Which Form of Marketing is Best for Your Medical Practice?
Growing your practice is probably one of your top priorities. In order to have sustained growth, marketing your practice is essential for success.
Whether you are looking to begin your marketing journey for a new practice or revamp your current strategies, you are probably wondering what is the best and most effective option.
Why Marketing is Necessary for Medical Professionals
In today’s world, the reality is that no business can expect to succeed without marketing. For medical practices, a large part of this is thanks to the shift in focus to patient-centered care, rather than a focus on the physician or practice.
Thinking about what marketing strategy will work best can seem overwhelming with all of the other things you need to focus on in order to run a successful practice. In fact, you probably would rather just focus on providing top-quality care instead of marketing. And we get it! That’s why we are taking a look at some of the more traditional options of marketing, such as SEO and digital ads, and how they stack up to referral relationships.
SEO - Invest in the Long Game
As Bill Gates has said, “content is king.” This is especially true for SEO. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of improving your site to increase its organic visibility in online searches. In other words, you are doing work on the back end to make your website more relevant and discoverable based on popular keywords or phrases that people search for in regards to your industry.
The more you optimize your site through SEO practices, the higher your page’s ranking will be in online searches on sites such as Google or Yahoo search engines.
The practice of SEO is using keywords or phrases in parts of your site such as:
Meta descriptions
Headlines
The first paragraph of a blog
Descriptive custom URLs
File names of images
Internal links
External links
What makes SEO difficult is that it is time-consuming and requires an understanding of the user’s intent. It takes time to research keywords and phrases that are relevant to your content and practice, and then insert them into your site and blogs. It also takes time to build rapport with Google and other search engines. However, once you get this rapport, it lasts a long time.
Digital Ads - When You Need a Quicker Win
Another common marketing practice is the use of digital ads. Digital is much more cost-effective than traditional forms of marketing, such as print or TV ads. Digital ads have expanded beyond the banner ads of decades past. Now you can run ads on social media platforms, run in-app mobile marketing ads, and use pay-per-click (PPC).
In order to effectively run a digital ad campaign, you have to:
Do your keyword research
Write up copy
Create eye-catching images or graphics
Optimize each ad for the different platform
And then run your ads
The great thing about digital ads is that they typically start to perform quickly, helping you get leads to your practice. However, you pay for each of those, and when you stop paying, they stop delivering. Not to mention that you have to constantly pay for ad runs and over time, that can really add up in cost.
Referral Marketing
There’s a nice blend of both the long game (like SEO) and the short game (like paid digital ads): referral marketing. Referral marketing can offer some great quick wins to help you bring patients in the door, but the relationships with referring doctors also build a pipeline for your practice’s long-term growth.
If you are thinking that doing the work to build your network can be time-consuming, there is a better way–by hiring a Physician’s Liaison!
Your liaison already has a built-in network of medical professionals and specialists they can connect you with that you need in your network. For over 13 years, our experts have helped practices and providers build up their network one handshake at a time. Our unique model is a dynamic approach that tailors your message to the unique needs of your prospective referrers.
What makes referral marketing the most effective option is that it is based on building relationships that last! This means longevity and permanence for your practice that isn’t based on the whims of today’s fickle consumers. So while you focus on running the day-to-day of your practice and providing high-quality, patient-centered care, we’ll be your champion for building relationships outside of your practice, helping you build a network that leads to referrals.
A beautiful result of solid referral relationships is that our clients learn the genuine hot buttons of not just patients, but also their referring providers. Unlike SEO & Digital Ads, a patient referred by their provider will often share praise or criticism with their referring provider. Additionally, patients often share praise or criticism with specialists about their referring provider as well. The end result is a valuable feedback loop based largely on authenticity.
Referrals are testimonials of your professionalism. Referrals also immediately build familiarity centered around your practice. Ultimately, a referral is also a reflection of the professional judgment of the person making the referral. The best possible outcomes and overall optimal patient experiences, despite being health and aging-related or illness and injury related, will naturally lead to lasting professional referral relationships based on quality of care and professionalism. Best of all, referral relationships are not tied to a monthly budget that delivers patients, which means that the referrals keep flowing even after your liaison is focusing on other areas on your behalf.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help effectively market your practice through building your referral network.