Do you know where your potential patient’s attention is?

If you don’t know where your potential patient is spending their time then you can’t know how to effectively market to them. And if you don’t know how to effectively market to them then you are throwing money away on ineffective marketing, losing out on revenue, and missing the opportunity to serve more people.

Testing this hypothesis

My wife and I frequently make the drive from our home near downtown out to the west side of our city. It’s about a 15-20 minute drive down one of the most traveled interstates in the U.S., Interstate 40.

Since it’s a heavily traveled interstate, it’s safe to assume that it has a high amount of potential consumers driving it every single day. Hence, the unbelievable amount of billboards that we pass on a daily basis, vying for our attention.

One day after the drive, I looked at my wife and asked her to tell me one company or event that she saw on a billboard. We passed hundreds, so surely she could tell me one.

Nothing. Not one. All that money spent on a billboard and not a single one converted or raised a company’s brand awareness. Her response…. “I literally don’t think I looked at a single one.”

Why is it that something that used to be an advertising gold mine for companies a few decades ago no longer has the same effectiveness?

Technology.

As a passenger, her attention was not on the billboards. Her attention was on her phone as she scrolled through social media, read articles and blog posts, and watched a quick video on YouTube.

As billboards no longer grab our attention, the same can be said for TV and radio commercials.

With companies like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, YouTube, Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, and Podcasts, commercials do not have to exist for us anymore. It’s all on-demand… all of the time.

On the off chance that we are watching a TV show live or listening to a radio station we will either instantly change the channel or station when a commercial comes on or we will pull out our phones and scroll through something on Facebook or Instagram, completely tuning out whatever commercial is now running in the background.

Yet, many companies are still spending between 500 and 5000 per month on TV and radio advertising, as well as on billboards. The cost has stayed the same over the years, but the return on that investment? I ‘d venture to say your return has gone way down.

Ok, so if those don’t work well anymore… what is working?

3 effective ways to market your business or medical practice in today’s digital world

Blogging on your website

Some of you may be completely confused why blogging is on this list. Isn’t blogging just a journal where people talk about their feelings, musings, and favorite foods? No. Well….yes, it can be, but blogging is incredibly powerful for businesses who utilize it strategically. I mean, this blog got you interacting with our brand, didn’t it?

Writing good content on your website blog has so many benefits. One of the most important benefits of writing highly relevant blog posts around things that your potential customer or patient are searching for is that it helps your website with SEO (or Search Engine Optimization)—A.k.a., it helps you with how high you rank on Google.

Another benefit to writing relevant content is that you can write pieces for each stage of a buyer’s journey or patient’s journey, which is the process that all of us go through when we are trying to make a decision on what to buy, where to go, or who to buy from. When you have a question about a particular problem you are having or are searching for some sort of solution what do you do? If you’re like 74% of us, you probably go straight to Google and search for it. Then you are given a long list of search results that are probably relevant to your search.

If you make decisions like this, wouldn’t your patients be doing the same thing with a pain they are having, symptoms they are experiencing, or procedures they are considering having?

Leveraging Social Media

As I mentioned in the stories above with my wife, people are increasingly spending more and more time with their head down staring at their phone and scrolling through social media.

So, why aren’t you making the effort to be as visible and present on these social media platforms as possible?

You can use Facebook and Twitter to engage with potential patients, distribute your newly written blog content, or give your two-cents on a relevant topic. You can use Instagram to show before and after photos or to interact with your patients after their procedure, surgery, or treatment. You can use LinkedIn to produce high-quality industry news articles that establish you and the other doctors within your practice as industry experts.

Online Advertising

Billboards, TV, and radio used to be great places to advertise because that was where attention was. The ROI was great, but now that attention has shifted, the ROI has drastically decreased.

With the world that we live in today being a digital-first world, new mediums for advertising had to emerge that brought similar or better returns than the former.

Google, Bing, and Facebook advertising are the new billboards, and the new TV and radio commercials, except they are even stronger. They’re stronger because they are tailored to your audience and they show up online where your potential patient is scrolling or searching. Have you scrolled down your facebook page lately and seen a relevant “sponsored” ad? That didn’t happen by accident. You fit a particular criterion that the seller thought would be interested in their company, what they had to offer, or a solution they provided.

 

If you’re still investing in marketing on platforms that are quickly losing their effectiveness then start with one of these above.

Remember, if you don’t know where your ideal customer or patient’s attention is, then you are throwing marketing dollars away, losing revenue, and missing opportunities to serve more people.

Don’t know the first thing about how to market on these 3 platforms? Don’t worry! Talk to someone on our team of digital marketing professionals today to help get you started.
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