthcare professional, you have an opportunity to help people by correcting the spread of medical misinformation, helping chronically ill people feel less isolated, and encouraging them to pursue a healthier lifestyle. Of course, you need to make it clear that you won’t be providing medical advice. This should be done in the office.

With time and consistent effort, you’ll be able to gain their trust and loyalty. If you can create the ultimate experience for your patients, they aren’t likely to go to another doctor.

Attract new patients

The internet has changed the way people find doctors. They are no longer limited to physicians in their area. Although word of mouth and referrals still rank high as a means of finding new doctors, many patients would turn to the internet to find healthcare practitioners of all kinds.

In a survey that was conducted by Doctors.com, they revealed that 63% of respondents choose one doctor over the other because of a strong online presence. You want you and your practice to be at the front of a patient’s mind when the need for your practice arises. And that’s exactly what social media marketing is for.

Social media can be an invaluable resource to attract new patients. As mentioned above, it provides a way to reach a new audience, engage with them, and promote your services. When done right, it will bring you a steady stream of new patients and grow your practice.

Patients want you out there

According to a survey conducted by the National Research Corporation, over 40% of internet users rely on social media for health information. Some would turn to social media for advice when they have questions about healthcare problems or issues.

Your potential and existing patients are already on social media, and using these platforms to get in front of them makes sense. There is already a demand for health-related content, so why not give it to them?

In a hyper-connected world, people want to be able to communicate directly with major brands in their lives, including their doctors. Take advantage of this opportunity to market your practice and services to the exact people that are looking for you.

Become a thought leader in your field

More and more people go online to look up medical information. Since anyone can post practically anything, health information online is often unreliable. As a physician, you can’t just remain quiet and uninvolved while people spread inaccurate information.
Information sharing is one of the greatest benefits of social media.

Doctors have a powerful voice. It is time for you to dip your toes into the virtual waters and disseminate scientifically-proven medical information to the general public.

Always bring value to the community. Give tips on how to stay healthy. Share information about current illnesses going around. Upload links to new research about your area of specialty. If you can make complicated topics easier to understand, then you’ll be able to help millions of people across the globe.

 

Why doctors need to be on social media

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Email Marketing for Healthcare Clinics

Email Marketing for Healthcare Clinics

In this blog post, we are going to be talking about all things email marketing for health care centers, oftentimes health care centers and clinics are worried about remaining HIPPA-compliant while pursuing email marketing efforts as part of their digital marketing strategy period.

So you need to be aware of the technology that you’re using and make sure that you have a signed with the software of your choice. Email marketing is incredible way to stay top of mind with your patients and your prospects.

It allows health care centers to increase the ROI of their digital marketing efforts and build loyalty and trust with those in the community. Please take a look at the video below, and transcript to learn more about how email marketing can be utilized by your clinic in order to reach more prospects, book more appointments and increase the bottom line of your marketing.

Watch the medical marketing video

Listen to the Podcast

Read the Digital Marketing Transcript

00:00 Caitlin Mcdonald: Hello, everybody. My name’s Caitlin McDonald, I am the co-founder over here at the Social Speak Network, and welcome to the newest episode of the Social Speak Network podcast. In today’s episode, we’re gonna be talking about email marketing for healthcare centers. Now, a lot of times, people think that email marketing is something that they can’t do; they don’t want to break any HIPAA compliance rules, they wanna make sure that patient information remains private. However, you can still utilize email marketing to keep your prospects and patients aware of what’s happening at your practice and making sure that they think of you first and foremost when either they have a symptom that they need to come in to your specialist, or they hear somebody else needing help and support in your specialties.

01:00 CM: So not all email providers are created equal. We typically recommend utilizing an email platform, a CRM that is designed specifically for healthcare. There are a lot of great form builders out there that are HIPAA compliant; Formstack, Jobform are just a few of them that do have levels that are HIPAA compliant, so that means that the information that is stored there remains secure. So you aren’t breaking any rules by having people sign up through that. We always wanna make sure, however, that people are explicitly stating that they are interested in receiving marketing material from you. We sometimes go a step further and add text in there about… In the form itself, about receiving text messages regarding upcoming appointments, so that you can send them text messages as well, and have it just be very transparent what they’re signing up for. So for example, if it’s a request a consultation form, you wanna make sure that you’re taking those steps to also ask them if they want to join your email list, rather than just assuming that requesting a consultation also means email list.

02:22 CM: The similar sort of thing for patients who are coming in the door, maybe giving you a call, not filling out one of those forms. While they’re in your practice, you should always be asking them if they would like to receive marketing information from you, and then ask for their email address and have them physically sign a sheet of paper that says, “Yes, I’m giving this practice permission to reach out to me via email.” We always wanna have some sort of a form like that.

02:56 CM: Now, one of our favorite pieces of technology is called Influx MD, and this takes this a step further. So it doesn’t just create the forms, but allows you to create the forms and then track prospects as they turn into patients. So it goes, it brings a prospect all the way through to that first online booking. Now oftentimes, your admin will have forms and paperwork that they need to sign, new patient paperwork that they need to sign before coming in. And through Influx MD, we’re actually able to create systems and processes that automates this entire flow. So not only are you receiving their contact information and gaining approval that the individual would like to receive the marketing emails from you, but you also are able to, within that same module, make sure that you are bringing a prospect into becoming a patient. So this really increases the transparency as it relates to ROI, and how much you’re spending on advertising versus just bringing in the door.

04:16 CM: So the goal is obviously, in that first appointment, to have that positive ROI. But if you think about the entire lifetime value of a patient, this also helps to increase that as well, and do referrals as well. So in this case, we use the CRM as that initial point up to that initial patient consultation, then they’re moved over to your EMR. So it’s kinda two platforms that work side and side. Admin and staff who need access to the records can have that, whereas marketers like myself just see the reports and the data coming in.

04:57 CM: So what types of emails, when we’re talking about email marketing, should you be sending out to prospects and patients? I already mentioned one of them. Those are kind of status updates of your practice. So do you have a new doctor? Has staff changed? Do you have new nurses there? You want to provide that personal feel, that personal touch to your prospects, so that you remain top of mind, and so that they really know, like and trust your experts. Secondly, you wanna send out timely health information. Potentially you’re writing blog posts, which we’ve covered in previous weeks, or creating videos, which we also have covered in previous weeks. And so you wanna make sure that you are getting those resources and that information to individuals, and email is a great way to do that. So you’re allowing them to take their health to the next level because you are providing them with those resources and the guidance to help them live healthier, more fulfilling lives.

06:05 CM: Now the last thing is, like I said, the last general type of email that we would recommend sending out is for appointment reminders, as well as appointment follow-ups. You might see this a lot where in other industries, and it’s less so in healthcare, where you receive an email requesting a review. Now, reviews on Google still are… And Facebook and Yelp [chuckle] are still some of the most powerful social indicators that you can see online through your marketing. People who are not familiar with your practice will actually take a look at these reviews in order to help guide their decision on whether or not they want to contact you for that initial consultation. And once they contact you, they will continue to do more research. So these reviews help to give them peace of mind. So we do recommend utilizing a software tool that helps to send out these follow-up emails, and it also works with text message as well to folks who have been to your practice.

07:26 CM: So, again, just as an overview of these types of emails; so staff news and information, information about your practice, maybe new locations, new specialties, new equipment that you have, so kinda the press release type. Tips and health information, so this is the educational type of information. We do recommend even sending this out weekly, it’s a great way to stay top of mind. And you could combine the two, if you wanna just send out one monthly newsletter, you could add the featured staff as well as that health education. And then the third one is for appointment reminders and follow-up reminders for reviews.

08:14 CM: I hope that this has been helpful as you start planning out your email marketing strategy for your healthcare center. Again, my name’s Caitlin McDonald, I’m here with the Social Speak Network. And we’re just about all the way through our Q3, Q4 marketing overview for healthcare centers. This was our 10th week going specifically into a topic. But over the past quarter, we’ve talked about your social media strategy, Facebook advertising, Facebook groups, Instagram, Pinterest, blogging, lead generation, videos, running a podcast and more. So if you’ve missed any of those and you wanna dive into more detail, we have the full transcripts available at our blog. You can hop on over to our YouTube channel to view the videos or over to Social Speak Network on iTunes to listen to the audio. Thanks so much and I will see you next time.

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