When looking to expand your medical practice, there are many possible avenues to take for your marketing efforts. The most obvious and common option is Google, incorporating two primary channels – paid advertising using Google Ads and local SEO using Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business).
Most medical practice owners will acknowledge that Google marketing is essential for growth, and incorporating all three networks can be critical to your efforts. But a truly comprehensive plan will integrate all of your marketing efforts, including email marketing, lead generation, and lead nurturing, combining them into one cohesive plan.
Google Ads and Lead Generation
Google Ads can be a terrific way to grow brand awareness and gain new patients for medical practices. But a well-developed Google Ads campaign can also be an excellent way to generate a stream of pre-qualified, high intent patient leads by getting them into a sales funnel.
Lead generation for elective medical procedures is unlike any other kind of lead generation. When considering a medical procedure, the time to make a decision can take months. An adage in marketing is that it takes six contact instances before a user converts. Using carefully crafted ads targeting users based on key demographics and user interest information, Google Ads becomes a vital piece of the puzzle when attracting new patients to your practice and getting them into your lead generation program.
Once you capture a potential patient’s attention using specifically targeted Google Ads, their entry into your overall marketing campaign and sales funnel is only just beginning. Using a lead magnet or a simple form on your site or landing page, you can capture their email address to begin your lead nurturing and email drip campaign… guiding them down your sales funnel to an eventual conversion.
Local SEO and Google Business Profile
Online reviews are vital to small and local businesses for obvious reasons of reputation plus their local SEO. A staggering 94% of patients use online reviews when considering a health provider, and 84% trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
To say that reviews are critical to your marketing is a gross understatement. There are hundreds of online review sites available but the first (and most crucial) review site is Google… or more accurately, Google Business Profile. The Profile listing is your company’s business card and, in many cases, the first representative of your medical practice that the public sees.
Updating your Business Profile needs to be part of your Google marketing efforts because not only do the reviews matter to potential patients but the better your rating, the higher your listing will appear in the Google Map Pack results. For a doctor’s office that draws its patients from area residents, this could be the difference between appearing in the top 3 results or not… which in turn could have a considerable impact on the number of new patients your office attracts.
So how do local SEO and Google Business help your marketing efforts? The positive reviews on your business profile page help establish trust and authority – two critical elements of a lead nurturing campaign. Without actively trying, your business page is answering essential questions:
- Who is this medical practitioner?
- Why should I trust this doctor over another one?
- What does this doctor offer that other doctors don’t provide?
- Why should I choose this doctor?
- What does the practice look like and how to find it?
The best part of this scenario is that you aren’t the active voice during this exceedingly valuable conversation. Your previous patients are that voice for you, acting as your advocate to new patients early in the discovery phase of their exploratory process.
Trust Efferent Media with Your Google Marketing
There are many moving parts to a Google marketing campaign that need to work together to be effective. Medical marketing is highly competitive and cannot be figured out on the fly or managed by an inexperienced team. The medical marketing team at Efferent Media has years of experience providing high-quality leads for healthcare practices… including hair restoration, chiropractic care, and dental specialists.
Our team will create and execute a custom plan based on the needs and goals of your medical practice. If you are ready to take your medical practice to the next level, contact our experts today by calling (631) 867-0900. We look forward to hearing from you!