Healthcare is highly competitive; that’s no secret. Whether you have a dental practice or a healthcare company, it’s likely you consider your market to be competitive. When you’re facing steep competition, it is imperative to have a comprehensive branding and marketing strategy — to help new patients find you, and to nurture a strong connection with existing patients.
Marketing can be overwhelming, with the multitude of platforms available. The terminology can be daunting, the statistics, the tools and choices. However, two relatively simple strategies are aimed at either patient acquisition or patient retention. You don’t need complicated funnels and tools to accomplish them. And they are tried-and-true marketing strategies too often overlooked by busy practitioners and healthcare business owners.
These two strategies — social media and blogging — give private practices and healthcare companies new opportunities to connect with patients in today’s digital world. By employing these two marketing tactics, your company is better-positioned to bring new patients in the door.
Search engine optimization is the ultimate secret of these strategies, as the use of keywords will improve your search rankings for new patients — and keep current patients engaged and coming back for appointments.
Blogging shows your healthcare expertise
Your blog serves to reflect your position as a thought leader in your niche; each blog post lives on your website as a source of information and insight. With your blog, you can educate patients and customers, and connect them with the services you provide.
Your healthcare blog improves your search engine ranking
With each new blog post, you create a new webpage on your site. Each new page tells Google and other search engines that new material is on your website, reflecting your specialty and healthcare niche, ready to be indexed for organic searches.
When you post a blog, you inform search engines about your healthcare specialty — and about your expertise on specific healthcare conditions and services. Blogging also helps establish your business in local searches, as it satisfies top factors that affect local search results:
Regular blogging:
- increases your website’s overall volume of quality content
- enhances the topical keyword relevance across your entire site
- improves your domain authority, an important score that drives site rank.
When blog posts are focused and consistent, they can improve your website’s page rank, therefore increasing your visibility with potential patients.
Social media + your healthcare blog = conversions
Creating quality blog content — sharing it on social media — can help convert website visitors into patients. One study showed that businesses that blog have 55 percent more website visitors, with a 5x increase in pages indexed by search engines.
Those sites receive 97 percent more inbound links from other sites, which also help build web traffic. Each blog and social media post has a clear call to action (CTA), driving visitors to schedule an appointment with your business.
With each blog — and each social media post of your blog — you build your brand and establish your expertise. Your prospective customers and patients can more easily find you when you blog and engage social media regularly, week after week.
However, many business and practice owners simply don’t have the time to do it effectively. Even those with a bent for writing find it difficult, week after week, to keep up.
Overwhelmed? We can handle your blog
Somnowell Marketing has a team in place to develop blogs that will attract and convert prospective patients. Our professional team of writers and social media experts have worked with dental practices like yours that need a weekly blog.
We can figure out how to best enhance your SEO keywords, your Google ranking, your social media, and your content. We know all social media best practices, and can ensure your blogs appear where your potential patients will see them.
Your practice deserves a blog that truly reflects the outstanding patient care you provide — and establishes your dentistry as an authoritative source of information.
