Today, the digital business card is as necessary as the sign on the practice door. What are essential measures in marketing, what is freestyle – an overview.
The information tool of choice for consumers today is undoubtedly the Internet. Doctors are also mostly searched for via the Internet, especially when a patient needs to reorient himself after a change of location or for a specialist.
Patients like to get an idea of who their prospective primary care physician or specialist is, what treatments they offer, or what other patients have to say about them before their first visit to the office. They want a first “eye contact”, for example, to find out what the doctor looks like, what impression his practice makes and how to find there. Those who provide all this information on the Internet and answer as many questions as possible already on a sympathetic homepage have a better chance of developing a positive online reputation.
How and where should doctors or medical practices present themselves?
When a physician establishes a new practice or takes over a practice, he or she should take the opportunity to inform the surrounding population by means of the local press. An attractive advertisement with a picture and some information about the services offered provides a good basis. In parallel, it is advisable to set up a simple homepage. Because people are curious and often want to know more than can be conveyed in advertisements. Thus, a digital business card is also useful for long-standing practice operators or affiliated physicians in a clinic. Since usually both budget and time resources are limited, you can hire a suitable agency to implement this. Here, agencies that already have experience in the healthcare sector are preferable, because the homepage of a doctor’s practice differs considerably from the Internet presences of other service providers.
Health is a matter of trust, therefore a potential patient informs himself differently and much more specifically. This calls for a careful, confidence-building and positive “visual language”, while texts are best received by the viewer if they are as simple and clear as possible.
It is important that one is found at all with the own homepage in the Internet and not only in a general information file of the city or the municipality together with 20 further family doctors is listed.
The more informative the homepage, the better you will be found on the Internet. The domain name of the homepage should be accordingly clear-language understandable, already express that it concerns a medical practice. If the specialty or specialization of the practice is also already apparent from the Google search result, this promotes the attention of the searching patient. This is easy to check in Google via search queries after setting up the homepage.
Various online directories – but be careful!
There are a variety of online directories that offer online listings to companies and physicians – for free or for a fee. Very few of these directories are actually used by searchers. When considering free entries of this type, attention should be paid to whether or not these entries will automatically become chargeable at some point. This way you can avoid unpleasant surprises.
Facebook, Twitter & Co. – yes or no?
Anyone who wants to use social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Co. must be aware in advance that these media are very time-consuming. They constantly require new content and quick responses to posts and comments from patients or visitors to the sites. If the pages are not regularly supplied with new articles and information, they become uninteresting and lose their attractiveness. Social media should ideally be managed directly by employees of the practice, since in many cases comments or information from the physician are necessary. If the support runs through an external agency, there are automatically certain time delays, which in turn can lead to negative reactions.
Small budget, big impact
The homepage is the measure No. 1 in the marketing mix; this can be realized also with small budget, without one must reach therefore into the computer keyboard. An agency with experience in healthcare already knows the specific needs of a medical practice. It is important to compare different offers, especially with regard to the budget. But the agency’s design style and service scope also play a role in deciding on the right service provider to match the client’s image and time budget. When comparing available offers, hourly rates for any rework or adjustments should be indicated (see “Tips for choosing an agency”).
Nowadays, a homepage should be programmed according to the latest standards right from the start (see “Own homepage – essentials”) and display flexibly on smartphones, tablets and other screens (responsive design).
Another effective and inexpensive measure is cooperation with local media. This can be done either through an agency or through the physician himself. Well-written reports on current health topics are readily published free of charge by many media outlets. This creates a public presence and builds trust.
Online public city or town directories also assist in publicizing the practice. You can usually register there as a practicing physician incl. Enter specialty and address free of charge. It is ideal to link the name with the own homepage in the entry, this “backlink” is for Google, for example, an indication of the relevance of the website for certain search queries.
Keyword Google: The doctor’s office itself should be entered there as a business on Google Maps, along with location, opening hours, photos. This is usually done by a contracted agency, but is also easy to set up yourself (“Google MyBusiness”). This measure promotes the findability via the search engine in a short time.
So you don’t always need the really big budget to achieve a good presence with good and effective marketing. However, it is important to maintain the image of the medical practice and to position yourself at the forefront of the competition.
HAUSARZT PRAXIS 2017; 12(4): 48-51
