When it comes to marketing, private healthcare practices need robust solutions to rise above their competition just like any larger provider. Healthcare practices like those owned by physicians, dentists, chiropractors, plastic surgeons, veterinarians and other providers may find themselves overwhelmed with marketing options and services. How do you know what type of marketing your private healthcare practice needs?
With the right expertise and range of available support, a solid marketing agency can help steer your course and let you focus on caring for patients, instead of figuring out how to drive a marketing campaign. Let’s examine some key elements of marketing that your private practice should consider.
Determining the Marketing Goals for your Physician or Dental Office
Before you have a conversation with a team of marketing professionals, what goals are important to your practice? This will vary widely depending on whether you’re just launching your practice or have been established for some time. These are some common areas to consider:
- Do you have an established patient base or are you trying to grow the practice?
- Do you already have an established brand? Are you hoping to elevate that brand, rework it, or in the case of a new practice, establish a brand?
- Do you need to upgrade your digital capabilities? For example, would you like patients to be able to book appointments online, but they can’t currently?
- Are you trying to establish your practice as a local authority in a new area?
- Do you need a better way to communicate with patients? What about reaching out to patients lost to follow-up?
Branding: a Core Component of Marketing
Your branding is tied to your marketing and an experienced agency can help you improve both. You should think of your brand as the foundation of top-tier marketing efforts. Whether you’re a new practice just establishing your brand or have been around for a while, having a strong brand strategy will help you define your marketing goals.
To determine this brand strategy, there are some helpful approaches you should look for in a marketing agency:
- Market research- your practice needs a customized research approach that will help you to evaluate your market. By using data collected in this research, your brand strategy can help you increase revenue, improve patient experiences, lower operating costs, and identify new opportunities.
- Competitive brand audit- where does your brand stand? What are its strengths and weaknesses? How do patients and other stakeholders view your brand? A comprehensive brand audit can help you get clear answers to these questions.
What Marketing Services to Consider for Your Healthcare Practice
You can think of a marketing agency as the hub of a wheelhouse of all the services that drive successful marketing and branding. It’s the job of a marketing agency to make sure all these components are connected, cohesive, and part of the strategy you’ve built together to get you to your desired goals.
Along with robust strategic branding support, a strong marketing agency should be able to help you with a full suite of services such as:
Web Design and Development For Physicians And Dentists
Your website is the engine of your entire marketing and communication strategy. A poorly designed website will create frustration for your clients and set the wrong tone for your brand. With the help of web design and development, you can create a brand-new website or revamp an existing one. Your web design and development should include an understanding of important details like mobile optimization in a world where 59% of global website traffic is on mobile devices.
Content Creation and SEO For Private Healthcare Practices
High-quality content that explains your services and what you can offer to patients will help answer their questions. But it’s more than that- if it’s optimized correctly, it will help push your website to the top of search engine results, too. This search engine optimization, or SEO, can be used to strategically create website pages and content that perform better. According to Healthgrades, a leading healthcare consumer reporting organization, 77% of patients use search engines before scheduling an appointment with a provider.
Digital Advertising Services for Your Dental or Private Physician Practice
Your digital footprint includes more than just your website– digital ad campaigns can draw attention to practice and its services. Additionally, simple basics like making sure your practice can be found on Google Maps and setting up and managing social media accounts can help increase your visibility.
Creative Services and Graphic Design for Doctors
The visual elements of your brand are important to your overall strategy and to help your marketing reach its full potential. A great agency should be able to offer creative services and graphic design to support your social media, emails, annual reports, website, logos, events and presentations, and more.
Media and Public Relations
Does your practice need public relations (PR) services? This can be another important component of your marketing and communications strategy that you shouldn’t overlook. Consumers look to trusted third-party sources for information on healthcare practices and providers that are new to them. For example, research has shown that physician-rating websites can heavily influence patients’ provider choice.
To tell your practice’s story through the right influencers, PR support can include things like pitching stories to reporters and producers, building trust with the media and other organizations, keeping your message consistent among your executive team, creating press releases, and securing speaking opportunities.
Email and CRM strategy
Email and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy can seem overwhelming as a small practice. There are many tools and options available to help with this, but how do you know which ones are best for your practice? By incorporating your email and CRM strategy into your larger marketing goals, a marketing agency can help create an effective direct marketing approach that maintains current patient contacts and builds new leads. This can include:
- Website contact forms
- Automated email campaigns
- Sending appointment reminders
- Following up with patients who have missed their appointments
A Healthcare Marketing Agency can be your Partner
With all of these moving parts, it’s easy to see why marketing and branding is a critical part of connecting with patients and the community your practice provides care for. Because you need to focus on providing high-quality care, partnering with a marketing agency that specializes in healthcare marketing will ensure your brand strategy stays on track.
When choosing your healthcare marketing agency, using the points discussed above can help you determine which one can meet all of your practice’s marketing needs. Remember to ask if they can provide comprehensive market research and a brand audit along with the services listed here.
Conway Marketing Group understands and supports the unique needs of physicians, dentists, and other private healthcare practices. With our services, we can help you grow your practice and reach more patients. Our experts specialize in marketing and branding services for doctor’s offices, dentists, chiropractors, and other specialty healthcare providers. To learn more, visit our website here, or fill out our contact form today.
