You and your team are busy caring for patients, providing preventative care and restorative treatments that help people obtain and maintain their health as it relates to your specialty. Are you also treating your own practice with effective marketing?
As a medical practice in your area, whether it be a small private practice or a large HMO, chances are that you want to inform the public of your services and attract potential patients in your target audience to visit your facility and receive your care. By creating the best medical marketing strategies for your practice, you can stand out amongst the other practices in your area, gaining the attention of your audience and expanding your list of patients.
There are a ton of ways you can advertise your practice, but not all options successfully boost your brand or capture audiences. Today, we’re looking at three of the most effective marketing strategies for a medical practice to implement so that it can rise above the competition and provide more care to more people.
1. Photography and Videography—Show Your Community What You Can Do for Them
Photos of your technology. Videos of the patient’s journey at your practice. Photos of your staff in action. Testimonial videos of your patients sharing their experiences with you.
What do these all have in common? They are highly effective additions to your overall marketing plan, especially when you want to stand out or be more noticeable.
If there is one thing people prefer from a medical practice’s marketing, it’s to see what your practice has to offer and what you can do for them. Reading about your newest equipment or the various services you offer only goes so far when it comes to helping your practice stand out. To make your messages pop, you must have interesting, engaging visuals.
Plus, photos and videos, when produced correctly, help you show off the human side of your practice. It tells your story and conveys the human element of your services, treatments, procedures, and other capabilities. The story of your practice deserves to be told, and well-captured and well-crafted photography and videography are leading ways to do that effectively.
When done right, photography and videography can bolster your credibility and trust among your patients and audiences within your community. They show your authenticity and your ability to provide the best care to patients in need of your treatment and care.
Photography and videography for your doctor’s office or medical facility instill:
- Trust
- Credibility
- Authenticity
- Transparency
- Understanding
Photography for a Medical Practice
The photography you present to your audience can either draw new patients in or drive them away, depending on the quality and the vision behind the camera. You want your photos to show current and potential patients how clean, efficient, and capable your facility, staff, and daily operations are. Plus, you want to showcase the human elements of your practice. However, if your photos are low-res, your subjects are badly lit, or your vision is poorly thought-out, your photos can drive viewers directly to the front doors of competing practices or facilities in the area.
It’s crucial to get the most out of your photographs, which is best accomplished by partnering with a marketing team that is well-versed in the art of photography for the healthcare industry. Even if you have a high-quality camera to capture your subjects, a good camera alone doesn’t include a vision, artistic eye, crucial lighting equipment, and an overall understanding of how the final shots should look for the most captivating, patient-appealing effect.
A seasoned marketing photographer knows how to achieve the final look you want and what is necessary to show your audience to capture their attention and draw them into your practice. Whether you want headshots, candid shots of your team and patients, interior or exterior shots, or equipment and technology shots, your photographer and marketing team can ensure each photo captures the essence and quality of your practice.
Types of Photography for Your Medical Practice
- Headshots
- Shots of your team and patients, staged or candid
- Interior photography
- Exterior photography
Where to Display Your Medical Practice’s Photos
- Website
- Social media pages
- Trifolds, bi-folds, and rack cards
- Billboards
- Video commercials
- Anywhere you can use photography to market yourself
Videography for a Medical Practice
Similar to photography, videography is highly effective at conveying your messages and effectively showing off your practice’s abilities and your human side.
In addition to instilling trust, credibility, authenticity, and other senses that photography instills, videography is also excellent at achieving things like:
- Better brand awareness
- More engagement from existing and potential patients
- More leads and conversions
Unlike photography, videography adds movement and audio to the equation, creating an even more captivating and more engaging way to stand out among competing healthcare facilities or practices in your area. It allows you to tell your story and share your messaging through a much more dynamic approach. (That’s not to say photography is not valuable or necessary when compared to videography. Both are crucial tools to implement in your marketing strategy and use on appropriate platforms and through the proper media.)
Videography is so effective, it’s one of the most significant marketing tools to start utilizing, not just for medical practices but for all businesses or organizations in need of marketing. Audiences significantly rely on videos to learn about companies’ offers, services, and capabilities, so much so that in 2023, 91% of businesses—regardless of the industry—used video in some way as a marketing tool, whether it was a reel on Instagram or Facebook, an explainer video on their website and YouTube, or a social media ad.
Incorporating video into your marketing strategies is so important if you want to stand out more, but it does matter how you go about it. The quality, messages, content, and length of your videos matter and must all be considered if you want your efforts to be noticed. Thanks to the ways YouTube, TikTok, and other video-based platforms have evolved, you can watch any video these days, marketed or not, and see that the production matters. It’s crucial to think about the video quality, sound quality, lighting, video length, visual and audible content, and more.
And it’s crucial to think about all these things in terms of the platform you’re using. If you’re looking to post your video as a reel on social media, the production may or may not need to be as thought out as a video you are creating for YouTube, your website, or an ad campaign.
There is so much that goes into producing a video that your desired audiences will want to spend time on. There is a certain expectation audiences have for the production of a YouTube video versus a Facebook or Instagram reel. And with missed expectations comes a lack of interest in the video as a whole. If a video cannot or does not capture attention, viewers are likely to abandon the video and move on to something else. In fact, only 54% of viewers who begin a video online actually finish it; if a video is less than one minute long, the retention rate increases to 66%.
If you want to produce an interesting, captivating video for your medical practice, you could try your hand at creating one on your own, but know that it will take a lot of time and effort to reach the production-quality levels that your audiences want to see.
Or, you could save your energy and partner with a skilled marketing company that has years of experience in video production.
A marketing company like M&R can analyze your vision for your video(s) and carry you through the production phase, from conception to finalization and posting, helping you choose the right platforms, formats, content, and everything else necessary to interest audiences and convey your message effectively. Plus, we’ll take care of the actual videography and post-production, too, ensuring we capture engaging visuals during each shoot and put them together to create a vision-capturing video you’ll want to show off.
Types of Videography for Your Medical Practice
- Explainer videos
- Overview videos
- Service videos
- Equipment spotlights
- Physician or clinician interviews
- Patient testimonials
- Streaming or TV commercials
Where to Display Your Medical Practice Videos
- Website
- YouTube page
- YouTube Ads campaign
- Social media pages
- Social ads campaigns
- Streaming platforms
- Television
Just remember, to adhere to HIPAA regulations, you should always ensure that you have a signed waiver from any patient whose photograph you use. Never take a picture or video that includes someone’s face within your facility’s halls without signed permission, or else you could be cited for a HIPAA violation.
2. Local SEO Optimization—Make Sure Your Community Can Easily Find You Online
Local SEO, traditional SEO… What’s the difference?
The difference is that traditional SEO optimizes your online presence for broad, more generalized searches, while local SEO optimizes your online presence for online searches that people in your community are performing. When people in your service area are searching for the medical care that you provide, you want your name to appear at the top of the page organically. To do that, you have to ensure your website and listings are optimized with relevant and localized content.
Is Your Practice Relevant, Close, and Prominent?
Relevance, distance, and prominence are the three main factors algorithms like Google rely on to determine whether your practice is a relevant and valuable option to present to a user during their search.
- Relevance: Based on your web content and especially the information on your Google Business Profile (GBP), Google will include your medical practice on the search engine results page as long as your profile and website content match the query. For instance, if a user is searching for eye care but your website and GBP make it clear that you are a cardiology center, you will not be considered relevant in that search.
- Distance: Your practice’s proximity to the user is a huge part of local SEO. Google knows better than to put your practice’s website or profile in front of a user in California if your practice is located in Georgia. But if your practice serves South Georgia patients and someone in Albany searches for the medical services you offer, Google will likely present your information to them as long as your web and profile content make your location and relevance clear.
- Prominence: Prominence hinges on your online reputation and your online activity. Google evaluates the reviews you receive and will boost your rankings in the searches if your GBP rating is naturally and believably high (Google has a way of detecting a profile that receives fake or forced reviews). Plus, when Google can see that your website and profile are consistently updated and tended to, it will determine that your practice is active, further increasing your chances of ranking well in a local search.
Google Business Profile and the Local Pack
Not much matters more to your ranking in a local search than your Google Business Profile (GBP). Free to use and valuable for every medical practice that sees patients, the Google Business Profile tells Google’s algorithm everything you care to provide, which should always include:
- Full practice name
- Address
- Phone number
- Hours of availability
- Service description
- Practice overview
- Relevant, quality photos and videos
Plus, your profile is where people can leave you reviews, ask questions, see any products or services you have listed, and more.
The algorithms use info from your profile—especially your address, ratings, and other relevant information—to determine whether you should appear in the local pack or at least appear in the top 10 results on the search engine results page (SERP).
The Local Pack
Coveted by every business everywhere, a spot in Google’s local pack means you appear front and center at the top of the SERP for a relevant and local search alongside two similar businesses and a map showing your location. The local pack stands out on the page, and it draws the eye to the three recommended practices that are relevant to the search, increasing your chances of gaining a new patient.
The way to make it onto the local pack is by having a GBP that includes accurate information and fleshed-out content and by naturally meeting the needs of the person performing the search. So, if you’re a cardiologist in Albany, GA, a nearby user searches “cardiologist near me,” and your GBP is optimized and filled out well, chances are you will appear in the local pack, increasing the odds of the user selecting your practice and calling to schedule an appointment.
How to Optimize Your Practice’s Local SEO
- Create and update your Google Business Profile
- Optimize your website content with localized content
- Publish localized content on your blog
- Monitor and respond to online reviews
- Utilize local schema markups in your web coding
- Optimize your web design for mobile
Local SEO can be tricky and may feel overwhelming to tackle on your own. Don’t worry; you can partner with a team of SEO experts who will ensure your content and listing profile(s) are optimized for Local SEO so that your medical practice can organically rank high in local searches that are relevant to your practice.
Learn more about Local SEO and how it can benefit you through our Definitive Guide to Local SEO.
3. Search Engine Marketing—Stand Out Online When Your Services Are Sought Out
Want your medical practice to skyrocket to the top of the SERPs, capturing users’ attention and standing out from your competition? You need to employ search engine marketing, or SEM.
Also called paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, SEM is a strategy that places your practice’s ads in front of users, capturing their attention and increasing your chances of a conversion.
Your medical practice is likely competing against similar practices in the area, meaning you need to do what you can to ensure you attract potential patients however you can. While strategies like Local SEO are often a long game (it can take up to 12 months for a business to gain traction with Google’s algorithm), SEM allows you to begin appearing in relevant searches almost immediately.
SEM can include:
- Search ads
- Display ads
- Google Local Services ads
- Remarketing ads
As a Google-certified, Microsoft-certified, and Semrush-certified partner, M&R Marketing’s digital strategists provide expert solutions to medical practices nationwide, and we can do the same for you. Get the most out of your online presence through an SEM campaign that will place your medical practice digital ads at the top of the page, right in front of the user who’s looking for you.
Learn more about SEM and how it can benefit you through our Definitive Guide to Search Engine Marketing.
There are several marketing strategies your medical practice can create to stand out above the rest. M&R Marketing will make sure each strategy is working for you. 478-621-4491
Whether you’re interested in photography and videography, local SEO, SEM, or any other strategy, you can rely on our team to create the marketing plan that features the best and most effective strategies to capture your audience’s attention and win over new patients.
In addition to the three strategies highlighted, we also provide:
And we offer so much more!
Ready to have your marketing strategies work for you? Contact one of our business development managers to learn more about enhancing your medical practice marketing today!
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