5 Awesome Ways to Market Your Healthcare Practice

Published on 23 January 2023
by HeartBeat Digital Marketing
Is digital marketing part of your healthcare business? It should be! We take a look at FIVE awesome (and proven) ways to market your practice and fill those appointment schedules.
FIVE Effective Ways to Market Your Healthcare Practice

Marketing a medical practice in Australia can be a tough prescription to fill. To be successful, you’ll have to:

  • Appeal to a wide range of patients and needs
  • Get your services in front of the masses
  • Educate those masses on why they need your services
  • Quash any reservations they may have about booking appointments

And that’s all while drumming up business for doctors who join your team along the way.

Get the gist in 30 seconds

  • No matter what services you’re offering, the goals are the same: get your business in front of new and existing patients and fill appointment schedules
  • A modern, mobile-friendly website is the face and hub of a practice so it better showcase your team and services the right way while offering online bookings and up-to-date health information
  • SEO is well worth your time and effort, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, you’ll have to strategise to hit the coveted page 1 of Google’s results
  • Online advertising targets specific audiences and can be set, so you only pay when people click or tap on your ads. That’s great for budgets!
  • In the ocean of social media that Aussies are exposed to, it pays (literally) to grow your brand with unique imagery, tone of voice and post timing on selected platforms
  • With its massive ROI, email marketing (EDM) is a powerful tool, but you’ll have to craft the content and set journeys for your audience

5 effective ways to market your healthcare practice

The Heartbeat Digital team has been perfecting healthcare marketing for Australian audiences for over a decade, with many of our clients seeing double and even triple-digit results.

Our experts put medical practice marketing under the knife to ensure your practice is at peak performance.

ONE: A modern, mobile-friendly website

“Websites boost legitimacy and trustworthiness of all businesses…”

We chose the adjectives ‘modern’ and ‘mobile-friendly’ for a reason.

Did you know? In 2021, 81% of Aussies used their phones to access the internet multiple times a day. Those numbers are rising.

A website showcases your team and services while alerting and diverting visitors to important information, i.e., online bookings.

Websites boost legitimacy and trustworthiness of all businesses while acting as a hub for traffic from social media, marketing campaigns and even Google Maps and other sources.

A key part of medical practice marketing is a website that positions your practice in a unique light. Are you an everyday family GP? Do you focus on complicated surgery? Are you all about children’s health?

The right messaging, colour coding, tone of voice and website elements (e.g. images and menus, etc.) make a huge difference.

Interesting fact

94% of people would be more likely to choose a new service provider if that provider offered online booking options. (Zippia)

Takeaways

Provide online bookings while showcasing your practice in a way that resonates with your audience—things websites do perfectly.

Find out how our team can modernise your existing website or create a stunning new one today.

Find out more about websites

TWO: SEO, SEO and more SEO

seo for medical practice marketing

If you’re not familiar, SEO means search engine optimisation, or orientating a website to rank higher on search engines like Google.

Think of it this way.

When someone who knows your practice’s name searches for it on Google, they’ll likely see it within the first few hits (link suggestions) on the search results page. Great.

But how about all those (potential) patients who don’t know your name? They might search for things like:

    • Best GP in my area
    • Doctors near me
    • Skin checks
    • Why do I have a stomach ache?

And so on.

Wouldn’t it be great if your practice appeared in Google’s results for those searches too?

You’d get direct links to your website, huge exposure, and the increased trust that comes with high ranking search results on Google.

That’s the power of SEO.

BTW: on Google, the term “doctors near me” receives over 114,000 searches per month in Australia alone.

“Carefully crafted blogs also offer a great SEO source…”

Essentially, SEO works by placing strategic keywords throughout a website, both on the visitor-facing pages and in the coding like snippets.

Carefully crafted blogs also offer a great SEO source, as they allow marketers to create content about specific topics with the intent of getting noticed on search engine results pages.

Interesting facts

  • Google has a 94.3% market share in Australia. (Statcounter)
  • 95% of people don’t go beyond page 1 of Google’s search results. (Digital Synopsis)

Takeaways

Ranking high in Google’s search results is a huge win for businesses, so ensure you’re maximising your SEO efforts with a strong and continuous strategy.

Learn more about SEO

THREE: Online advertising

“…your advertising budget only goes to an audience who will appreciate your services…”

Online advertising is a huge space: display ads on other websites (e.g. news sites), ads on Google search results pages (page 1 of course) and ads on social media are some prime examples.

The beauty of online advertising is that they are targeted, meaning they are shown to specific audiences and can even be shown at specific times.

For example, ads for coffee do much better in the morning.

With online advertising, your practice can target specific audiences like areas near you or certain age groups on social media, making online ads extremely effective. You can also target people who search for specific things or like certain things on social media.

This means your advertising budget only goes to an audience who will appreciate your services—unlike a billboard on a highway.

These ads can be crucial to new practices or those that are expanding services or staff, as online ads are super effective if tweaked correctly.

Getting even more cost effective is PPC or pay-per-click, a type of online advertising where you pay when someone clicks or taps on an ad.

In other words, you only pay for advertising if your ad is actually clicked on.

Interesting fact

Customers are 155% more likely to search for brand-specific terms when exposed to display ads. (Techjury)

Takeaways

With so many Australian consumers opting for digital channels, a strong online presence driven by online advertising is a key ingredient for success.

It may seem a little overwhelming at first, but with the help of a professional, your practice can reap the benefits of strategic PPC and online advertising.

Learn more about PPC

FOUR: Social media

social media

It’s no secret that Aussies spend a lot of time on social media, so why not get your name out there on those powerful platforms?

“…social media content lets you position your practice in a specific way…”

One in every three minutes that Australians spend online is on social media, with 82.7% of our population being active users.

As such, most people are familiar with the idea of posting on social media pages, and for good reason.

Social networks provide incredible opportunities for healthcare providers to build relationships with clients and followers and to facilitate engagement.

When businesses are active on social media, they stay fresh and front of mind per their audiences, something hugely beneficial when it comes to medical practice marketing.

Regular social media content lets you position your practice in a specific way, perhaps through tips, advice and insights, as well as getting the faces behind the name out there.

For example, a practice that focuses on women’s health might colour code accordingly, offer tips with links to informative blogs on their website (extra points for SEO) and post photos of their team in action.

Post ideas include:

  • Tips
  • Brand story
  • Statistics/insights/infographics
  • Client success stories (Non-patient)
  • Sales and promotions
  • Meet the team
  • Milestones and special events
  • Health information and updates

Just make sure any client (non-patient) you mention on social media gives you their approval first.

Interesting facts

  • On Facebook, posts with images get 2.3x more engagement than text-only posts. (Buzzsumo)

Here are the most popular platforms by number of unique monthly visitors – December 2022:

  1. Facebook – 18 million
  2. YouTube – 17.5 million
  3. WhatsApp – 12 million
  4. Instagram – 10 million
  5. LinkedIn – 6.5 million

Takeaways

Get active on the socials! Curating an active social media account can be a full-time job in itself, so work out which platform is right for you (Facebook and Instagram are safe bets for medical practices).

Keep on brand in terms of colours and styles too with attractive, fresh imagery.

Need some professional help with your socials?

Learn more about social media content

FIVE: Email marketing

“…putting the average ROI at an eye-watering 3,800%…”

EDM (electronic direct mail) marketing is as old as the internet itself, but don’t let its age deter you.

Email marketing is super effective and has a massive ROI, with the Data & Marketing Association putting the average ROI at an eye-watering 3,800%, or $38 for every $1 invested.

  • Top Performers: 18% of companies achieve ROI greater than $70 per $1 invested
  • Low Performers: 20% of companies achieve ROI less than $5 per $1 invested

Pretty lucrative!

EDMs have a huge ROI because they can typically be created and set up quite quickly by one professional, personalised with names and sent to a huge audience. Recycling and editing old content can make it even easier and faster.

Here’s how medical practice marketing EDMs work. With attractive images and graphics, the emails follow a ‘journey’, for example:

  1. Initial email: sent to all contacts
  2. Unopened: A few days later, an unopened version with a tweaked subject line sent to recipients who didn’t open the initial
  3. Unclicked: Later, another version with a new subject line and altered content is sent to recipients who didn’t open or interact with the unopened version
  4. Final: possibly a last ditch email with revised content is sent to any recipients who still didn’t engage

You’ll need to have well-crafted content and a large database of contacts to make them effective.

Reports on the results, including open rates and click rates, are also essential for measuring success and future planning.

Takeaways

Almost all practices have a large database of patient emails, so why not use it? Do some research on what kind of content resonates with your audience and develop an EDM campaign.

Our team offers awesome EDM campaigns that work wonders for medical practice marketing.

Get started on EDMs

Medical practice marketing at the end of the day

Medical practice marketing at the end of the day

The overall goal is basically the same for all practices — get your business in front of new and existing patients and fill appointment schedules.

If only it were that simple.

Today’s consumers expect smooth, mobile-friendly resources that deliver fast results.

This graph shows the rising number of smartphone users in Australia:

Smartphone users in Australia 2017 to 2026
* Data source: statista.com

Make sure to put at least a few of the techniques above into practice and you’re bound to see great results.

Better yet, bolster your medical practice with an experienced marketing team.

The Heartbeat Digital team are experts at positioning practices as go-to’s for medical needs in their respective communities.

Get in touch with the team today to discuss your medical practice marketing needs and unlock those new patents.

There are no obligations to simply find out.

Speak to an expert

 

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