If You're Not Leveraging Social Media for Your Medical Practice, You're Missing Out
Social media marketing is a hugely successful way to market your goods or services directly to your target audience. Whether Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn or Twitter, the targeting capabilities are impressive and can lead to massive exposure even on a lower-end budget as compared to traditional advertising avenues.
Marketing for doctors, medical offices and other healthcare related businesses can be a bit tricky. Nine successful social media professionals have shared their insight into making sure you're able to get the most out of your social media marketing campaigns for 2019 and beyond.
1. The Human Element
“The best way Doctors and medical offices can use social media in 2019 is all in the content. Lifestyle tips, healthy recipes and preventive information in their specialty will broaden their audience and perhaps capture the attention of someone that wouldn't have noticed them before. Keep the content informative, human and don't make it too clinical. You want to show your expertise, but also show that you are human and care about the full picture of your patients lives, not just one appointment.”
By Kristen Harold of KMH Marketing
2. Facebook Live
“Facebook will continue to favor video content, especially live content. Medical professionals need to establish a formal process for creating facebook live videos in their practice. A great way to do this is to set a specific time each week that you film the doctor talking about common procedures and questions. This will create engaging content and is a great opportunity for potential patients to ask questions, you can't give medical advice but you can discuss procedures and their benefits!”
By Joseph Sloan of Advice Media
3. Make Use of Video
“When it comes to social media marketing for doctors you will really want to utilize video. Take videos of the different treatments that you offer and show how these treatments are performed. People will want to see what they are getting themselves into before receiving any sort of treatment, and by using video you will be able to show them just how the treatment is done and how a patient reacted. Also, using video to give testimonials from patients. People want to make sure that your reviews and testimonials are REAL and by taking a video of someone talking about how your treatment helped them, it gives you more credibility because it shows them real people are coming to your office. Video gives people an inside look into your office and will ultimately make someone feel more comfortable going to your doctors office rather than someone else's who doesn't have an inside look.”
By Samantha Walls of InTouch Marketing
4. And More Video…
“I work with surgeons (in extremely competitive online spaces) who stand out by leveraging this specific strategy – they take real, unedited testimonials videos from their patients & load them to YouTube so that it ranks for keywords. We then combine this with paid traffic, meaning we run YouTube ads and remarketing ads on Facebook and YouTube.
It's part of the doctor's office protocol now to ask their patients if they would be willing to share their story & to shoot the videos with their iPhones at post-surgical follow-up visits. Last month alone, regular uploading of videos like these for the spine surgeon resulted in 60+ very targeted phone calls.”
By Kristen Hinman of Peare Media
5. Highlight Expertise & Accomplishments
“I work with an orthopedic practice and my strategy has always been to highlight the doctors expertise and accomplishments. This means creating content around events they attend or participate in. This helps add credibility to their name. To highlight their expertise I recommend writing blogs or recording videos where they give free advice for injuries they treat. Not only does a future patient get a feel for you, but they also get familiar with you. I started a Youtube channel for the group I work with and a majority of our content is doctors introducing themselves and explaining injuries they see often.”
By Chris Williams of Clock In Marketing
6. Share User Friendly Content
“Share content with a broader focus than just the practice — while it's helpful to post about the availability of flu shots, changes in insurance provider arrangements or office hours, patients are interested in more macro information about their health. Provide tips for treating common ailments, updates about new research or clinical trials and articles about health trends and statistics. Post events you are hosting, and use groups to convene patients with common interests to specifically appeal to demographic segments like moms of young children or seniors.”
By Leigh Picchetti of LKP Consulting
7. Facebook Ads & Live Webinar Funnels
“I’d say that the most successful revenue generator for me has been utilizing Facebook ads to drive traffic to live webinar events. It works because you give perspective customers something that not only educates them but allows them the opportunity to ‘get to know you' which builds an initial rapport. You can then invite them to take advantage of a special offer at the end of the webinar. The special offer can be anything from a free consultation, to a specific discounted services. Of course, there are variations on this strategy. The Facebook ad may not always lead to a webinar – maybe a free report that leads to an email series, maybe it leads to a quiz that leads them to a special offer. The point is using funnels in conjunction with Facebook ads is a sure way to make acquiring new clients simple and ongoing.”
By Dr. Maiysha T. Clairborne, MD of DrMaiysha.com
8. Start Small & Stay Active
“When you decide to post on social media, start small with a few platforms and then add more if you feel that you're able to keep up. There's nothing worse than starting out on social media, then not posting for six months. So focus only on the platforms that you feel are going to be the best fit for your audience. Maybe for doctors, that's Facebook and Twitter. Or maybe if they're interested in the B2B side, it's LinkedIn. Just don't try to do TOO much if you're just starting out. I've seen businesses get overwhelmed – and then just stop posting.”
By Michelle Garrett of Garrett Public Relations
9. Consider An Ongoing Social Series
“Use a ‘Series' to increase engagement: One of the biggest problems many people face when getting into social media, is that they don't know what to feature each time they consider posting. Creating an ongoing (perhaps weekly) series' helps mitigate that issue – for instance ‘Cure-iosity Wednesday' where a doctor talked about the historical significance of a particular cure. This would allow each time you want to post on Wednesday, for their to be a continuity and a positive expectation from the audience, who would find a pleasant familiarity with your Wednesday posts after time. Ideally you stick to a very specific rhythm so there could even be an anticipation for the next one.”
By Tim Brown of Hook Agency
