medical marketing

Restricted Medical Content Google Ads | Google Advertising Policy

March 19, 2022 / B2B Marketing, CRM, Digital Marketing, SEO / , , , ,
restricted medical content google ads

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Google advertising is more pervasive and commonplace than ever before. Any brand or business worth its salt needs to have a Google ads presence in today’s hyper-competitive market. And this applies to healthcare marketing as well.

Advertising healthcare services is different from almost any other product or service, owing to the restrictions and guidelines on healthcare advertisers by Google. Brands cannot freely advertise products and services without adhering to these guidelines and getting certified by Google to serve ads.

With all the restrictions unique to online advertising in the medical space, what should companies do to remain relevant online? And what’s the best way forward while designing your digital marketing strategy, specifically Google ad campaigns?

Can You Run Google Ads For Medicine?

Google has in place comprehensive guidelines for advertising products impacting prescription drugs, online pharmacies, unapproved substances, clinical trial recruitment, and many more.

And rightly so. Protecting the healthcare interests of people when it comes to their online persona should be a top priority for any platform. As a result, some substances cannot be advertised at all while some need a certification by Google to be advertised in select locations only.

If you want to advertise using any restricted drug terms or active ingredients in your ad copy or landing page, you need to apply to become a certified healthcare advertiser. For medical devices, your landing pages and ad copy should be clearly targeted towards healthcare professionals and not patients.

If your application is denied even after sticking to Google’s guidelines, you can always contact your Google ads rep. They might be able to help you get approval.

What is Restricted Medical Content in Terms of Google Ads?

Google casts a wide net when deciding the kind of products and content that can be advertised, erring on the side of caution. What this ends up doing is restricting the list of allowed substances and services that can be advertised using the Google Display Network or the Google Ads Search Network.

Before healthcare advertisers start crafting ad campaigns around Google ads policies, they should know exactly what Google considers restricted medical content.

Prescription Drugs without Prescription

Pharmaceutical companies are not allowed to offer prescription drugs without valid prescriptions. Due to the obvious negative repercussions, unauthorized pharmacies are restricted according to the Google ads policy.

Violations of these guidelines can lead to serious consequences for your Google ads account, leading to suspensions and some legal repercussions as well. If you believe you’ve been wrongfully penalized, you can submit an appeal with thorough justification.

Running Ads in a Target Location where You are not Licensed

Online pharmacies are also not allowed to promote products in regions where they aren’t licensed. If they do so, it amounts to Google considering them as unauthorized pharmacies.

Hence, as an online pharmacy, make sure you’re running ads only after being certified by Google to do so. Moreover, you also need to ensure you’re not offering prescription drugs without prescriptions and aren’t promoting them in locations where you aren’t a licensed pharmacy.

Restricted Drug Terms in Ad Copies and Landing Pages

In addition to restricted substances, Google also limits certain drug terms to be used in your ad text, landing pages, or keywords. While advertisers outside the US, Canada, or New Zealand aren’t permitted to promote prescription drugs, even those located in these three countries need to be certified to keyword target restricted prescription drug terms.

In some cases, Google allows exceptions to its Google AdWords policy – like public health and awareness campaigns run by the government or establish NGOs.

Unapproved Substances in Google Ads

When it comes to an outright prohibition on promoting certain products, Google has a fairly wide list of prohibited pharmaceuticals and supplements. Although this list contains as many as 162 categories of products that you cannot promote, no matter what, it is still not completely exhaustive.

Google has some additional banned categories of substances it doesn’t allow promotion for by players in the healthcare industry, some of which are:

  • Products containing ephedra

  • Products containing human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), especially in weight loss products or when promoted along with anabolic steroids

  • Products claiming to be as effective as prescription drugs

  • Herbal and dietary supplements containing active pharmaceutical ingredients or dangerous constituents

  • Products not approved by the government but promoted as being safe for use

Only approved countries’ manufacturers are allowed by Google to promote DHEA and Melatonin products.

Opioid Painkillers

Opioid painkillers are prevalent in medication-assisted treatment (MAT), which is one of the few exceptions where promoting them is permitted by Google. All other prescription opioid painkillers are not allowed to be promoted online.

However, Google allows exceptions to this policy for government and not-for-profit health awareness campaigns and certified addiction treatment providers in the United States.

Clinical Trials, Biohacking, Cell Therapies, And Gene Therapy

Experimental and non-regulated treatments and procedures are not allowed to be promoted under Google’s healthcare marketing policy. These include, but aren’t limited to biohacking, DIY genetic engineering products, and gene therapy kits.

Furthermore, regenerative medicine products like stem cell therapy, cellular therapy, gene therapy, and more are prohibited for promotion, regardless of their regulatory status.

Clinical trial recruitment ads are also limited to certain countries and aren’t allowed to advertise prescription drugs, misleading expectations, or imply that the products being tested are safe.

Abortion And Birth Control

The abortion-related ad group is one of the most restricted ones with Google allowing abortion ads only in select countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. Even then, you need to be certified, with a clear demarcation whether you’re a provider that provides abortion or doesn’t provide abortion.

Moreover, if your ads are part of the Google Ads Network (shown as part of search engines) and target multiple locations, your ads will only be shown in approved areas and will be classified as Eligible (limited).

HIV Home Tests

Lastly, Google prohibits the promotion of HIV home tests everywhere in the world except in the US, UK, France, and the Netherlands. While advertisers in the US can only promote FDA-approved HIV tests, those in the UK, the Netherlands, and France can promote tests that meet the local regulatory requirements.

What Can Healthcare Professionals Advertise on Google Ads?

After knowing about the breadth of restrictions on healthcare marketers, you might be wondering if there’s anything you ‘can’ advertise. Well, yes, you’re allowed to promote prescription and OTC drugs, but only in select regions.

Prescription Drugs in Limited Countries

Prescription drugs can be advertised only in select countries – Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Even then, you need to be certified as a healthcare advertiser by Google before you can start promoting your products.

You also need to check whether Google allows keyword targeting related to prescription drug terms in your country.

While implementing this policy, Google checks whether your landing pages link to or use any terms referring to selling prescription drugs.

OTC Drugs in Select Countries

Google also allows advertising OTC or over-the-counter drugs in select countries like the US, the UK, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, New Zealand, and more. Just like prescription drugs, you need a certification from Google before advertising your OTC products.

Thought leadership improves your brand recognition and brings invaluable and organic traffic to your website and your online listings. You should start planning your content strategy right away if you don’t have one already.

How to Run a Successful Google Ads Campaign Without Restrictions?

Before you go ahead trying to build the perfect advertising strategy, you should be aware of Google’s personalized advertising policy. Google Display Network and Google Ads Network both prohibit advertisers to use personalized advertising – ads that employ user data to create more relevant ads. This is due to healthcare data’s sensitivity and privacy concerns.

Hence, ads that fall into sensitive interest categories like personal hardship and sexual interests cannot use personalized advertising features like remarketing, demographic and location targeting, Gmail ads, and more.

The Google Display Network, however, allows you to use three targeting methods in your ads – keyword, placement, and topic.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s look at a few tips to create a great Google Ads campaign for health products:

  1. Remarketing: While designing ads for the Google Ads network (text ads in search engine results), make sure you’re not using remarketing.

  2. Keyword Targeting: Try to target websites that do not use your desired keywords in a misleading or irrelevant manner. This will minimize the chances of your ads getting suspended.

  3. Landing Pages: Your landing pages need to provide comprehensive information to visitors, but at the same time need to be broken down into images, videos, proper headings, bullet points, etc. to keep the users engaged.

  4. Videos & Images: Google reported that 79% of visitors stay on healthcare websites that have videos. Use this to your advantage by investing in high-quality videos and images that illustrate your products and services better.

  5. PPC partner: Partnering with the right Google advertising agency can skyrocket the quality and effectiveness of your ad campaigns. You can leverage decades of expertise and experience working around Google’s restrictions and make sure you stay competitive.

 

Medical SEO Agency | How Can They Help You Grow Your Business?

March 19, 2022 / B2B Marketing, CRM, Digital Marketing, SEO / , ,
image result for content marketing for healthcare

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Search engine optimization (SEO) is part and parcel of any business’s online strategy. Whether you’re a traditional brick-and-mortar goods and services provider or an internet business, you can’t do without SEO strategies baked into your overall digital marketing plan.

When it comes to the healthcare industry, medical SEO becomes more specialized and assumes even more importance. Healthcare professionals operate in a highly-regulated and sensitive industry where they need to balance responsible care delivery with aggressive marketing.

Medical Services Partner

As healthcare providers, you already have a lot on your plate minimizing the cost of care and enhancing the patient experience. Becoming healthcare marketers and managing a whole medical SEO strategy on top of it might seem a bit overwhelming. But you can always leverage the SEO expertise of an outside SEO agency to help you craft and maintain a battle-tested and highly-effective SEO campaign. With their decades of experience providing medical SEO services to practices like yours, your business will be in the right hands.

What is Medical Search Engine Optimization?

Medical Search Engine Optimization or SEO refers to the activities performed by a doctor or a medical practice to optimize their online presence for search engines for the end goal of acquiring new patients. These activities are focused on the medical practice’s website, their online listings, and their link-building with other websites in the medical space.

Digitalization of Healthcare

In this age of digital-first, patients are increasingly taking their healthcare online. Studies show that almost 78% of people purchase goods or services after a location-based Google search.

If your practice isn’t appearing in front of patients when they search online for a doctor, then you’re sorely missing out. In fact, your online reputation now determines if new patients will even consider giving you their business.

Emergence of Local SEO

The first page of search engine results is some of the most valuable online real estate for businesses today. With patients searching for keywords including ‘near me’ or ‘close by’ increasing by more than 900% in the past two years, local SEO is taking over medical marketing as we know it.

Healthcare SEO is vitally important for any healthcare practice looking to not only grow its business but also build its brand and retain its existing clientele.

Why is Medical SEO important?

As effective as SEO might seem in general, you might wonder if you really need to implement it for your practice. After all, you might have been getting new patients through physician referrals and word-of-mouth all this time. But medical SEO is indispensable to growing your business and scaling it beyond a certain point. Let’s find out why:

Lack of SEO Means Losing Business

If you’re not investing in SEO yet, you might think you’re saving costs that can be used better elsewhere. But what about the opportunity cost? By not putting your best foot forward with your website and business listings, you’re shooting yourself in the foot by losing out on a significant patient population that’s looking for practices like yours online.

Cons of Google Ads for Doctors

Just like a coin has two sides to it. Google ads for doctors have their own set of pros and cons. Following are the top disadvantages of using Google Ads:

Not All Google AdWords is Worth it

The role of AdWords in a campaign is monumental, but many keywords do not do justice to their pricing. The more competitive industry, the more expensive keywords it has to offer. Therefore keywords can at times be a bit pricey.

Pay per Click Model can be a Burden on Budget.

As per the pay per click model, you are supposed to pay a per-click cost which can be a burden on your decided budget. Users may end up paying more costs with PPC campaigns.

Medical SEO is Considered More Effective than Google Ad

In medical practices, tough Google ads are an upcoming trend, yet SEO has had an upper hand since it has been an existing practice and advertisement method. Largely, doctors prefer medical SEO services to promote their practices.

It’s estimated that 97% of people learn more about a company or business online than anywhere else. With such a large chunk of your potential market prioritizing online searches, you can’t afford to miss out.

Later You Are, Weaker Your SEO

It’s a fact that search engines keep crawling all online content to keep their search engine rankings updated. The longer your website stays unoptimized for search engines, the more it hurts your organic search engine ranking. Other medical practices will have filled the vacuum and benefitted from a well-executed SEO strategy.

Hence, you need to start optimizing your online presence as soon as possible. There are a few simple techniques you can get started on today and they won’t even take a ton of your time or money.

Expertise Ranks High in Healthcare

More than perhaps any other industry, thought leadership plays a vital role in establishing your practice and your physicians as experts in their field. When patients start to trust the content you put out on your website and the value you offer them, they regard you as more than just another business.

Thought leadership improves your brand recognition and brings invaluable and organic traffic to your website and your online listings. You should start planning your content strategy right away if you don’t have one already.

Focus Points of Medical SEO Agency

A healthcare SEO agency can help you create a curated SEO plan best suited to your business. Their SEO experts can work on the granular elements of SEO and come up with a structured campaign covering off-page SEO, on-site SEO, and technical SEO.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to the factors not directly related to your website but still impacting your SEO ranking on major search engines. Google and other search engines highly value your business listings, your Google My Business page, and your social media pages.

Moreover, any backlinks redirecting to your website also increase your Domain Authority (DA) and consequently, your presence in search engine results. Make sure to keep your social media handles updated and filled with regular and useful content relevant to your target audience. Your Google My Business page should also always be up-to-date.

On-site SEO

On-site SEO factors are those that affect the content directly present on your website – your keywords and your webpage content. Your website is your online home and patients want to be impressed by what they see. If your website is not visually engaging and easily navigable, they are not likely to enjoy their experience, contributing to a higher bounce rate and hurting your SEO ranking.

It’s, therefore, important to provide highly-relevant content on your website around the keywords your potential patients are using. Plus, you should have your contact information clearly displayed on your website so you can rank well in local search results.

Technical SEO

These factors make up the behind-the-scenes, technical aspects of your website like its loading speed, internal linking, dead links, duplicate content, and structured web elements. Search engine algorithms automatically ascertain how well you’ve worked (or not) on these factors and score your website against others based on the results.

How Can an SEO Agency Make Your Website Hot Favorite For Search Engines?

Partnering with a healthcare SEO company can increase the quality and effectiveness of your SEO campaigns manifold. Healthcare SEO experts can use their expertise and experience to help you master the following six aspects of healthcare SEO so that you can focus your energies on enhancing patient outcomes.

Safe, Fast, And Mobile-friendly Website

When it comes to having an SEO-friendly website, you need to focus on safety, speed, mobile friendliness, and optimization.

People don’t have the patience to browse a slow website. Ensuring your technical SEO factors are sorted can work wonders when edging out other websites similar to yours. What people also don’t like is browsing an unsafe website i.e. one without the ‘HTTPS’ tag in the URL. A secure website is paramount to keeping potential patients on your site.

Lastly, your website should be well-optimized for mobile devices considering around half of the web traffic comes from mobiles. The meta title tag of every webpage on your site should also be accurately filled to contribute to your ranking in search results.

Informative Content

Google and other search engines value authoritative and long-form content when ranking web pages. A healthcare SEO agency can help you chart out a content calendar to plan and publish highly engaging and relevant content in the form of blogs and social media posts.

A healthcare organization today is expected to be a thought leader in its field and patients will not consider visiting you if they don’t find your online presence strong enough.

Enhance Visual Elements

Visual elements play a huge role in website optimization. Video is the fastest-growing content format today and websites with more video content perform better in search results than those without. If your website has rich audio-visual content like videos, infographics, and images, potential patients will spend more time on it and this will indicate to the search engines that your website is valuable to users.

You can also incorporate relevant keywords in meta tags of images and videos to make indexing easier for search engine crawlers.

Use Appropriate Keywords

Keywords are not only important in meta descriptions of images and videos but across every content piece you put out on your website and social media platforms. Strong keyword research is something that a reputed SEO company can help you with. When your content is built around providing valuable information around the keywords patients are searching for, you automatically capture inbound traffic.

Link Building

A healthcare business website, just like any other website, thrives on cultivating organic, high-authority backlinks. When reputed websites link to your practice website, search engines consider your website as offering value to users. And this contributes a lot to your SEO ranking.

But be careful with your link-building strategy. Having backlinks from irrelevant and low authority websites can hurt your ranking as well. Also, make sure there are no dead links giving ‘404’ errors to users and damaging their user experience.

Online Reviews

Healthcare SEO services don’t just stop at improving your website and social media presence. They can also help you obtain and manage patient reviews on your Google My Business listing as well as your website.

Positive reviews create trust and confidence in potential patients when they’re browsing for healthcare businesses online. Automating this process is a piece of cake when you’re working with a medical SEO services provider.

Choose a Credible SEO Partner For The Success of your Medical Practice

SEO offers tremendous potential to grow your business but only when it’s done right. Do your due diligence before partnering with any SEO company. A reputed healthcare SEO provider like Turnkey Mate can do the heavy lifting for you and work wonders for your practice. Contact us today to discover how we can partner with you on your journey to building your healthcare brand.

Google Ads For Doctors | How To Generate ROI

March 4, 2022 / B2B Marketing, CRM, Digital Marketing, SEO / , , , ,
google ads for doctors

Table Of Contents

Introduction

With the growing competition in the medical profession, it can be difficult for doctors, physicians, and hospitals to attract clients and increase revenues. Hospitals and doctors must use modern techniques like Google Ads to create awareness amongst potential customers and patients.

What Are Google Ads?

Google ads are online advertising platforms that help you to promote your medical businesses and website through digital ads.

It helps you advertise and create awareness about your medical services, which helps increase traffic to the website. This is done by using appropriate keywords through Google’s search engine service and its partner sites.

Google ads accounts are managed online, allowing you to create or modify the google AdWords campaign or ad text at any point. If you take a deeper look at Google ads, it has many benefits in promoting your medical business and helping it grow.

Following are a few advantages of using Google ads:

  • Google’s massive reach: Google is a brand in itself. Today if anyone wants an answer to anything, Google is a one-stop solution. The search engine handles approximately five billion searches daily. If your website ad is listed in the search results, the viewer will probably choose your medical services over your competitors. It has a much wider reach than Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
  • Bring any budget to the table: At times, winning a click can be expensive. But the benefit of using Google ads is that you can constraint your daily expenditure, advertising budget, maximum bids, etc. This way, even if you are not monitoring your accounts, you can control your overspending habits. Moreover, you only pay for genuine clicks and visits to your website.
  • Capabilities allow for a range of targeting: Google always has something to offer for every business at every stage of subscription. There are two ways to increase your page reach with google. One is by using broad and relevant keywords. The other one is using long-tail and more relevant keywords. A keyword is a word that people type in a search engine to find what they are looking for.

 

Below mentioned are the features of relevant and long-tail keywords:

  1. Use of relevant or broad keywords shows your ad to the prospective patient at the initial search stages. There are two techniques which you can practice under this. A booth of keywords can boost your website traffic and the number of visits to your account. You can capture their information through an ad with a click landing page that sends your target informative content. Or you may use re-targeting software if there are no successful conversions.
  2. On the other hand, the use of long-tail keywords is less expensive and search-specific. It provides users with the specific content they might be looking for.

Pros of Google AdWords for Doctors

Do you want to get new patients regularly and fast? Using Google ads can be the right practice for you. Following are the benefits offered by google ads for doctors.

Increased Reach & Target audience

Though search ads are best suited for targeting patients at the right time, it also increases brand awareness at the same time. Display Ads also build online brand awareness quickly. Combining these practices helps you cover more ground to promote amongst your users, grow your impression and stay ahead of other doctors.

It helps you make your marketing campaign as targeted as possible. For example, if you are based in a specific region of Canada, it doesn’t make sense to pay for ads for people living in the USA. Another fantastic feature is the Google AdWords schedule under which you can schedule ads for later. Since google ads have the best targeting in marketing, it shows your ads only to the people who have searched for the keyword before.

Track Results of Online Advertising & Pay per click

Creating an account and setting up an ad campaign can be done quickly. If you follow all the steps carefully, live campaigns will be set up easily, which can be instrumental in growing your audience. Once your campaign is live, you can sit back and track your results by various tracking methods available. These are termed conversions by Google. A code is provided by Google through which you can track how many calls you have received through your ad and your website separately. You can also track how many patients scheduled an appointment on your site through this feature. This feature also allows you to keep a track of the number of visits to your site.

Unlike other online advertising platforms, you only pay when the viewer clicks on your ad. This is referred to as pay per click. It can help in maintaining the ad budget as you do not have to waste it on advertisements that are not intended in the interest of people. There is no minimum amount, and you have the choice to decide how much money you want to pay for your Google ad campaigns per day, per month, or per location.

Widely Accepted and Acclaimed Marketing Strategy

Rather than organic search results, the percentage of consumers clicking on Google Ads is increasing. This indicates the need for the doctor to appear in organic search results and Google ads. Many doctors are following this trend of advertising to increase their reach and outshine their competitors.

Cons of Google Ads for Doctors

Just like a coin has two sides to it. Google ads for doctors have their own set of pros and cons. Following are the top disadvantages of using Google Ads:

Not All Google AdWords is Worth it

The role of AdWords in a campaign is monumental, but many keywords do not do justice to their pricing. The more competitive industry, the more expensive keywords it has to offer. Therefore keywords can at times be a bit pricey.

Pay per Click Model can be a Burden on Budget.

As per the pay per click model, you are supposed to pay a per-click cost which can be a burden on your decided budget. Users may end up paying more costs with PPC campaigns.

Medical SEO is Considered More Effective than Google Ad

In medical practices, tough Google ads are an upcoming trend, yet SEO has had an upper hand since it has been an existing practice and advertisement method. Largely, doctors prefer medical SEO services to promote their practices.

What's the ROI for Google Ads?

The cost of google ads is different as per the company campaign across the medical industry. When we talk about the amount of money spent by the advertisers, it is subject to the campaign size, cost per click, expected revenue, etc.

Any marketing campaign undertaken by healthcare professionals serves the primary purpose of generating a high return on investment. Return of Investment is the amount of profit you earn compared to what you spent on your ad.

In today’s time, PPC can be considered one of the most promising and profitable marketing channels. This is because it brings genuine traffic to the website and landing pages quickly with a faster conversion rate.

  • It is essential to calculate ROI because it gives you an accurate picture of your advertising campaigns and their impact on your websites.
  • It tells whether you are gaining any profit from your google ads campaign and how much your ad is helping in achieving your goals.

According to an estimate shared by Google, businesses are earning $2 from every dollar spent on average. This estimate is calculated by the advertisers’ cost per click activity sample.

How to Make the Best Out of Google Ads?

To make the best out of google ads, you need to keep two significant factors in mind.

  • Research: A deep and thorough research of keywords related to your services should be done, and the ad text should further be framed in the desired manner to generate good convertible leads from your website.
  • Landing Pages: The landing pages of your campaigns that the viewer is redirected to should be relevant to the ad text and keywords search.

 

Google Ads Vs. Organic SEO | What is Better For Your Medical Practice?

While both PPC and SEO aim to get more patients and get your medical businesses on top, both of these have different practices to get there. SEO works on getting organic ranking but Google Ads target particular keywords and phrases.

Though SEO is an existing advertising platform with a lower cost yet, PPC is the face of advertising these days. The following reasons support this statement:

  • PPC provides time-sensitive discounts and sales: Google ads for doctors are more beneficial as they generate traffic to your site and the number of visits to the site increases.
  • New patients: With an effective PPC campaign you can gain aggregate marketing data which further enhances the number of potential leads. Moreover, it reaches a highly targeted audience.

 

SEO is a vital and successful tool as it makes your medical business found on the web. PPC on the other hand will do the same process in a short duration of time. Hence, if you aim at gaining organic traffic in a short time, Google ads are the platform for your medical businesses.

Verdict: Are Google Ads Worth it?

Google ads can be pretty effective for medical businesses and doctors to gain new patients and create awareness amongst the masses. Though there are several cons to google ads, these can be overcome easily if you take assistance from professional experts in this line. Following factors can also be considered before investing in PPC ad campaigns:

  • If you research and balance the cost & reward of the ad conversions, you do not have anything to worry about.
  • Researching the trends and related keywords can save you money and time. It also helps you to connect to the target audience in a better and more flexible manner.
  • Using the right combination of the keywords, SEO, and Google AdWords campaigns tools can help you gain new patients and receive real data, driving revenue at a low cost.
  • It helps you stay ahead of the competition.

Bottom Line

Google ads for doctors can be a game-changing practice for attracting more patients, creating awareness amongst the potential customers, and retaining the existing patients. Right keywords and keywords related to the line of profession can be used to drive revenue via Google. Doctors and medical businesses are highly recommended to go for Google ads if they are looking to increase profits and online brand awareness.

Turnkey Mate is a US-based leading digital marketing agency. It is a one-stop solution for all your SEO and PPC solutions. The company professionals are committed to providing reliable and effective digital marketing solutions to its clients.

Click here to know more about Turnkey Mate.

 

Digital Marketing Agency for Doctors | Why Do You Need to Hire Them?

March 2, 2022 / B2B Marketing, CRM, Digital Marketing, SEO / , , ,
digital marketing agency for doctors

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Imparting your footprint in today’s digital world with traditional practices can be challenging. If your medical practices want to attract potential patients, then you cannot solely rely on local SEO and outdated marketing strategies. You need better digital strategies to meet your medical business’s needs. Owing to advancements in technology, there are several business strategies that can help doctors and medical businesses to promote their medical practices and sail in the digital world.

You will be amazed by the terrific job a healthcare marketing agency can do for a medical service provider. They not only manage your business listings, they can also help you establish a 360° presence on social media. It’s your choice whether to take a leap of faith and hire professional medical marketing services or take your chances in the constantly changing business environment.

Healthcare businesses are one the most lacking businesses when it comes to establishing a digital presence. Don’t fall behind. Make the smart choice – hiring a healthcare marketing agency.

 

What is a Healthcare Marketing Agency?

A healthcare digital marketing agency may look similar to other marketing agencies out there, but make no mistake. A healthcare marketing agency functions in a very different way than an ordinary marketing agency. They do not fall in that mix because of their expertise in the field.

Medical marketing companies specialize in providing digital marketing tactics only for medical businesses and doctors. They have experience in providing targeted services in the healthcare industry. Any marketing agency can do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your medical practice, but only a healthcare marketing agency knows how to manipulate search engines to get your business the desired traffic and results.

Hiring a robust healthcare marketing agency instead of an all-rounder marketing agency is the smart choice for your practice, which enables small businesses to attract patients.

What Does a Digital Marketing Agency for Doctors Do?

The primary role of a digital marketing agency for doctors is to come up with digital strategies that can rank your business website at the top of search results. They study the course of your services to determine the best strategy, which lets your business stay ahead of its competition. Powerful healthcare marketing and SEO enables medical business to build relationships with long-term and loyal customers.

A healthcare digital marketing agency is responsible for developing effective strategies and running marketing campaigns on social media platforms. They evaluate the needs of your practice and help you be at the top of your field. Experts use several tools and resources to compile the data collected from a number of data points such as website, mobile application, etc.

8 Reasons You Need to Hire a Healthcare Marketing Agency

In the medical industry, the concept of intrepy healthcare marketing is still new. But you should be aware of what a digital agency can do for medical businesses such as yours. Doctors have started relying on modern techniques and strategies for the growth of their business and practice. Marketing agencies can improve your online presence, and also run PPC campaigns that can bring more traffic to your website.

Below are the top 8 reasons why doctors like you should hire a healthcare digital marketing agency.

1. Expert in Medical Practices

Would you hire a services who claim themselves to be neurosurgeons and veterinarians at the same time? We know these two are different things, and one cannot be an expert in both the fields. You will look for a niche-specific doctor. Then why take chances with your digital marketing experts?

Hiring medical marketing services ensures expertise and professioanlism. The professionals know what is needed to run a healthcare practice. A great team of medical marketing agencies must have:

  • Knowledge of latest healthcare industry trends

  • Advanced expertise in digital marketing services such as SEO, PPC, etc.

  • Experience to successfully run healthcare marketing campaigns

  • Knowledge about the field competition

2. Effortless Communication

All healthcare organizations have specific terms of communication. There is a lot of medical jargon involved. For anyone who is not related to the field finds it difficult to communicate properly with doctors and other members of the medical team.

For a practice’s success, effortless communication is very important. Healthcare marketing agencies are well acquainted with the jargon. They can easily attract new patients by following an effective communication process. They make your practice look like a one-stop shop for all medical queries.

Smooth communication between the doctors and clients (patients) is possible with the help of a healthcare marketing agency.

3. Marketing Channels Focused on Medical Practices

A typical advertising agency has fixed marketing channels that they use for all of their clients. They fail to realize that the needs of the healthcare industry are different. For promoting medical information, specific channels are required. All digital marketing campaigns have to take place on these channels.

Some of the paid and unpaid advertising channels are:

  • Digital advertising

  • Email campaigns

  • Listings management

  • SEO Search Engine Optimization

  • Analytics

  • Liaison marketing

  • Referral marketing

  • Social media

  • Mobile marketing

  • Video marketing

People searching for medical services should be able to quickly access information about your service from one of the above channels.

4. Help Convert Referrals to Appointments

Word of mouth is more effective than any digital marketing strategy out there. Healthcare providers have to make sure that they get new customers through referrals. Referrals are suggestions given by old or existing patients to visit your hospital. For example, if you are a dentist and a patient of your primary physician is facing teeth problems, the physician refers that patient to you.

Referrals are a great way to attract more leads. But solely relying on referrals is not enough. You should be aware of conversion optimization to make those referrals actually use your services.

More and more patients should be brought in through referrals as those are the most genuine clients.

5. Compliance with HIPAA and Stark

Healthcare professionals are bound by certain rules that puts them under the obligation to protect the private patient information. A practice thrives only when such rules are followed strictly. Breaking of HIPAA and Stark compliances can lead to severe constraints.

Regular marketing agencies are not well versed with rules in the medical industry. But someone who has a hold in the industry can make sure they do not break any rules while creating their online presence.

A professional healthcare marketing agency offers strict HIPPA and Stark compliance for all the services.

6. Cost-effective Digital Marketing Services

Marketing services such as social media marketing and content marketing do not come cheap. If you buy these services individually, it can cost you a fortune. Web design and content creation are the priciest part of marketing.

To avoid the overuse of money for marketing services, you can simply hire a digital marketing agency. The agency will do all the work for you. In this way, you can avail cost-effective digital marketing services.

Digital marketing services are a one-stop shop for all that includes taking your business online to maintaining its reputation. Engaging with such an agency is an ideal choice if you want to enhance your business’ practice in a cost-effective manner.

7. Offer Engagement Solutions

Clients like to interact with the service providers, especially in the healthcare industry. Patients look forward to hearing what their doctors have to say about the progress of their medical problem.

A medical marketing agency can come up with effective digital marketing strategies that enable doctors to directly contact their patients through a number of channels, such as social media handles, emails, etc. Businesses can also engage with customers to address their concerns, queries, etc.

Irrespective of the physical location of your practice, marketing resources can be used to engage your team with your clients. Customers can consume information easily in form of short content.

8. Defend Your Online Presence

Online reputation management is an important part of digital marketing. A few bad reviews and your practice can face a great loss. It is important that your marketing team is equipped to deal with negative reviews and help you attain your business goals.

Reputation management includes resolving issues raised by customers. If people see that you quickly resolve your clients’ issues they will trust you more. You cannot stop people from leaving negative comments. What you can do is tackle the comment and turn it to suit your needs. A good medical marketing agency knows how to do that effectively.

 

Wrapping Up!

Website development and simple Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are not enough for your medical practice to grow and succeed. In order to gain new patients and retain the existing ones, you must develop strategies that protect your online presence and reputation.

Healthcare marketing services can be pretty effective in gaining new customers. The competition in the healthcare is getting stiffer day-by-day. Effective healthcare marketing strategies can help your business to grow and stay ahead of its competition. By hiring robust healthcare marketing services, it’s just a matter of time before your business is flooded with new clients.

Turnkey Mate is a reliable healthcare marketing agency, which can deliver favorable results quickly. The marketing experts at Turnkey Mate add a human element to the provided services, which are effective in enhancing the customer experience, website performance, and business revenues.

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Digital Marketing for Medical Practices | All You Need To Know!

March 27, 2022 / Digital Marketing / , , ,
digital marketing for doctors

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Digital media has changed consumer behavior in healthcare irreversibly. Today’s patients are inundated with multiple sources and channels of communication, so digital marketing for medical practices is an indispensable reality.

Medical practices can no longer rely solely on traditional marketing strategies to build awareness and acquire patients. Nor can your physicians depend exclusively on referrals and expect a steady stream of patients. Digital marketing offers a highly effective way of growing your brand and making your medical practice stand out from others.

And when your potential patients are no longer taking healthcare advice from friends & relatives and taking their health decisions from their mobile devices, you cannot afford to sit back and relax. Digital marketing might feel like an additional task, but the return on investment it offers is tremendous and too good to pass on.

What is Digital Marketing for Medical Practices?

Digital marketing refers to the communication and branding activities to build brand awareness and acquire new customers. When it comes to medical practice, digital marketing strategies differ from other industries like retail or finance, as it deals with sensitive issues of personal and family health.

Hence, medical marketing can be defined as the set of digital marketing activities undertaken by a medical practice to reach new patients and retain existing patients through a combination of communication and branding strategies.

According to a report, 77% of online health queries begin from search engines. Patients are increasingly taking their healthcare research online and making purchase decisions based on your online presence. Your practice needs to assess its existing digital identity and overhaul every aspect for a competitive advantage.

 

Why Do You Need Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing today is much more than a crucial medium to reach new patients. Utilizing various online marketing strategies can reap massive benefits for your medical practice. You stand to grow your business and your brand and save thousands of dollars that can be better invested in other areas to improve patient outcomes.

As a 2020 survey showed, more than 90% of healthcare practices today utilize digital marketing strategies for their business. With almost all of your competitors proactively trying to reach new customers and grow their brand, you need to have a digital marketing strategy in place.

Healthcare providers show more confidence than ever in their practice website, social media presence, and SEO efforts. They’re also leveraging online advertising on Facebook and Google to build and engage communities and generate brand stickiness for their practice.

You need to reach potential patients where they are. Hence, website optimization, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and content marketing have to be integral parts of your online marketing plan.

What is the Difference Between Traditional and Digital Marketing?

When you think of traditional marketing methods, you’re probably thinking of newspapers, TV, radio, and billboards. These techniques are intended to reach the masses in a blanket approach. Digital marketing, on the other hand, involves inbound and outbound techniques like SEO, website marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and many more.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with traditional marketing. The problem lies in limiting your marketing efforts exclusively to conventional marketing. Traditional marketing works well only for sharing standardized marketing messaging with a broad group of people, irrespective of their demographical differences. Also, traditional marketing methods cannot cover the entire patient journey and all the consumer touchpoints.

Moreover,  traditional marketing campaigns on TV and in newspapers are much more expensive than digital marketing strategies. And you never know if your campaigns are performing as well as you’d hoped because you seldom have any way of measuring your ROI.

Lastly, digital marketing is simply more pervasive than traditional marketing. Almost 97% of people learn more information about a business or healthcare provider online than anywhere else. Your billboards and print ads might reach many potential patients, but your online presence will get almost everyone.

Advantages of Choosing Digital Marketing for Medical Practices

There is no shortage of digital marketing techniques for a medical practice online. And the advantages that come with them are numerous as well.

  1. Target the right audience at the right place: With digital marketing, you have the power to target tailored segments of customers with platforms like Google and Facebook. You can share customized campaigns directly with the target audience of your choice. e.g., women aged 35-55 living within 5 miles of your practice.
  2. Increase brand awareness: As a medical practice, your brand is perhaps your most important asset. By strengthening your online presence and optimizing your digital marketing efforts, you can grow your brand organically and translate that into leads and sales.
  3. Enhance patient loyalty and retention: Acquiring more patients is essential to retain your existing ones. No matter how impressive your services are, if you’re not leveraging CRM and other digital tools to enhance the patient experience for your current patients, they are bound to jump ship.
  4. Skyrocket your conversion rates: Digital marketing provides cost-effective methods to boost your conversion rates, thereby decreasing your patient acquisition costs. Due to practical customization tools and PPC ads, you’re only paying for relevant impressions and not advertising to irrelevant leads.
  5. Measure your ROI: With advanced tracking and analytics tools, you always view how your online marketing efforts are performing, giving you the added advantage of tweaking them for the best results in the future.

Interactive Strategies for Healthcare Digital Marketing

The importance of a medical marketing strategy might be obvious but creating one – maybe not be that simple. With literally dozens of strategies available on the web and without professional marketing services, how do you decide which techniques to pick that best suit your unique medical practice? You need a strategy focused on a chosen few marketing tactics best proven to generate the maximum value for your business.

Quality Web Content

A medical practice’s website is its number one spokesperson, working 24 x 7 to showcase what it has to offer. Patients looking for medical professionals online almost always visit their websites. You should make sure your website provides a modern browsing experience, loads fast, and is optimized well for mobile devices, considering around half of the global website traffic comes from mobile phones.

Your website content should be helpful for patients visiting it and should contain easily discoverable information about your practice.

Search Engine Optimization

Studies show that people make purchasing decisions 78% of the time after a location-based Google search. This shows that local search results account for most new patients reaching your medical practice. SEO aims to optimize your entire online presence to make it search engine-friendly, so your website and business listings are consistently ranked high in search results.

Your Google My Business (GMB) page should be updated regularly and provide detailed contact information and details of your services to patients online. These techniques together constitute what is known as search engine marketing.

Pay-Per-Click Ads For Increased Online Visibility

As the name suggests, PPC advertising is a cost-effective digital advertising technique to put your brand in front of prospective patients. With Facebook and Google Ads being the platforms of choice for 80-90% of marketers, you have at your disposal prime virtual real estate to pitch your digital billboard.

You can outcompete other medical practices with the correct keyword bidding strategy and supplement your organic SEO efforts with effective PPC ads. Plus, you can customize your ads using parameters like age, gender, geography, and interests to maximize your reach and conversions.

Targeted Social Media Marketing

Social media usage has exploded in recent years. With people spending almost 2.5 hours daily on major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, your practice also needs to be present on these websites.

Leveraging organic engagement using consistent and highly-relevant content supported by social media advertising can massively increase awareness for your brand. You can reach newer patient segments, boost your social proof, and acquire previously untapped leads with social media platforms.

Interactive Video Marketing

Video is the fastest-growing content format in today’s highly dynamic internet. People spend 88% more time on websites with videos than those without videos. YouTube being the second-largest search engine globally, patients are also four times more likely to use YouTube than other platforms to find information about a brand, product, or service.

You can use video marketing to establish your brand and your medical professionals as authorities in your field, thus bolstering your online reputation and increasing your inbound leads. Documenting successful patient treatment journeys (with their consent), answering patient queries with engaging and informative videos, and sharing explainer videos featuring your physicians are only some of the interactive ways to utilize YouTube’s powerful potential for your practice.

In Conclusion

Your medical practice needs to have a solid marketing strategy and update it to incorporate recent trends and patient behavior regularly. You should also consider partnering with a professional medical marketing agency to help manage all your medical marketing efforts while you continue to provide excellent services to patients.

 

Online Marketing For Doctors | What’s the Benefit?

March 27, 2022 / B2B Marketing, Digital Marketing / , ,
online marketing for doctores

Table Of Contents

Introduction

The revolutionary impact of digitalization has been felt across industries, and healthcare is no exception. Consumer behavior, or in this case, patient behavior, is almost unrecognizable from just a few years ago.

Patients depend heavily on the internet to search for and choose their care providers. And doctors need to start taking notice.

As a doctor, digital medical marketing might seem like an additional headache, one you might not feel very enthusiastic about. But online marketing is no longer a luxury in today’s hyper-connected and always-online world. Today, doctors need to don multiple hats – that of a caregiver and an influencer.

Your potential customers no longer rely solely on word-of-mouth recommendations to make healthcare decisions. They are taking their medical needs into their own hands, conducting their research on mobile devices, and judging your medical practice based on your online credibility.

And all this is happening online, every second of every day. Hence, you need to be present where they are to ensure you don’t lose out to the competition.

Importance of Digital Marketing

In the healthcare industry, digital marketing is more commonly known as medical marketing or healthcare marketing. It’s a blanket term encompassing all outreach activities performed by doctors or medical practices to reach new patients and retain current patients through communication and branding.

These activities include traditional marketing methods such as newspapers, TV, radio, and billboards. And of course, digital marketing techniques like SEO, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, and Content Marketing.

According to a report, 77% of online health queries originate from search engines. Add to this the time spent on social media apps and the significance of having a quality website, and you have a lot of stuff to master if you want to stand apart from the noise.

As a 2020 survey showed, more than 90% of healthcare organizations utilize digital marketing strategies for their business. With your competitors leaving no stone unturned to reach new customers and grow their brand, you need a digital marketing strategy.

Why Doctors Need Online Marketing

Digital marketing is much more than an indispensable channel to reach your customers. Utilizing the various online marketing strategies we’ll be discussing can reap massive benefits for your medical business.

Medical marketing grows your business and your brand and helps you save costs better utilized in other areas of your practice.

Let’s take a deep dive into the benefits of digital marketing for doctors:

Enhanced Service Awareness

Spreading awareness is a no-brainer when it comes to growing a medical business. With hundreds of clinics, hospitals, and platforms in your vicinity vying for the same patients, your online communication strategy will make you stand out.

People expect all healthcare practices to have their information readily available online. If your potential customers need to struggle to find you online, they’re not going to award you their business.

With more than 90% of people trusting online reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations, digital marketing offers the most lucrative way to be present where your customers are looking for you and increase traffic to all your online channels.

Improved Access to Patients

The core objective of marketing, offline or online, is to reach the people already looking for you in the most effective way possible. What digital marketing does brilliantly allows you to control, to a granular level, the customer segments you want to target.

With platforms like Google and Facebook providing highly-customizable campaign generation tools, you have more control over the exact people you want to reach with your messaging.

Moreover, social media apps and platforms account for almost 2.5 hours of an average person’s daily time online. If your doctors and medical practice management connect with patients with relevant and engaging content, they will become valuable customers.

Reduced Marketing Budget

For all the promise that medical marketing holds, it would be reasonable to assume that it would cost an arm and a leg. Fortunately, that’s not the case. Digital marketing strategies offer a cost-effective way of building awareness and your brand.

With options like Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements, you have to pay only when a customer clicks on your ads. Compared to costly traditional marketing strategies like print ads and TV ads, you can save a ton of costs that can be redirected to improving patient outcomes, thereby unlocking additional patient retention and brand growth advantages.

You can further maximize your return on investment (ROI) by consulting with a full-service medical marketing agency like Turnkey Mate, leveraging the perks of expert digital marketing services and an online marketing plan that’s tailored to your needs.

Increased Digital Presence

Digital marketing for doctors builds awareness and provides access to more patients cost-effectively, but it also establishes them as thought leaders in the medical community.

This leads to trust among your potential patients, and in atry where people’s health is involved, trust is an invaluable currency.

By publishing relevant content to your target audience and providing them with helpful information, you can gradually build a lasting lead generation channel for your practice.

Different Types of Digital Marketing Strategy for your Medical Practice

Knowing that healthcare marketing is essential for your business is one thing, but how do you decide which digital marketing tactics to choose for your overall strategy?

You need a focused strategy built around a few online marketing tactics best proven to generate the maximum value for medical practices.

These tactics cover all the different channels you can use to reach more patients and establish yourself as a reputed brand in the medical community.

Let’s discuss how leveraging digital marketing tactics can help you grow your practice.

Search Engine Optimization

Patients will rarely go past the first page of search results when looking for local physicians, and that’s where you need to appear.

Studies also indicate that people purchase goods or services 78% of the time after a location-based Google search. Local search results account for most new patients coming through your doors.

Search engine optimization (SEO) simply aims to optimize the online presence of your excellent practice based on the online behavior of your potential patients. For example, your Google My Business (GMB) page should be updated and provide comprehensive contact information and details of your services to people.

Your practice should also have a Facebook page and organic backlinks to your website from high-authority websites. Together, both will increase the Domain Authority (DA) of your website and boost your organic ranking on search engines.

Social Media Marketing

Your future patients spend vast amounts of their daily time on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Social media has become the go-to hub for people to find and talk about anything they care deeply about – and that extends to service providers, including physicians and medical practices.

social media marketing

Nurturing engagement with existing and new patients through your social media channels creates a unique stickiness to platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Using consistent, highly-relevant content and paid advertisements in tandem can grow awareness for your brand, reach newer patient segments, and increase your social proof.

Email Marketing

Email is still one of the cheapest and most effective marketing methods for doctors who want to grow their medical practice online. With an exciting and relevant subject line, you stand a decent chance of your email being opened by users.

According to a recent Hubspot report, email marketing has the highest ROI for small businesses.        Emails offer a quick and cost-effective way to communicate informational or promotional messages to your existing and potential patients relatively non-intrusive manner.

According to the same Hubspot report, personalizing your email message is the number one tactic that can improve your click-through rates.

The open email rate for healthcare marketing is 23.4%, more than 5% higher than the average across industries. You’re already in an advantageous position. You just need to nail your email personalization and subject line strategies to perfect your email marketing strategy.

Pay-Per-Click Advertisements

Pay-per-click or PPC advertising is a time-tested method to appear right at the top of Google’s search results, thereby being featured in prime virtual real estate. With the right bidding strategy, you can outcompete others to generate a significant increase in patient appointments.

As the name suggests, you only pay when users click on your ads. Hence, you’re getting your money’s worth, and you can be sure that your marketing campaigns are working. PPC ads are a great way to complement your organic SEO efforts to kickstart your digital marketing efforts.

Content Marketing

Content marketing uses the power of patient-focused content to market both healthcare practices and medical practitioners. It is at the core of inbound marketing and helps establish your routine as an authority in your specialization.

Publishing a blog post or POV on relevant industry trends can skyrocket the reputation of both your physicians and your brand. This can be done on your website, your physicians’ LinkedIn profiles, or their Facebook pages. Social media platforms are used by 94% of businesses for content distribution.

Being the second largest search engine, YouTube has become a valuable part of any content marketing strategy. With video overtaking blogs as the most widely used content format, you simply cannot afford to miss the powerful impact video content can have on your patient acquisition.

Bottom Line

With digital marketing for doctors becoming a necessity, your medical practice not only needs to have a detailed strategy but constantly needs to refine it to succeed and stay relevant.

You can also consider hiring marketing professionals to help manage all your online marketing efforts while you continue to provide excellent services to patients. The right mix of inbound and outbound marketing strategies will supercharge your marketing campaigns to reach potential patients online and build your brand.

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