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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! 

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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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Why Podcasts are important to your digital marketing strategy?

Benefits of adding a podcast to your digital marketing strategy

Podcasts have become a very popular way to connect with your target audience. They are easy and convenient which is always a win-win situation when it comes to digital marketing!

Today, we are going to be covering a few tips on Why Podcasts need to be implemented into your digital marketing strategy!

00:01 Amber Irwin: Hello and welcome to the Social Speak Network Podcast, I am your host Amber Irwin. And today, we are going to be covering tip number nine: Podcast Marketing. We’ve covered a lot in these past tips of how to really create that content strategy. And I wanted to talk on [00:22] ____ really about just podcasts in general, and how and why they’re so important to your content strategy. So let’s jump into the why. Why are podcasts so important? And why have they gotten so popular? And let’s start with number one. They’re engaging to your audience and convenient. So when we’re thinking of our digital experience for our audience, we wanna think of what are the things that are convenient for them, that are easy for them to consume, and still give that value, and show that we are the experts in that industry. Whatever industry that is.

01:09 AI: And you have to think, podcasts are such a great way to really be able to package all this information into one setting. So, convenience is key. People that are listening to podcasts are usually… Maybe they’re driving, they’re walking, they’re cleaning the house, they’re working… They always have them on because it’s not something… They don’t have to watch the video, they can have it wherever so it’s the convenient piece for your audience is key. Number two is that mobile experience. We talked about this with… A few of the other tips is making sure that the digital experience is mobile-friendly because most people are using their phones to do the work.

02:03 AI: And so 69% of people listen to podcasts from their mobile device. So this is a great way that they’re able to listen to your podcast. Again that convenience piece, it’s mobile, they have it wherever they’re at. And thinking of your audience, what does their day look like? Are they in the car for an hour a day or maybe two hours a day? Are they family, are they mothers where they are sitting in maybe car line [02:35] ____, are they… Think of who they are, and how much time are they spending in the car or what does their lifestyle look like? Are they active? And so they always have their phone with them, so it’s mobile-friendly.

02:52 AI: And they’re becoming… Podcasts. And number three, they’re becoming more and more popular. And this is… So according to Search Engine Journal, there were 48 million weekly podcast listeners in 2018, 48 million. And Statista data says that there will be over 115 million listeners before 2021, a 115 million. What’s really cool about this is it’s growing and growing every day and the type of podcast… It’s really like your YouTube channel. We’ll get into that a little bit later on in the tips I’m giving you, but just thinking of how many people you can reach and your target market by creating a podcast. And it’s very simple, so that was tip number three. They’re becoming more and more popular. A lot of people have their favorite play lists of podcasts in different varieties. If you talk to people, most people will have, I would say, between 5 and 10 podcasts that they listen to, and for different reasons. It may be personal podcasts they like on the personal base. They have their work ones, things that are within their industry, that they stay up-to-date with. They may have, if they are a part of different organizations, a lot of people are requiring or recommending them listen to certain podcasts.

04:27 AI: So these podcasts are… There’s everything out there. So you’re looking at what is your audience struggling with? And so if you are a paediatrician and your audience is mostly mothers. Most of the time, that’s who’s bringing the kids in to the doctors. And are those moms looking for healthy eating, are they looking for… Maybe tips for… Parenting tips. Are they looking for podcast on vaccinations, are they looking at holistic medicine, like what are they struggling with? What questions are they asking you?

05:04 AI: And to be able to put a podcast together around that, that brings me into tip number four: Brand Loyalty. You have this convenience piece, you have the content piece of talking to your audience, and now you’re building this brand loyalty. And so a podcast is something you’ll have interviews, you can find out from your audience, you know what are those topics that they wanna learn more about and be able to interview someone on your podcast. You can just talk about a certain topic just like this on your podcast. So you’re building that brand loyalty. And like I said, most people have between 5 and 10 podcasts that they listen to on a daily or weekly basis, so they’re building that brand loyalty. They are really, they feel like they know the people that are putting on or the businesses that are putting on these podcasts.

06:03 AI: And number five is they are low cost. We’re not talking a big recording studio. I’m in my home office, I have a good microphone, I have my computer. You can use an external camera or your computer camera, you may need to, depending on lighting maybe get a little light, but honestly, it’s low cost if any. The only thing you’re really gonna pay for is where you’re going to put your podcast when it’s done.

06:36 AI: And so, we’re on Podbean. And Podbean I think is like 14.99 a month. And that also allows you… That syncs with iTunes and so that gets you on to iTunes. It gets you onto the other podcast networks as well. So it’s a really good tool. But $15 a month for being able to share information that you’re already talking to your audience about already… It’s brainless, you gotta do it. This has to be a part of your content strategy. And number six is you are building that expertise and value. So every podcast… Again, a great way to start is start serving your patients asking or writing down, what are they asking you when they come in?

07:29 AI: What issues are they running into? What are their pain points? What type of lifestyle are they wishing that they would have or that they’re working towards or what are they struggling with on the home side with their family? So thinking of your industry and your audience and you’re building these podcasts around those topics, you’re providing valuable information to your audience that they wanna know about. So this ties in with tip number four of that brand loyalty. If you are providing them value and you are showing that you are the expert in that industry, that’s building that loyalty.

08:08 AI: They are going to be listening to you. And then going into tip number seven, this is content creation. So one thing I love about podcasts is when you’re thinking of your digital marketing strategy, you wanna be able to think of how people comprehend information and podcasts are obviously auditory. Videos are visual. If you have a white paper, a free download to go along with something, those are gonna be the kinesthetic learners. And so, with podcasts, if you do… Let me give you a little insight tip here.

08:49 AI: We use Zoom. There’s a paid version and a free version. And one thing I like about Zoom is you can record it, and do a video, and it also records the audio. So when you’re creating this podcast, you can put the audio file onto Podbean or your podcast platform, and then you can take the video format and upload it to your YouTube channel. So you’re able to use this content in multiple different ways. And then, what’s really cool about this too is with your podcast, you can have… Your podcast can be shared out onto your social media platforms, you can have a link onto your website that says, “Join or subscribe to our Podcast.” So it’s really creating this community of people. And again, you’re already talking about these things to your audience.

09:46 AI: So, it’s just recording it and being able to package it in a podcast, wrap it up in the box and put podcast on it. And your audience is able to get it from their phone. They can listen to it from their computer. But again, you’re providing that information to them that is valuable and that is key. So if you’re thinking about starting a podcast in the new year and implementing that into your content strategy, I would start by opening up a document or opening up… Getting a piece of paper and start writing down what does that podcast strategy look like? What are you blogging about? What are you talking about on social media already? Those blog posts that you’ve already written, we were talking about how important blogging is, and how those blog posts should be 2,000 plus words and around that keyword foundation. Your podcast should be the same thing. And you can turn those blog posts that you have already taken the time to write, you can turn those into a podcast and then take the audio file and implement it into that blog post.

10:57 AI: So people can either… They can read it, they can listen to it or they can watch it. So it’s really… Again, you’re touching every type of learning style, so your audience whichever way they wanna consume your information, it’s there for them to do. And I think that that is really important for your digital marketing strategy. So start looking at what are those pieces you’ve already written on your website and on social media? What’s your audience, your patients, your current client list, what are they talking about? What are they asking you?

11:29 AI: And start writing down some topics. And your podcasts don’t have to be super long. Again, think of your ideal, your target market, are they on the go quick, quick, quick? So they do they need to be between 15 and 20 minutes long. Maybe you do your interviews, maybe 30 to 40 minutes long. I would say whatever you do, to keep them under an hour, under 30 minutes if possible. You gotta think of… If they’re listening to them while they’re driving, what’s that drive time like? So just keep your audience in mind. But anything under 30 minutes is gonna be great. And if you keep ’em between that 15 to 22 minutes, even better.

12:11 AI: So, if you have questions or need help creating this podcast strategy, please let us know. You can go to socialspeaknetwork.com and schedule a free 30-minute consultation. And while you’re at it, subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Podbean, Social Speak Network. And we are here to help you thrive with your content strategy. Have a great day.

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6 Best Practices for Physician Referral Marketing

6 Best Practices for Physician Referral Marketing

According to a report in the Annals of Family Medicine, 45% of physicians receive new patients through referrals. Like any medical practitioner, you want to make sure that your practice is supported by your referral partners and your community.

We know that you are doing your part in referring patients to other physicians whom you feel are the best. But are they returning the favor of referring their patients to you?

If you’re looking for ways to get more referrals, keep reading. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices your office should maintain to maximize the potential of your patient referral program.

Get out of the office

In a fast-paced hospital setting, it can be especially hard to connect with colleagues. If you want to bolster your referral network and keep your business thriving, then you need to make the decision to get out of the office, even if it’s just once a month.

Meet new physicians and healthcare leaders in your community. Reach out to existing providers who you refer to and who refer to you.

Identify physicians you want to partner with. You’ll want someone who is a good match for your practice, share your values and hold themselves to a high ethical standard.

Build a relationship

The best way to grow your referrals is to build, maintain, and improve your relationships with referring providers.

Professional referrals are based squarely on sound relationships and expertise. Doctors and their staff will only refer their patients to people they trust, like, and feel are competent.

Make a continual effort to show your referring doctors that you value their partnership. You can call them up just to see how they and their families are doing, drop by with a frappuccino for them or take them out for lunch.

In most cases, it is not the doctor, but a key staff person who actually handles the referral mechanics. If you want to grow your referral base, then you should take the initiative to get to know not only the physician but also their staff. Be certain to identify and include the key gatekeepers. Capitalize on those connections and they will be more likely to pass your business card on.

Simplify the referral process

Most doctors would simply advise their patients to book an appointment with a certain doctor.

Unfortunately, 50% of professional referrals never result in a doctor’s visit. The referral process should be quick and simple.

Otherwise, you’ll be missing out on a big slice of the referral pie. Even if the referring physician and their staff adore you, they’re not going to send patients your way if your referral process is frustrating, time-consuming, and just plain clunky.

Simplify the referral process by investing in a secure online referral portal, where they can send you the patient’s information, including contact information, suspected diagnosis, and reason for referral.

Since you already have the necessary information, it will be easier for you to decide the course of action and how quickly the patient needs to be seen. As a result, you’ll be able to serve both the referring physician and the patient better.

Make referring physician look good

When doctors refer their patients to you, it means that they trust you. Your office will serve as an extension of theirs, so they are counting on you to provide patients with excellent service.

Often, patients report back to their primary physicians about their experience. Make a special effort to accommodate the referred patient as soon as possible. Also, make sure that you take good care of the patients and treat them right.

Ensure the referring physician that there will always be room for their patients at your practice.

Be grateful

We grow up learning the importance of good manners, and that usually starts with saying “thank you”.

If a patient is referred to you, take the time to call the referring physician to thank him/her for the trust and confidence. You can also send a hand-written note if that’s your style. Let the referring practice know that you appreciate the referral.

Stay in touch with the referring physician

When a patient is referred to you, it is always vital to follow up. This is a crucial step that many physicians do not do.

One study suggests that 40% of patients that follow through with a referral never went back to their primary physician after the care is initially provided. Always send the patient back to the referring physician. The last thing you want is for the referring doctor to feel that their generous referral has cost them a patient.

Let the referring practice know that the patient has already been scheduled and that you will continue to communicate about what transpires. You want to assure the referring doctor that you’re invested in their patients’ health and that the patient will be receiving the best care possible.

6 Best Practices for Physician Referral Marketing

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Lead Generation for Medical Practices

Lead Generation for Health Care

Today we’re going to be talking about Lead generation. We’ve already discussed Facebook advertising and social media marketing and lead generation ties into this as well as your Patient Journey very closely.

Now as we dive into lead generation, there are some basic components that we are going to discuss. The first is having a clear understanding of what your ideal patient is looking for online, then it includes creating the messaging that’s going to bring this person into the door and get them interested in learning more, followed by the technical aspects of creating a landing page a welcome email and a thank you page. as we discussed these items were going to dive into the hero’s journey and what this means for creating advertising copy that captures the attention, build trust, and books initial consultations with your patients.

Often times we see health clinics run ads that direct people to a page on their website. While this is great for building website traffic we have found that these campaigns lead to nearly zero results and a negative return on investment for health care centers. While you want to make sure that you are helping those in your community, you also need to make sure that you are understanding how the money you spend in your advertising actually relates to an increase in revenue of your bottom line.

Please – if you know that your ads just run to a page on your website, jump into your account and pause them now and don’t hesitate to contact us for a marketing consultation.

Let’s start first with the needs of your ideal patient we’ve been talking about this over the past couple of months. You should already understand your patient Journey. What brings these patients in the door? What makes them look for your services? And how can you position the benefits of coming in to see your doctors so that it answers the key questions that you are prospects have.

Watch Lead Generation Strategy

Listen to the Lead Generation Strategy on our Marketing Podcast

Transcript of Healthcare Marketing Podcast on Medical Lead Generation

00:01 Caitlin McDonald: Hello and welcome to the Social Speak Network podcast. I’m Caitlin McDonald, the co-founder over here at Social Speak, and today we’re gonna be talking about lead generation for your healthcare practice. So, we’ve already discussed Facebook advertising and social media marketing, and lead generation really ties into these as well as your patient journey which we’ve been discussing all throughout very closely. So, as we dive into lead generation, there’s some basic components that we’re going to discuss. The first is having a clear understanding of what your ideal patient is looking for online. So, then, this dives into creating the messaging that’s going to bring this person into the door and get them interested in learning more. You follow this by the technical aspects of creating a landing page, and a welcome email, and a thank you page.

01:05 CM: And so, as we discuss these items, we’re going to dive into the hero’s journey, and what this means for creating advertising copy that captures the attention, builds trust, and books initial consultations with patients. So, oftentimes, we see healthcare clinics and different clinics run ads that direct people just to a page on their website, and maybe there’s a schedule, your appointment form there. Well, this is great for building traffic to your website, we’ve found that these campaigns really don’t lead to a return on your investment. Yes, you might get a few people booking appointments. However, there’s a much better way to run your lead generation campaigns, so that you have a higher chance of getting people filling out that initial form. And so we’ll be diving into that today.

02:02 CM: So, while you wanna make sure that you’re helping those in your community, you also need to make sure that the money that you’re spending on getting people through a funnel is actually increasing the revenue to your bottom line. So if you know that your ads run to a page of your website on your website, please jump into those accounts, pause them now, pick up your phone, give us call, we are here to help you. Again, this is the number one mistake that we see health care centers and clinics make. So, again, yes, it’s awesome that you’re getting website traffic there, but are they actually been converting into patients for your clinic?

02:51 CM: So, taking a step back, let’s first talk about the needs of your ideal patient. And we’ve been talking about this for the past month or so, maybe two months, and you should already have a sense of your patient journey. So this includes what brings the patients into the door, what makes them look for your services, and how can you position the benefits of coming in to see your doctors so that it answers the key questions, concerns, and fears that your prospects have? So take the time to review your patient journey again. And, again, this can be multiple patient journeys. I just want you to think about one of them. Once you have that patient journey at the forefront of your mind, you can begin to understand how you can position the answers to these common questions and solutions to these common fears as part of the hero’s journey framework.

03:51 CM: So let’s quickly talk about the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey originates from Joseph Campbell, and really can be a framework that we can utilize in our marketing messaging. I’m not gonna go through step-by-step about what Joseph Campbell says, but more about how we can use it in your marketing language. So we actually follow this process when we are writing Facebook ads for our healthcare centers. So, the step one, first step is create an emotion. And this is really getting people involved and getting them to have a connection to the story that you are telling. Then the next thing is to determine a theme. This is an idea of how we should live our lives. Are you finding peace in your life, or are you living a life of greater success? Are you living on your own terms, and things like that? Then you can talk about the hero’s journey. So, what was their life before they started on this journey? What was the background?

05:09 CM: Then, what did you long for, what did this person long for? So, for example, if it’s somebody who has knee pain, their life before is that they could hardly get off of the couch, they couldn’t go out and enjoy the activities that they used to, they longed to dance at their daughter’s wedding and have that first dance, but they were just in pain. So you need to create empathy for the hero in your content. And so you can talk about this individual either in the third person or in the first person. We found for a lot of smaller solo practitioners, health coaches that talking about this in the first person works really well. And for larger health care clinics oftentimes having an individual tell their story works really well.

06:00 CM: So you want to show how misfortune has affected the character as a way to develop that sympathy. And you also want to make the hero likable. You can’t have a villain as that hero especially in these ads. So, the next thing is you need to present an opportunity that this main character, the main hero has faced. And so this can be an event that’s never happened to them before. So they learned a secret. They heard about a specialist in the area, they heard about one of your physicians and the services that you offer. And so the hero then takes action. And, as it transitions into this new situation, what’s at stake? What are those big questions that they have? And now it’s a chance to show how they actually pursued their goal of being able to dance at their daughter’s wedding.

07:10 CM: They took action and they accomplished their goal by coming in to see your specialist. By booking that first appointment, they were able to put their fears aside and to understand how knee replacement surgery has come a long way. And so you want to make sure that you are building up a climax and showing how this hero has taken their pain and found a solution and then actually acted on it. And then here is when you show the transformation. So you’re telling about what life was like after. You start with before, how bad everything was. They find the solution, they take action and then you have the transformation. We’ve been finding that having a testimonial within this transformation piece can work really well to provide social proof that the transformation actually worked. And if you are an expert, you are the specialist that you say you are able to help people, I’m sure you will be able to find one of those testimonials.

08:17 CM: So we really enjoy following this… Enjoy… [chuckle] We found a lot of success following this hero’s journey as we’re putting together the language that we use in the Facebook ad. So then I mentioned rather than sending somebody directly to a website that just is part of your site as a whole, really directing them to a landing page. So we take some of those key benefits that we’re identifying within this Hero’s Journey of all the things that they could accomplish after that transformation and we put those benefits onto the landing page. We can also put a video of the specialist that actually allowed that transformation to happen. And so you can do a quick video of one of your physicians, one of your doctors, or even yourself in there, just to build trust, get people to know, like, and trust your brand and to allow people to come face-to-face with who they would be meeting at your practice.

09:21 CM: From here we have that schedule appointment now. For smaller solopreneurs you could have an e-book or a checklist to grow your email list. We also do recommend that for healthcare centers. But if you really wanna see that immediate return, scheduling the appointments, having this here is a great idea. So, to build your landing page, we utilize a tool, Lead Pages. It’s just leadpages.com, you can sign up for an account there, and we build basically all of our landing pages through here, and they’re just very simple layouts. So, as I mentioned, we take the benefits, we put them on one side, we have a video, and we have the schedule now, and a headline up at the top with maybe your logo.

10:20 CM: And so it’s just very clear and crisp and has one call to action. They don’t then see all of the links at the top of the website, and start clicking around to learn more and forget that they were even there to book an appointment. This is to get people to take action immediately. From here we have lead pages actually send out an initial email to anybody who signs up for the consultation or to download a resource from you. And we have lead pages also host the “Thank You” page. So on the “Thank You” page is where you can provide even more information about the clinic, link to the website, and things like that. Sometimes we even build that “Thank You” page directly onto the website so that they can then start poking around and learning more about your practice.

11:17 CM: And how this works if somebody clicks on the Facebook ad. You’re targeting them based on interests, geographic location. Maybe there are people who have been to your website, and because you have the pixel installed on your website, or in a different landing page, you can re-market to them. Potentially you have an email list, and you can create a lookalike audience for that email list. And so you have this audience, you direct them to the landing page. After that landing page which we build on lead pages, we put the code directly onto your website, so it could be a WordPress website, you just use a plugin, it’s super simple. Other websites, you can take the HTML code from lead pages, plug it into a page on your website for more control and flexibility. Lead Pages does A/B testing, kinda just built in so you can try different designs, you could try having a video, not having a video, changing colors or language, and it will all automatically process for you.

12:25 CM: So they get to the landing page, they fill out the information, they got sent a welcome email as well as redirected to a thank you page where they can learn more about your practice. And the reason why we do this is because we really feel as though if you want to help the folks in your community who are struggling and who need your clinics support and expertise, that you need to create a system and a messaging that’s going to make it as simple as possible for them to move forward and take that next step. We have just found such great success with this process. Typically, you might start out and you might get the messaging wrong, and that’s okay, at least you’re getting the information and the data to then make a new decision in the future.

13:27 CM: So, as I mentioned before, if you are currently running ads and you don’t know how well they’re converting, or you think that they’re just going to a page on your website that may or may not have a little form on the side of the page, please reach out to us. We would love to chat, love to dive into what you do have going on, just for a free consultation where we can tell you the steps that you can take in order to optimize that advertising campaign. Of course we do also work as your external marketing department, and we can help manage those lead funnels as well. So, again, my name is Caitlin McDonald, I am the co-founder of Social Speak Network, you’ve been listening to the Social Speak Network podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in and we will see you next week.

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5 Healthcare Marketing Trends That Will Help You Stay on Top

Change is the only permanent thing in life, they say. That’s never been truer in the world of healthcare marketing.

Healthcare marketing is continuously changing. Keeping up to date with the latest digital trends and consumer preference is key to remain competitive and acquire a steady stream of patients.

Keep these trends in mind when planning your healthcare marketing campaign.

Excellent digital experience

Most hospital websites focus on providing information such as the address, business hours, doctor’s bios, specialties offered, etc. As competition in the digital landscape heats up, more and more hospitals and healthcare providers are putting a greater focus on patient experience.

83% of patients visit a hospital’s website before booking an appointment. That means a patient’s experience begins with your website. Their online experience will determine whether or not they will convert from leads to actual patients.

For a better online experience, make sure that your website loads quickly and is easy to navigate. Patients love the idea of convenient scheduling. If you offer online booking or have a customer service chatbot they can communicate with, that would be a plus.

You are bound to see a high ROI if you focus on creating an exemplary online experience for potential patients.

Video Marketing

According to a study that was conducted by Hubspot, 45% of people watch more than one hour of video a day. Out of the 45%, an astounding 81% have been convinced to buy a product or avail a service after watching a branded video.

Incorporating video content into your marketing strategy can help build trust and provide a much deeper understanding of what your healthcare company has to offer. Prospective patients are now researching doctors who specialize in the procedure they’re looking for before scheduling an appointment. This is where video content proves useful.

Through videos, you can verbally and visually explain how the procedure work. This can help ease fears or uncertainty. Plus, it helps prospective patients get to know the doctor before a consultation, so they gain a sense of trust beforehand.

If you haven’t already, we urge you to start creating video content, both for your website and social media accounts, sooner rather than later. 

Search engine optimization

They say the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google. Why? It’s because 55% of users won’t go past the first three organic results. 

According to studies, 89% of consumers turn to the internet when they’re looking for answers for their healthcare queries. You want your website to show up at the top of Google’s search results. Otherwise, you’ll be losing to your competitors.

With more and more people turning to the internet for medical advice, it is important to capitalize on these searches by making your website as visible as possible. To get on page 1 of the search engine results, you’ll need a strong website and an even stronger SEO strategy.

Online reputation management

Your online reputation will have a significant impact on your practice. Why? It’s because a huge majority of patients turn to the internet to research physicians.

The survey revealed that 84% of patients read online reviews to help them gain insight into healthcare providers. 86% of them will be hesitant to schedule a consultation with you if they read a negative review or comment.

To stay competitive, you need to make a concerted effort to manage your reputation, both online and offline.

Whether you like it or not, patients are going to leave reviews. The sad truth is that dissatisfied customers are more likely to leave feedback than happy customers. With a single review, comment or article, the reputation of any healthcare organization can be tarnished.

You can’t make negative feedback go away, but you can encourage happy patients to speak out for your brand. It is in your best interest to encourage patients to leave reviews.

Mobile healthcare apps

Gloomy faces of ailing patients waiting outside the doctor’s office, long queues, and a dull, monotonous hall – this is the picture one would imagine while waiting at a doctor’s clinic or a hospital about a decade ago.

Millennials are the largest U.S. generation, and they demand convenience. They are switching to providers that offer a much higher level of convenience. This is where mobile healthcare apps come in.

In today’s era of the smartphone, keeping in contact with a healthcare provider has never been easier. Patients can chat with their doctors and ask for advice about a symptom or a condition. They can also book appointments with their doctors, access doctor’s prescriptions, and even purchase medicines through their mobile devices. In addition, patients can easily monitor their health conditions themselves through apps. This helps them stay one step ahead of the disease; hence, reducing the need for invasive treatments.

Healthcare apps are also beneficial for doctors and medical staffs. They can check the patient’s reports and prescribe medicines if required. Doctors can even make referrals through the apps. 

 

 

 

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