Help patients find your practice when searching online

In this article we will look at a 4 major ways your patients will use to locate a practice in their area, and discuss with other patients whether or not a practice is reputable and worth using for the health care.

Directory Listing

Search engines often pool data from other sources so as to help provide relevant search results to those using their search engines. One of these platforms is Directory Listings. You may have heard of Yelp, or Angie’s List, before. When a business is listed in an online directory this allows search engines to index that listing, and use it as one of the search results for the lookup of that business.

It is even possible for your medical practice to be listed on a number of directories, which often has the capability of allowing patients to rate a practice on a scale of 1 to 10 or give them a 1 to 5 star rating. As well patients are often able to leave comments about how good their visit was, or complain about various issues they may have experienced in their interactions with specific practices.

This can be both good and bad for a medical practice, and means that you need to make an effort to monitor your presence online, and quickly reply to, or respond to any negative comments or concerns you may receive about your practice.

Many directory listing are also used as an alternative to searching through a search engine to find information, as directory listing are often geared towards a specific niche. A directory listing for doctor’s wouldn’t including listings for your local pizza place, so online users often realize that they will save time by using a reputable directory to find a listing for what they are looking for.

Search Engine Marketing

Even though Directory Listings are a powerful tool to be used to build your patient base, as patients can find you directly using these directories, a more generic way of searching for information, and the most widely used, is Google, and other search engines.

Your website must be built around the concept of being able to be found by a search engine tool, and to find your way at the top of specific regularly used search terms. If not, your website will often sit in obscurity, unless you are utilizing many of the other strategies and technologies previously listed. 

That being said, one of the first ways someone will start their research online, to find a doctor, is through an internet search. So making sure your website is Search Engine Optimized is the best way to ensure you can capture as many visitors as possible through online searches. 

Now, if your website isn’t configured for Search Engine Optimization, you may need to have a website rebuild. A website rebuild is beneficial for many reasons. Firstly, mobile users are now surpassing desktop computers as the main tool for accessing the internet. Most websites built prior to 2014 were not built to be mobile-friendly. They may have add-ons that may have allowed the site to have a mobile-friendly version added, but the site itself in many cases would be due for an upgrade.

During this upgrade, ask the company in charge of your web development to integrate many of the tools and strategies we’ve discussed thus far, into your online platform, so that you can maximize the effectiveness of the online marketing campaigns.

Google Maps Local Listing

Something that is often overlooked is to have your website and business location listed in Google Maps. This is a great way to have your practice established in the online community. Many people that search for a new doctor often start by searching in their area locally. If your practice is listed in Google Maps, then it will add your practice to their search list. 

The patient will then be able to view any Google star ratings, see how close each practice is to their location, read comments from other patients and decide within seconds if they want to contact any of the practice’s or not.

If your practice isn’t listed on Google maps then these patients simply will not see your practice to know that you are available and accepting new patients. All the other practices in your area that took the time and made the investment to have a website, have their practice listed, and monitored all feedback and comments, to ensure they have the highest rating possible, will receive these new patients actively looking for a physician.

Online Forums, Comments and Reviews

It is critical to the future success of your practice that you monitor online forums, directory listings, and social media based review sites. When someone has a bad experience in your practice, either in-person, over the phone or through other means, it is highly likely that if the person frequents the internet, that he or she may submit a review on a number of sites. These reviews if left unchecked can dramatically damage the reputation of a practice, and scare away potential patients who may have chosen your practice, if not for the negative reviews and comments.

Of course you cannot control who or what will be posted online about your practice. It starts with customer service training of your staff to ensure they are constantly sharpening their skills, and learn how to deal with stress and negative emotions they may feel when dealing with patients or irate customers.

By your staff continually upgrading the interpersonal skills, it will ensure that patients are interacted with in a kind and courteous manner at all times. This will then ensure that even if a patient has a negative situation, it can be diffused enough that the patient may no longer feel the need to vent their frustrations online, and sully your practices good name.

Many practices will dedicate marketing staff to using many of the strategies listed in this book, as well as monitoring their social media account and online presence, or outsource it to competent companies. This will free up the medical staff’s time to focus on servicing patients, while still maintaining their online and offline marketing efforts to keep the practice growing and expanding.

As you can see, from everything that we’ve discussed, a marketing plan that incorporates both online and offline marketing strategies are crucial to the survival of any practice. Even if you have constant patient referrals, you still need to monitor your online presence to ensure your reputation as a Medical Professional is held intact.

If you feel that this is all a little bit overwhelming, then it may be appropriate to seek out professional services that specialize in these very same services and help your practice not only establish its presence online, but also harness that presence to drive new patients into your practice.

With a solid marketing strategy in place, in our next article, we will look at a few ways that you can harness the new patients flooding into your practice to create additional revenue streams.