The Importance of 5 Ps in Medical Marketing

Apprehension rather than endorsements is what matters to patients before choosing medical practitioners. It has become inevitable for physicians to market their practices in order to develop a brand identity, reach a wider range of patients and keep appointment books full.

No matter how much of an expertise you possess in your field, your marketing skills would be tested to the core while expanding your patient base. Some physicians are hesitant to entwine a marketing strategy because of a common perception that being a physician is good enough to find new patients and keep the current ones. Nevertheless, the reality is the only way to accomplish visibility is through commencing a medical marketing campaign. Explained below are 5 Ps of medical marketing.

PRODUCT: In case of medical practice, product refers to the services you are offering. For instance, if you are a cosmetic dental surgeon, your product is the dental treatment you offer. Moreover, your official atmosphere plays a vital role in making a good first impression on patients. However, the most important attribute of your product remains providing outstanding treatment and care.

PRICE: The price for your product is not limited to what you charge. It is also characterized by the value of your services. When it comes to pricing, you have to match patients’ expectations. If they find the same kind of services at a similar price, they’ll happily move resulting in your loss. So, if you providing excellent services at affordable prices, you’ll get many word-of-mouth referrals.

PLACE: The location of your office is vital for your success. If they can’t find your office or unable to reach, you may want to consider shifting your base. Here, visibility matters and if there are any hindrances in the way of patients arriving at your office, try to eradicate them.

POSITION: Your position in the healthcare industry is judged by the distinctness of your services. What makes your practice different from the others? In order to develop a result oriented marketing plan, you must identify your practice’s uniqueness in the market.

PROMOTION: When it comes to promotion of your practice, you have to plan comprehensively. The above-mentioned 4Ps should always come first and are as much crucial as the 5th one. Promotion of your medical practice includes advertising campaigns, direct marketing and online marketing.

5 Strategies for Successful Healthcare Marketing

Do you want to be contemplated as an expert in your specialty and attract new patients to your practice? All you need is a strong medical marketing concept. It takes more than being a good doctor to generate a new line of patients. You need to develop a carefully thought out medical marketing campaign to withstand extreme competition from fellow practitioners. Whether you have been the healthcare industry for years or just started, the following strategies will help you develop credibility for your practice and attract new patients.

• Set a budget and get on with your medical marketing campaign: Develop a plan that will help you achieve your desired payer mixes. Systematize your medical marketing campaign by setting small targets along with a budget.
• Create a unique brand image and message: To get the best results, hire a medical marketing agency with an extensive experience and vast knowledge base regarding running successful campaigns for doctors and hospitals. Make sure your website, newsletters, brochures and logo have a reliable brand image and message.
• Partnerships with other practices: Referral system plays a key role in the medical profession. In order to take benefits of the referral system, try to coordinate with other practices. Apart from being result oriented, referrals are a cost-effective way to market your practice.
• Search Engine Optimization for your practice: Easy accessibility is what today’s patients like. Make it easier for them to find your website with the help of SEO. Employ the services of SEO experts so they can optimize your website to appear relatively higher on Google, Yahoo and other leading search engines.
• A copywriter to lend credibility to your marketing materials: To convey your message correctly and engulf trust among patients, a copywriter is required to author your marketing materials. Poorly written articles or blogs will have a negative impact on your practice and make it difficult for your potential patients to get the education they need.

Why Your Medical Practice Should Use Twitter

In the past few months, twitter has burst on to the scene like anything. Twitter is living up to the expectations of people. Numbers show an exponential rise in users per month. There are numerous articles and blog posts describing how important twitter is and how can it be your favorite marketing tool. As with any other business, medical practices too have developed a liking towards Twitter to promote their services. If you are not one of them, you surely need to understand what twitter can do for your practice:

Patient Connectivity: This is one of the perennial reasons to have twitter in your medical marketing plan. Nowadays, people access their emails and twitter accounts from smartphones. This would be great for a medical practitioner to grab the opportunity to remind his/her patients of an appointment or let patients know of special deals or offers.

Patient Feedback: Nothing beats twitter when it comes to patient feedback. By creating a twitter profile, you can ask patients to give their comments on your services to help improve practice procedures. Satisfied or not, patients take pride in their opinions. On a positive note, they’ll feel attached to your practice, if they have contributed something.

Medical Marketing: One of the great things about twitter is that it doesn’t require any monetary investment. However, it does require time. Unquestionably, it is the most straightforward ways of marketing- a way to convey your thoughts on a more personal level than an email or online advertisement.  

Discounts: Patients thrive on discounts and giveaways. You’ll be able to attract more patients by offering something of interest and in return, they spread a positive word. This is one of the great benefits of Twitter. You can share your tweet with all the followers. If you have something interesting to offer, twitter can become a powerful marketing tool.

How to Write Persuasive Medical Marketing Content

Whether you are revamping your website, writing an article, newsletter or flyer, the content used in your marketing materials plays a quintessential role in describing who you are and what your practice can offer to targeted audience. Follow these guidelines if you want your content to be the best in medical marketing community.

• Simplicity is the key

Remember: you are writing for your patients. So keep the sentences and paragraphs precise and to the point. Unnecessary addition to the content can be frustrating for the patients and will lose interest. However, content should be long and encouraging enough for patients to contact your office.

• Choose captions carefully 

Encouraging captions can make a vital point, steering your potential patients to the information they are seeking and persuading them keep reading and take appropriate action.

• Images are beneficial

Back the content on your website, blog or newsletter with subsequent images. If you are writing about new developments at your office or introducing a new member, support your content with relevant images. Photos or images tend to attract patients.

• Stay away from meaningless writing

Keep in mind, your content is for patients and not your friends. Keep the target audience in mind while conversing via multiple marketing avenues, or else you may lose them to puzzling medical terms.

• Make it SEO friendly 

Search engines regularly index your medical website for fresh content and make sure your content is targeting keywords you want to rank. Quality content is vital from the point of view of SEO, as it helps in improving the website’s ranking.

• Remove errors if any

Mistakes are bound to happen, so revise your content for any grammar and spelling errors. Mistakes in the content can frustrate readers and give your practice a negative image.

If you need assistance in writing medical website content, contact Practice Builders.

5 Valuable Tips to Make Your Online Presence a Reliable Source for New Patients

It’s 2013 and probably the time to take some serious personal and professional resolutions-generating new patients using new medical practice marketing strategies. Onset of New Year is the perfect time to evaluate last year’s accomplishments and failures, and reflect on your practice’s marketing goals for the upcoming year.

Before you set out for 2013 medical marketing plan, consider these valuable questions about present position of your online presence: 

• Have you incorporated a website and is it fully functional?

If you haven’t launched a practice website yet, you are losing out big. Get down on it immediately. A medical website can single handedly take your practice towards success. It is the most preferred source of information for patients. If you have created your website in the past year, now is the time to give some tweaks to maximize its potential.

• Is your website mobile friendly?

Nowadays, a mobile website is an absolute necessity because of increased likeliness of individuals towards smartphones. By year-end, more people will be accessing internet from their mobiles. It makes sense to reach an audience engaged in mobile internet. A mobile website will be an addition to your repertoire.

• How are you tackling negative patient feedback?

There will be times when you’ll get negative response from patients. You cannot control it. But, you can overcome such response by encourage positive reviews on popular directories such as Google and Yelp. With the right attitude, you can hastily cumulate reviews from your satisfied patients from their smartphones.

• Are you not social media savvy?

Sharing practice’s details on social networking sites increases your chances of being recognized, and that stands for every practice. Social media offers this tremendous opportunity to connect and communicate with current and probable patients. Your Facebook profile and blog can be linked with your website for maximum exposure.

• What is your SEO strategy?

A website without SEO is like an airplane without passengers. Without search engine optimization, it is impossible for patients to find you online. Hire an online marketing expert to execute a search engine marketing solution, which revamps your website for vital keywords. You’ll see positive results in short span.

Vital Tips for a Successful Medical Marketing Plan

Not satisfied with your marketing efforts? Want to attract a new line of patients, increase web traffic and improve website ranking?  With the onset of 2013, its time to review what lacked in past year’ marketing efforts and focus on achieving new goals set for this year. Here is a list of few ideas you can implement in your marketing plan 2013.

Refurbish your website

Working on a new marketing plan may mean designing your medical website again. If you haven’t paid attention to your website in the past, chances are it could benefit from fresh content, a new layout or a different design. A revamped look will help entice new comers and make significant first impression.

Take SEO efforts to the next level

If your website isn’t ranking in the top pages of search engine listings, you need to boost your SEO efforts big time. Try exploring new search engine marketing strategies. Pay per click advertising is one of the most influential marketing tools used to improve website ranking making it easier for patients to find your website.    

Mobile Website

You don’t want to miss out on a mobile website, especially in 2013. It’s the era of smartphpnes and tablets. Nowadays, people are inclined towards using internet on their mobile phones. If you want to reach patients on the go, launch a mobile website. 

Be a socialite

Physicians cannot afford to miss this opportunity! More and more people are using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to connect with the people and businesses in other parts of the world. Be social savvy. Use this opportunity to create awareness, interact with patients and generate leads. Build your own social presence and start communicating with patients.

Reputation Management

Managing your reputation should be your top priority in 2013. This should include implementing strategies focused on optimizing online presence in top directories and encouraging a steady flow of patient reviews.

You can expect better results in 2013 with these medical marketing strategies.

Social Media Boost For Medical Practices

Social media has proven its worth as a successful marketing avenue for multiple businesses. But have you thought of implementing it in your medical marketing plan? According to Medical Marketing and Media, the number of people featuring on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have gone up considerably. The fact is there are numerous benefits of having an active social media presence. Let’s have a look at how you can benefit your practice with social media.

Acknowledgement of your practice

With an increasing number of people actively indulging in social media, various social networking sites present great opportunity to publicize your practice. More recognition means more people visiting your practice, which means more patients contacting you. Here are some illustrations of using social media:

• Share patients’ positive feedback.
• Improve search ranking for better leads for the website.
• Generate referrals by engaging with users.

Its advantage patients

Social media also provides an opening to serve patients better through online consultations. Here are certain ways you can use to add value to patient experiences:

• Direct communication with physicians and specialists.
• Precise and correct information on symptoms, diseases and treatments.
• Updated information through blogs and articles.
• Quick updates in critical conditions.

Other Benefits

Apart from greater exposure, patient benefits and value for your staff, social media still has lots to offer. As the influence of social network grows on people, there will be more opportunities in future. Here are some more reasons why social medial will be a palpable choice for doctors in coming years:

• Gives your practice a strong backbone.
• Develops relationships with patients.
• With social media, you can control your reputation.
• Helps you withstand fierce competition.
• Creates a sense of trustworthiness.
• Improves website rankings in search engine listings.