Sooner or later you will meet your patient face-to-face but before that happens, you should know that the number of people searching online for health-related issues is rapidly increasing. This means that if you’re a medical practitioner, people are relying on the internet to find you.
A study conducted by Pew researchers revealed that around 93 million Americans have searched a health-related topic online. The bulk of these people are affluent, well-educated, and women. In fact, the only other online activity topping the search online for medical information is email.
What Does This Mean for Medical Practitioners?
You can understand from this research that people trust the internet to make better and more informed decisions. These decisions are about anything from buying a pair of shoes to finding a particular doctor.
It also shows you that people depend on themselves to find who or what they need online. As the healthcare scene is changing rapidly with thousands of health-related apps used by patients, people are much better informed than before and, in turn, expect their doctors to utilize the internet just as much as them.
As a result of these expectations, doctors are changing the way they market themselves, and those that haven’t done so yet, need to.
Why Should You Market Yourself?
There are loads of other reasons to have a marketing strategy for your practice. A marketing strategy is an investment for you and it’s going to pay off.
Here are some of the most important reasons to market yourself online.
- Visibility and Easy Tracking
As long as people are searching online, then that is the place to be. If you’re not visible, then no one can find you. A digital marketing plan will put you on the map for users to find you. A digital marketing plan will make it easy for others to find you. You can’t reach the same number of people with traditional marketing. Besides that, digital marketing is easy to track, so you know what is reaching your audience and what isn’t and the strategies worth investing in.
- Competition
If you see there is no reason to market yourself, this one word should give you enough reason; competition. The competition is stiff and it’s not easy to get noticed over your competitors. You need to view this competition from the eyes of a potential patient searching. A decade ago, a patient might have been satisfied simply because you had a website. Fast forward to 2020 and this isn’t enough reason. Patients want to see engagement on the site, optimized pages, and a responsive site. If you don’t provide what they’re looking for, they will find someone else. It’s as simple as that.
- Credibility
You need to show your credibility. Maybe you feel an online presence or lack of it shouldn’t be a judgment on your credibility or your skills, but that is not the way patients see it. They will judge your credibility by your site and the information on your site because they have a lot to compare it to. Potential patients can visit your site already armed with a lot of information about the medical condition they want to know more about. The healthcare marketing specialists at Telos Digital Marketing explain that patients now, more than ever, are searching online for treatments, diagnosis, and physicians. Having a specialized marketing strategy will help you use the right SEO and digital marketing practices to attract target audiences. Terminology is extremely important when online and using the words that patients will type when searching will not just increase your visibility, but it will rank your website high on search engine pages.
- Content
Some physician websites make the mistake of not including a blog or not, updating their blog if they have one. A blog is a crucial component of your content and shows that you are in tune with the latest trends in your specialty, and this affects the quantity and quality of traffic on your site.
The content you put not only speaks about the facts, but represents your views and opinions of the various treatments and procedures of your specialty. This gives you a chance to decide if your beliefs and methods resonate with them. If it does, the reader can then decide that you are the doctor for them.
Since people have the luxury of looking up physicians’ online, at any time and from any place, it proves to you that as a medical practitioner you need to have a strong presence online. With digital marketing, you can emphasize your highest qualifications and engage with patients and potential patients. It’s also a way to reassure new patients that they are dealing with a professional and established medical practitioner.
I’m a 20-something stay-at-home mother and wife. I have an amazing husband, a beautiful daughter, two loving dogs, and a lazy cat. I wouldn’t change my life for anything! I love to read, listen to music, cook and blog!
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