Omni Channel Marketing - What is it and Why Your Practice Needs it Today!
John Vakidis - Partnerships and Enterprise Sales in Healthcare
Growing sales through strategic partnerships.
When it comes to marketing your healthcare practice online successfully, it's going to take more than 1 or 2 marketing approaches to be successful in today's ever-changing, complex world. Consumers are more distracted than ever before and they spend more time online vs. any other medium. Early this year, Digital Information World reported that consumers are spending more than 6 hours per day online. Read more here.
If you haven't done this already, it's even more important now than ever before that you shift your marketing budget from traditional advertising to digital. Today we are going to discuss Omni Channel Marketing and I'll be discussing this primarily from a digital marketing perspective., but if you have a budget to do digital and traditional marketing, then apply these principles to both.
Omni Channel Marketing - Definition
According to Socrates, "The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms", so for today's discussion, let's define the difference between Multi-Channel Marketing and Omni-Channel Marketing.
“Multi-channel is an operational view – how you allow the customer to complete transactions in each channel. Omni-channel, however, is viewing the experience through the eyes of your customer, orchestrating the customer experience across all channels so that it is seamless, integrated, and consistent. Omni-channel anticipates that customers may start in one channel and move to another as they progress to a resolution. Making these complex ‘hand-offs’ between channels must be fluid for the customer. Simply put, omni-channel is multi-channel done right!” - John Bowden, Senior VP of Customer Care at Time Warner Cable
Omni Channel Marketing - Digital Strategy
When it comes to Omni Channel Marketing, your website will be one of the most important aspects of your marketing efforts. It is the central piece to all the other marketing channels when driving new leads into your healthcare practice.
Your website will showcase your brand, educate potential patients on the procedures that you offer, the technology that you have available and highlight your expertise. If you run a practice that offers cosmetic treatments, whether you are a plastic surgeon, dermatologist, med spa owner or a cosmetic dentist, one of the best ways to showcase your talent is to leverage your before-and-after galleries. If you are in cosmetics or non-cosmetics healthcare, leveraging your reviews inside the website is another great conversion element that helps build trust with the consumer.
In addition, you want to have lots of great content and this where leveraging an Omni-Channel Approach begins. Your messaging needs to be consistent and cohesive across the Website, SEO, Content Marketing (Blog Articles), Email Marketing, Videos on YouTube, Podcasts, Social Media Channels like Instagram and Facebook, Paid Advertising (Google Ads), Display Ads for Retargeting, and if you are also doing traditional advertising like Print, TV and Radio, this applies here too.
Omni Channel Marketing - Getting Started
You want to make sure that the company that you hire 1.) Understands your industry, 2.) Has the Technology to tie your channels together, 3.) Offers as many channels as possible.
Keeping all of your online marketing efforts under one roof (sometimes two ) helps ensure consistent messaging. If you have 7 marketing partners running 7 different channels, it's highly unlikely that they will be coordinating a cohesive messaging together.
At DoctorLogic, we understand healthcare marketing. Our specialty is in Aesthetics, Dentistry and Ophthalmology. We have a platform that leverages technology as no other agency can.
DoctorLogic offers the following services to help aid in your Omni Channel Marketing approach.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Online Review Solicitation, Monitoring and Management
Online Local Listing and Directory Management
This allows us to strategize with our customers and build marketing campaigns that leverage multiple channels while keeping their marketing efforts under one roof.
It's not uncommon for us to replace 4-5 vendors. Not only is this easier on our clients for peace of mind, communication, reporting, and strategy session meetings, but it's typically easier on their wallets, too!
For more information about marketing your practice more effectively with an Omni Channel Marketing approach in 2020 and beyond, let's talk!
Connect with me here on LinkedIn if we are not connected yet and please mention this article in your connection request. You can also contact me via email or by phone (below).
To your success!
John Vakidis
Do you have questions about marketing your practice more effectively online? If so, shoot me an email to [email protected] or call me at 469-458-7126.