3 Tips for Online Medical Marketing

These days, doctors are beginning to see the importance of online medical marketing skills in making their practices more successful. Here are three tips that will set up a basic foundation for a well-marketed practice.
 1. Defining your medical practice online
If you are currently practicing medicine, you have also probably invested a good portion of your life working to earn the credentials that come after your name. Why would you reduce those credentials to one word? Describe yourself to the patients. Tell them about your values and your goals. Help them see who you are, and they will feel more confident in you and comfortable with you. Be truthful, show your personality, and define your practice positively.
2. Branding
There are three important parts to branding: credibility, consistency, and connection. Remember these three C’s. Branding is an extremely important marketing investment that opens the door to your long-term success. It gives you a greater chance to become more known.
To start, high-quality web design and web content give you more credibility with the patients who visit your website. It builds a good image and gives the public the impression that you are knowledgeable and trustworthy in what you do. In other words, high quality web design and content have the power to get patients to start talking about you.
Hand in hand with credibility comes consistency. Update. Be reachable. Be punctual. If your patients have a difficult time reaching you, they may decide to hire another doctor’s practice. Consistency is the foundation of making connections and relationships with patients. Through consistency, you can show patients who you are, what your beliefs are, and what you can offer them.
3. Using the Web and making it usable
When you create your website, make sure that it is parallel to your brand. Think of your website as a vehicle to advertise your already existing brand and as a way to build your credibility as an able doctor. An extremely important part of online medical marketing is to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which, if done correctly, can bring your website to the top of the list of results when the public types in certain key words into the Google, Bing, or Yahoo search bars. You may have the technological skills to do this on your own, but if not, we advise you to work with a professional to invest in SEO. Think about it this way: if you are searching for the “best dermatologist in California” on Google, do you often look at the pages of listed results other than the first 3? Be informative, use high-quality content and web design, and make the website your own. You can do almost anything with the Internet, so portray yourself and your practice positively, and don’t be afraid to get creative. But experiment smartly.
 
Happy marketing!