5 Top Online Marketing Strategies for Healthcare Professionals in 2015

5th January 2015 Mike Busby Blogging, Internet Marketing, Mobile Websites, Patient Reviews, Social Media, Video Marketing, YouTube 0 Comments

Marketing strategies for healthcare professionalsAs we move into a new year, now is a good time to evaluate what you should be doing to increase your patient numbers. Whether you be a cardiologist, a nephrologist or an wholistic therapist, everybody needs new patients to keep their practice thriving.

Here are our 5 top tips for online marketing strategies for healthcare professionals to bring in new patients …

1. Blogging

If you are not blogging yet, then now is the time to start. Google loves blogs, so if you want to be found in Google searches by either potential patients, or even other consultants who may want to refer patients to you, then you need to get writing.

Writing blogs is also a good way for your potential patients to not only see your level of knowledge and expertise, but also get a glimpse of you as a person. People want to engage with people they like, and that includes patients and their consultants. So, don’t be too dry in your writing style, give away a little about yourself and people will warm to you.

2. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

A recent survey of the analytics of over 100 of our healthcare professionals’ websites show that they now get about 40% of their website visitors coming from mobile devices, ie smart phones and tablets. That is up from 20% last year. At this rate, more people will visit your site next year using a mobile device than a desktop device.

So, how does your website display and function on your smart phone. Most websites will operate, but they are not easy to use. Whether it be constantly pinching and stretching, moving the screen around to see content, or struggling to go to other pages because the links are too small for ‘fat fingers’, it is not a good experience for your site visitor.

Your website should now be mobile-friendly, or you will start to lose patients to organisations whose websites are.

3. Encourage Reviews

Many healthcare professionals are worried about encouraging reviews in case they receive a bad one. However, nothing you do is going to stop the odd bad review whatever you do. People will still post them up. It just may be that you don’t see them.

It is better to create a specified place for people to post and have a level of control over your patient reviews. One such place is your website.

If you are able to encourage people to post up positive reviews, then these will swamp any bad reviews that you may get. You also remain in control (to a point) and you will see any bad reviews and have an opportunity to respond to them.

4. Engage in Social Media

Healthcare professionals are also generally concerned about engaging in social media because (1) they don’t understand it and (2) the fear the openness of it, where people can say whatever they like. Why not take some time out to learn how social media works and start to get involve After all, this is what most people do online now. At the very least, you should enable people to be able to contact you through these channels.

5. Use Video to Improve Your Online Visibility

People love to watch videos. This is demonstrated by the fact that more people search within YouTube than in both Yahoo and Bing combined. People also like to do their own research now, especially for medical matters, and then find videos to be a good way to understand better. After all, it is easier to get a message across by using a mix of visual and audio messages, than just the written word.

The videos you produce can be both uploaded to YouTube for viewing there, but can also be streamed through your website. It is very easy to create videos and add them to you website, so what are you waiting for?

If you would like more information on any of the subjects discussed here, please contact Mike Busby on 020 8381 3000 or mike@chitswebsite.co.uk.

Chits UK are a London-based digital marketing agency specialising in creating marketing strategies for healthcare professionals – www.chitswebsite.co.uk.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *