Online Medical Marketing Strategies For Attracting Quality Patients Written by Jeff Tormey on May 5, 2020. Posted in Connect, Convert. Online medical marketing sounds like it can be confusing. There’s SEO, there’s ads, there’s social media, and all of these things need to be combined to form a cohesive marketing strategy. That’s a lot of different tactics to consider! But healthcare marketing is not about tactics, it’s about strategy. While tactics play a role, they’re not the end of the conversation. Do the first things first. Figure out who you want to reach The first thing all businesses need to do before they start marketing is figure out who they need to be marketing to. Marketing doesn’t work if it’s to the wrong people. Can’t decide what kind of people who want to reach? Start with your services. What services do you currently offer, and what kind of people come in for those services? What are their problems? What are their demographics? Define these things, and you’ll have a good idea of who you should be reaching with your marketing. Then take a look at your local market’s needs. Do research on your local market’s demographics, and take a look at their behavior. For example, a bariatric surgeon may be looking for women aged 30-45 who are struggling with their weight and have not found success with diet and exercise. Figure these things out for your practice! Decide what medical topics you want to speak about Now that you know who you want to speak to, you need to figure out what you need to say. Medical topics that relate to your practice are the best topics to discuss, as they give prospective patients information that could lead them to book an appointment. It’s not enough to have something to say: you have to have a reason to say it. Why should prospective clients listen to you? Ultimately, you want to talk about issues near and dear to your target audience, while also providing interesting and highly informative content for them to read. What kind of topics should you discuss? Whatever is highly relevant to your audience! Going back to our bariatric surgeon example, you may want to discuss things like the post-op diet that all patients have to go through, or how they should be preparing for surgery. Figure out what your market wants! Read More: Ways to Promote Your Medical Practice Test different digital online medical marketing tactics There are many different medical marketing tactics. You will want to invest in many, or all, of them and see which ones are moving the needle the most. Search engine marketing, social media marketing, paid search, paid social, PR… all of these things should be tested. Invest small amounts of money and time into them, and see the results. You’ll notice that not all of them bear fruit, but given enough time and tests, some of them should. Then, you’ll know what you’ll need to invest in further. Last Words: Make Sure To Track The Results Of Your Marketing! Many businesses, clinics included, fail to measure the true impact of their marketing. When you measure this, you’re not going to get a 100% accurate picture, but you will get a good idea of what’s working and what’s not. However, you can’t get this idea if you don’t collect the data and analyze it! You should be collecting information about where your website traffic is coming from, what people are doing on your website, and how many people are requesting an appointment (either by phone or through your secure web form).
Keys To A HIPAA Compliant Website Written by Jeff Tormey on April 28, 2020. Posted in Connect. You want to have a strong web presence so prospective patients can find you online. You may even want to have people send you information online so you can give them recommendations. Both of these things are great! But there’s one thing standing in the way: HIPAA compliance. If your website is not compliant, you risk a hefty fine… or worse, a lawsuit. So what do you do to make your site HIPAA compliant? Keep PHI In Mind Protected health information (PHI), and its transmission or storage, is the key to figuring out if what you’re doing is HIPAA compliant or not. If you’re transmitting or storing PHI, which you almost certainly are if you’re using web forms to collect prospective patient information, you need to make sure everything is HIPAA compliant. What counts as PHI? Anything that can be used to identify a person. Security Is Paramount If you’re dealing with PHI, your healthcare website needs to be using SSL (HTTPS) encryption. This is non-negotiable. You also need to be using encrypted web forms. If the information is being submitted through a web form, then there needs to be no way that an intruder can get access to that information. Encryption helps there. Email notifications for your web form can’t transmit PHI to another user. That means, those notifications cannot have any PHI in them whatsoever. All data needs to be time-stamped on the date and time of collection, and it needs to be accessible on request. PHI collected by your website cannot be accessible to just anyone. You need designated staff members with designated secure logins, otherwise it’s not compliant. The point is to make sure no unauthorized user can gain access to PHI transmitted, collected, or stored on your servers. Got any questions at all about HIPAA security requirements? Give us a call at 888-986-3638. It’s better safe than sorry. Getting Help With Your HIPAA Compliant Website? Get a Business Associate Agreement (BAA)! There are plenty of service providers that are well equipped to handle PHI. If you’re going to work with one, make sure to get a BAA from them. This certifies that the vendor has checked your technology solutions HIPAA compliance regulation. This includes HIPAA compliant web forms, web hosting services, servers for storing patient information, and much more. Ask us about HIPAA compliance if you have any other questions.
The Five Keys to Effective Hospital Marketing Strategies in 2020 Written by Jeff Tormey on April 14, 2020. Posted in Connect. Have you been brainstorming hospital marketing strategies, but couldn’t come up with any novel ideas to support your current initiatives? You’re not alone. Most hospitals in the US stick to the tried-and-true marketing tactics that they always have. They’ve recently added digital to the mix: much later than most businesses. Why? Because it takes time and effort which is often spent taking care of the hospital’s immediate needs. There are, however, ways that you can come up with good hospital marketing strategies that work for you. Here are the keys to doing so. Satisfy the needs of your local market. Every market has different needs, and your market is no different. You already have much of the data needed to satisfy your local market’s needs. Data such as the median age of the population, ethnic backgrounds, patterns in patient behavior, all of these will help you understand what the unmet needs are. For example, if your area has a high proportion of Medicare enrollees, you may want to invest in services that a geriatric population will benefit from (that a younger population might not). Or, as another example, you may find that your local area’s Chinese population is growing. You might want to invest in more Chinese-language services and marketing materials in order to communicate with them. Only you can truly understand what your local market needs out of a hospital and their messaging. Create high quality interesting content. Good content wins on the Internet. There’s so much content out there, especially medical content, and in order to stand out, the content that you decide to promote and produce needs to be better than what’s currently out there. This means satisfying a need that isn’t currently met, giving information that isn’t expressed, or simply giving them a friendlier, more familiar person to listen to. Your content, though, is NOT the time to toot your hospital’s horn. However, it is perfect for conveying information in a way that’s relevant to the people in your market, giving you an edge on the competition. Reach out to your patients. You have patient data (not derived from medical records) that you can use to market to them. Now, that doesn’t mean being annoying and spammy: there are rules against that. What you need to do is make sure your patients know when they need to come in for follow ups, annual checkups, and give them whatever information they need in order to get the most out of the care you’ve given. You can also use this opportunity to get feedback. Ask your patients how their experience was, and get them to answer questions that could help improve your hospital’s operations. Leverage the true power of social media. Why would a person follow a hospital on social media? There are many reasons. One reason is to stay up to date with information regarding the hospital’s openings, closings, and events. Another reason is to get important health information relevant to your local market. A big reason, though, is to get information that is relevant specifically to them from people they trust. They’d rather hear information from a physician they can meet and speak to, especially if it’s going to be their physician. Local authorities build trust first by being local, and then by being an authority. Remember, though, when using social media, you will need to remain HIPAA compliant and make sure that no PHI is being transmitted in any way on a social media platform! Measure everything. It’s not good enough to be everywhere. You need to put effort in making sure that every initiative your hospital takes part in is measured. How should you measure the effects of content strategy and social media marketing? Blog viewership, social media following, and related upticks in hospital performance metrics. By measuring your initiatives, you can figure out what’s working and needs more investment, and what isn’t working and should be pruned back.
Why Patient Engagement Is Important In Healthcare Written by Jeff Tormey on April 7, 2020. Posted in Connect. Healthcare professionals tend to regard patient engagement as a high priority. It’s considered an essential indicator of quality care and correlates well with positive business outcomes. However, patient engagement is not a guarantee. Ultimately, it’s up to the patient to decide which healthcare options he or she would like to pursue. As a healthcare professional, you can only hope to provide the patient with the information necessary to make a decision. So what can be done about patient engagement, and why is it so important yet so difficult to achieve? What Is Patient Engagement? Patient engagement represents how patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers interact to make good healthcare decisions on behalf of the patient. Ultimately, the onus is on the patient to make the decision based on the information given. Patients who take an active role in their healthcare and utilize the services provided by caregivers and healthcare professionals to the utmost can be said to be highly engaged patients. Patient engagement has become a strategy to help achieve better health outcomes for patients while lowering the cost of administering healthcare services. Why Is Patient Engagement Important? Patients have options available to them. It’s not hard for a patient to go to another practice. They can search for doctors and practices online quickly, and they have access to customer reviews online. Thanks to the Internet and global interconnectedness, patients are no longer limited to their immediate area, either. Without actively getting patients engaged in their healthcare, they’re much more likely to have a negative experience and switch practices. Engagement tools can help cut costs, reduce waste, and lower the burden on staff. Technology has done wonders for improving patient engagement. Even ubiquitous tools like social media and search engines allow patients to have a much more active role in their care. What’s even more interesting is the growing availability of tools such as wearable tech that checks health measures and patient portals for patients to access their medical records safely online. By making sure that patients know about these tools, as well as providing active support for the latest patient engagement technology, your practice can help make your clientele a much more engaged one. Patient engagement leads to better health outcomes. How does patient engagement improve patient health? Engaged patients are, for example, more likely to attend regular health appointments and participate in recommended screenings. They’re more likely to understand why they’re important, too. They’re also more likely to actively look for information about health topics relevant to them. Engaged patients are interested in their health, and healthcare professionals can help instill a greater interest in a patient’s health. Engaged patients are more likely to be satisfied ones, and thus more likely to return. Thanks to improved health outcomes, as well as a sense of understanding between the patient and healthcare staff, engaged patients are more likely to report positive experiences and overall satisfaction with their care. As a result, they’re more likely to come back or recommend your practice to another. This has the effect of not only establishing a quality clientele, but also allowing that clientele to grow organically. In Summary Patient engagement is a key priority for healthcare professionals. Patients who are actively engaged tend to experience better health outcomes and have more positive interactions with your practice. With the advancement of healthcare engagement solutions, technology is increasingly helping patients take a more active role in their healthcare journey.
How To Get Patients To Sign Up For Your Medical Patient Portal Written by Jeff Tormey on March 24, 2020. Posted in Connect. If you’re looking for a way to improve patient engagement while making communication with patients easier, look no further than patient portals. More and more practices have started utilizing patient portals in their patient engagement strategies, and have found that they reduce costs, make it easier for patients to get necessary information, and improve recordkeeping. The vast majority of hospitals use patient portals, and smaller practices are starting to come on board. But the biggest problem these practices face is getting a patient to sign up for the portal in the first place. So how do you fix this problem? How Do Patient Portals Work In their most basic form, patient portals are web-based access points for patients to view medical data such as lab results and electronic medical records (EMR). But patient portals can do so much more. Practices can use patient portals that allow for communication between patients and doctors, appointment scheduling, and even bill payment. Patient portals come in two main forms: standalone systems and integrated services. Standalone systems exist only as a web tool, not integrated with a comprehensive practice management software suite. Patient portals are such great tools for reducing costs and managing patient engagement that the majority of hospitals in the US use one. But how do you actually get people to sign up? Tips For Getting Patients To Sign Up For A Patient Portal Enroll at the first appointment If you get a new patient, it’s important that you get them to sign up for your patient portal. Ideally, getting them to sign up before their appointment even starts can help improve engagement. Enroll for scheduling online appointments Online appointments are a huge value add for many patients, as it makes scheduling appointments much easier. For this reason, you should have them enroll to get access to online appointment scheduling. Provide registration to the portal when patients come in Many patients don’t register for the portal because it slips their mind. Having them register for the portal upon walking in allows this process to be done seamlessly within the regular intake flow. Link your portal sign up on all correspondence If you send an email, make sure to include a footer or signature that prompts them to sign up for the patient portal. This makes it easily available. Also, if patients call your phone, have your staff remind them that it’s an option. Optimize for desktop and mobile Most Internet traffic nowadays comes from mobile phones. Making sure that your patient portal can be easily accessed on one’s phone is an important part of making it easy to use. Get all staff involved with patient signups Your staff, especially the ones at the front desk, have mandatory interactions with patients. Having them remind patients of the portal and giving them opportunities to sign up is an excellent way to get signups. Make sure patients know the benefits Many patients don’t sign up because they don’t know what’s in it for them. Letting them know that it could save them money and time by giving them instant access to medical records, lab results, and communication with a healthcare professional may incentivize them to sign up. Enroll patients in bulk Import your list of unenrolled patient emails into the portal, and then have it send these patients an email to get them to sign up. Follow up with emails to those who have yet to pick a username and password. In Summary Patient portals are a hugely useful service that all practices, big or small, should provide. Get the team involved with patient enrollment. Consider the reasons why patients sign up to patient portals, and make the benefits known.
10 Topmost Healthcare Marketing Tips In 2020 Written by Jeff Tormey on March 4, 2020. Posted in Connect. Marketing for healthcare continuously changes. It’s challenging to identify healthcare marketing trends and determine which strategies to use to reach prospective patients. Healthcare establishments will get the best results by planning and fine-tuning their marketing strategy with the help of a few trending marketing tips. What is Healthcare Marketing? A process of strategically reaching out to healthcare audiences via messages and experiences to attract patients, develop strong relationships, and keep users engaged with your business. Planning Your Healthcare Marketing Strategies Every healthcare establishment should have a plan in place to keep up with trends in the industry to remain competitive. Crafting the right messaging in tune with those trends will allow your business to engage with your target audience at the right time. Fine-tune your healthcare marketing strategy Here are ten tips for fine-tuning your healthcare marketing strategy in 2020. Consistent branding The brand messaging of your healthcare business should remain intact when implementing a marketing campaign across a variety of channels. Evaluate the online patient experience Patients want to find the information they are looking for on your website quickly, view it clearly, and find it useful. You want patients to be able to interact with your medical site to be involved in their healthcare. Build a responsive website A responsive website will display beautifully on any device regardless of the screen size. 40% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is difficult to navigate, graphics are unattractive, or the site doesn’t load properly. Create great content The content draws visitors and search engines to your site. Regularly producing the best healthcare marketing content for your website that is valuable, consistent, and patient-focused will establish your healthcare business as a trusted authority in your field. Test site speeds 40% of users will abandon a website that takes more than 3 to 5 seconds to load. Periodically test the site speed to be sure you are capturing all users. Build a mobile responsive website 48% of people view websites and posts on their mobile phone or tablet. You want to be sure your site can be seen on any size screen to engage all viewers on your website. Optimize for the search engines 80% of consumers do their product and service research online. However, less than 10% of search engine users move on to the second page of search results. If your healthcare website doesn’t rank on the first page of results, consumers will not find you. Utilize PPC and display ads for Healthcare marketing Pay-per-click advertising and display ads can help a healthcare clinic or practice increase brand awareness and move your website up in rank on search engines in a relatively short time. Use video marketing Most healthcare marketers are using healthcare videos to connect with existing and potential clients, engage with them, and convert them into regular clients. Videos are being used to introduce the healthcare business and staff, inform patients about services, processes, and health conditions. Implement social media strategy Marketing on social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter is an opportunity for your healthcare establishment to reach a broad audience with your products, services, and message and stay connected to existing clients Using these tips to plan and fine-tune your healthcare business’s marketing strategy should reward you with an increase in prospective patients, website traffic, and loyalty among existing healthcare clients.
5 Benefits A Crm In The Healthcare Industry Can Provide Written by Jeff Tormey on February 17, 2020. Posted in Connect. What is a healthcare CRM? A healthcare customer relationship management (CRM) system is an invaluable tool to maintain up-to-date information about patients, offer quality support, gather valuable insights, and provide efficient customer management processes. The Benefits of Having a CRM in the Healthcare Industry 1. Reports, Metrics, and Dashboards A CRM stores data on patients in a communications module so that it is readily available to employees throughout the healthcare system to schedule and track patient appointments and interactions. Many doctor’s practices, clinics, and hospitals have set up an online medical portal to make new patient check-in and record updates for existing patients less time consuming for staff. The patient management module of the CRM enables staff to add or update patient records, , and access medical histories of patients to provide better care. The reporting module of the CRM can be designed to segment the patient population to analyze and then understand them better. Additionally it can calculate specific metrics such as patient retention rate, length of stay etc. Reports can be generated by metric or customized information to track and measure progress over time. 2. Mailing and Marketing Campaigns Knowing who patients are, what they need, and what they are looking for allows healthcare establishments to improve their services and quality of care, and build strong relationships with their patients. A healthcare CRM can track patient satisfaction and the patient’s likelihood of referring others to the healthcare establishment. Such data provides valuable feedback to healthcare executives to make data-driven decisions. The CRM allows you to filter your contacts to get a targeted list of patients or prospective patients who would most likely be interested in upcoming special offers or new services or products. 3. Integration with Existing Software Your new healthcare CRM must provide EMR integration and work seamlessly with your practice’s current applications. 4. Availability on Multiple platforms CRM software is one of the most popular types of software for business and healthcare practices. Approximately 50 % of users access CRM software from a smartphone, a cloud-based platform, or a tablet. 5. Customer Management Processes There are a considerable number of daily tasks that must be completed for internal processes to function correctly. Filing out forms, reporting, compliance with regulations, appointments, patient notes by doctors and nurses, medications prescribed and on hand, etc. All of these tasks, which involve a specific sequence of actions, can be automated with a CRM. The task management module of the CRM allows staff to add a task, assign it to an individual staff member, and track the progress, deadline, priority, and completion of the job. A Healthcare CRM is a versatile system that acts as a medical records portal, patient tracking system, statistical analysis system, marketing platform, and routine task automation center. Tailored to your specific healthcare needs, a CRM can free up you and your staff to focus on the patients treatments, and more strategic projects, which results in enhanced customer experience, reducing waiting times, and satisfaction.
How To Create A Medical Website That Enhances The Patient Experience Written by Jeff Tormey on February 3, 2020. Posted in Connect. Well-designed Medical websites can make a big difference in elevating your medical business brand, generating more revenue, and improving the patient or prospective patient experience. Your medical website design can benefit from the following design tips. 1. Design Should Target Your Intended Audience Health and wellness websites should target consumers seeking information and services about the specific services provided by the healthcare or wellness provider. A general practice medical doctor offers different services to different types of patients than a cardiovascular doctor. The design of the website should cater to the target audience you seek to attract. 2. Keep it Simple, clear and well-structured Design your website so visitors can see what your business is all about and what services you offer when they enter your website. Too many pages, menus, and too much content or graphics can cause the visitor to get lost and confused on your website. Keep medical website designs simple, well organized, professional, and eye-catching. 3. Highlight Key Information The information that you most want your patients and prospective patients to know about your medical practice or clinic should be the first thing that catches the eye of the viewer. The entire website should be designed to highlight that essential information. 4. Create a Mobile Responsive Design A mobile responsive website can determine if someone is viewing the site from a smartphone, and will show the mobile version of the website. If a user finds your website on their smartphone, they can push a button to automatically dial the medical practice, making it very easy for the user to contact you. 5. Incorporate Appealing Visual Content Visual content captures the visitor’s attention first. Visual content is not limited to graphics. Website designs can utilize photos, slideshows, and videos to enhance your medical brand or provide information. Be sure that the visual content you incorporate in your design does not impair page load time. Stay away from designs that rely on Flash, as many devices do not support that technology. 6. Make it Search Engine Friendly Search engines recognize coding elements within a website that identify what the purpose of your website is. Your design should incorporate HTML coding tags and headers to identify your medical business and help your website rank in the top pages of search engine results. 7. Consider User Experience When a consumer visits your website, they want to quickly determine what your business does, find answers to specific questions, and become more knowledgeable about their healthcare. Health websites need to provide engaging, high-quality, relevant content in a variety of modes that will allow users to engage with the business and be more involved in their healthcare. 8. Follow HIPAA Compliance Whenever patient’s communicate with a medical business via their website, HIPPA regulations for privacy and security must be followed. Designers are held to a higher standard for medical websites. Medical websites that are well structured, mobile responsive, HIPAA compliant, and patient-focused will meet the needs of patients as well as the medical office or practice. The site will become a go-to tool for staff and patients alike.
Why Healthcare Videos Can Help Businesses Grow Written by Jeff Tormey on January 17, 2020. Posted in Connect. Video is a highly important aspect of online business and has been for the better part of a decade. In 2018, viewers were spending almost 7 hours per week watching online video, and that number goes up as the viewers get younger. To capture the attention of all generations, and to be able to convey your message in a more effective way, your healthcare business needs to start using video as soon as possible. Excuses For Not Using Healthcare Videos It’s too expensive. Although online video can be expensive, it does not need to be. More and more, people are consuming content made with no editing filmed on smartphones. This can be done by any business! It’s hard to track. This is absolutely false, as Youtube, Google Analytics, Facebook, and Instagram all allow you to track metrics. It’s up to you to correlate them to business objectives. Why Should Healthcare Businesses Use Video? Videos make excellent testimonials, which help build trust in your brand and authority in your niche. People trust what they can see, and they are more drawn to people who are talking to them directly on video. Best of all, if you can use these videos to show results, it makes for a powerful marketing tool with strong social proof. Healthcare videos can be used to educate and inform patients about their health conditions. Patients want to learn about their conditions in order to understand what they’re dealing with and ease the anxieties they may have about living with or treating their conditions. This also shows that you know what you’re talking about, building trust among your viewers. Social media is video-friendly. Facebook and Instagram prioritize videos in their algorithms, allowing you to reach greater numbers of people with a video post. Tips for Effective Healthcare Videos Focus on what your patients care about. When posting a video about a certain condition, you’ll want to use the video to ease their anxieties while also giving them the most important information they need. Optimize for mobile devices. The majority of video views are done on mobile devices, and vertical video is becoming more and more common. Keep in mind the platform when you’re uploading videos. Snapchat and Instagram Stories are meant specifically for vertical video, whereas Youtube and your website are more for traditional horizontal videos.
Healthcare Search Marketing Solutions & Trends for 2020 Written by Jeff Tormey on January 10, 2020. Posted in Connect. Healthcare marketing has changed a lot over the past decade. Now we’re entering a new decade, and it’s an exciting time for healthcare businesses doing Internet marketing! By taking advantage of the following healthcare marketing trends for 2020, your business can grow with the times without being left in the dust. Check them out! Changes in SEO for Healthcare Marketing Search engine optimization, or SEO, changes more rapidly every year. As Google’s big brain aims to assist users by giving them the most relevant results, typical SEO techniques have been largely overtaken by a focus on the user experience. A few things to note for 2020: Content is King People have been saying “content is king” for years now. However, it’s never been more true than it is now. When considering the user search experience, Google wants users to find exactly what they’re looking for when they’re searching on their platform. They promote content that is high quality and decisive, giving the user exactly what they want. When creating content for healthcare marketing, keep keywords in mind. These keywords will expose what people actually want to know when they search for that term. As always, aim for the long tail, and give people the content they want. Authoritative, correct, and informational. But never forget your business’s main objective! Healthcare search marketing content should revolve around answering the questions patients and clients actually want to know. They want to learn about their relevant health conditions, or how your products and services will help them. Answer these questions informatively and with authority. Infographics: Rank for Image Search Infographics have spread in the late 2010s, and their use isn’t going away. People want content that is condensed, easy to understand, and quick to digest. Infographics fit this bill exactly. Best of all, infographics often end up prioritized in Image Search because of how many people click on them. Use them to make excellent content even easier to digest. For example, if you want to talk about the benefits of a medical device or service, you can include many different statistics and charts to show how it helps people treat their conditions or solve their problems. Video: Not Just Youtube People watch more video content every year. Video content has become the focus on many social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn. Videos have become prioritized on those social networks, and people share more and more video every day! By producing high quality video content, you can more effectively spread your message in a condensed form that keeps the user’s attention. But video quality is not just about how good the camera or studio is: in fact, vertical video shot with smartphones have become commonplace even for businesses and personality brands! For your healthcare business, people respond to personal authorities on video. Having someone who acts as an ‘influencer’ for your business, while having the authority to speak on advanced healthcare topics, could be your saving grace for a good video campaign. Most of all, remember how your content strategy fits into your business’s objective. Use your content, including videos and infographics, to help bring people into your funnel and segment your potential prospects.