Best Practices for Healthcare Advertising on Instagram Written by Jeff Tormey on July 15, 2021. Posted in Manage, Other. One of our top 10 healthcare marketing tips in 2020 was to embrace social media. This hasn’t changed in 2021. And one of the best ways to get into social is through healthcare Instagram advertising. Why Instagram? For many healthcare companies, bridging the gap between themselves and prospective patients is difficult. We are in an age where people are quite skeptical of medical providers or jaded based on poor experiences. Success on social media relies on your ability to get past that skepticism and connect with people. Instagram is all about the personal connection. Medical Instagram accounts help people see practices as families, and see healthcare as something warm and welcoming. Of course, your success depends upon doing it right. Tips for Instagram Medical Accounts With any social media effort, you need to engage in best practices. But what are those for Instagram healthcare pages? We suggest the following. Be Personable, Not Personal Your professional Instagram account should read professional, but warm and accessible. This is very different from the tone of a personal page. While you want patients to feel like they are getting to know you, never forget your professionalism. Use Your Profile Info Your Instagram business profile should have all the information a patient might need to work with you. This includes your hours, location, phone number, and services you offer. Be sure to set up the contact button as well. Follow Other Healthcare Accounts You want to become part of the Instagram healthcare community, and part of that is following other accounts. Target those that are in your sphere and don’t be afraid to engage with those accounts. It’s a great way to learn from others. Vary Your Content A lot of medical practices fall into the trap of creating Instagram medical accounts that are just one infographic after the other. You need to switch up your content if you have any hope of garnering engagement. Some types of posts to include are: • Quick videos explaining relevant topics • Before and after treatment photos (get permission) • Inspirational quotes related to healthcare • Commentary on notable medical news • Explanations of new research• Tips and tricks for wellness Figure Out Those Hashtags Finally, one of the only ways to get discovered on Instagram is through hashtags, so make sure you are using the right ones—and verify what they are actually about to avoid embarrassing situations. For more information about the best healthcare advertising practices, contact Sequence Health. Also if you want to know what makes advertising via Instagram so effective. Read on our detailed blog about “Instagram Marketing for Doctors”
Guide to Keyword Research for Your Healthcare Facility Written by Jeff Tormey on May 1, 2021. Posted in Other. Who is the top healthcare provider in the United States? While you wrack your brain trying to think of the busiest practice or doctor you know, someone else is likely heading to Google to find the answer. And you know what? That right there is the answer. We live in the age of Dr. Google. What do we mean by that? Essentially, before seeking treatment from a medical professional, most U.S. adults will first ask Google about their symptoms. • How can I tell the difference between allergies and coronavirus? • What does a spider bite look like? • What are the symptoms of appendicitis? Of course, Google itself doesn’t provide them with answers. Websites do. And which websites show up first in the search results comes down to medical SEO. Increasing Patient Interest With Online Marketing If you can rank in those top results, you can pull in more patients and increase your practice’s profile. Medical online marketing is essential to your success—word of mouth doesn’t cut it anymore. This isn’t a small amount of traffic, either. One in every 20 searches on Google is related to health and healthcare. While these come from all over the globe, many are local to you. On top of that, just being seen as an authority can help boost your reputation.But how can you do keyword research for medical industry topics? Here are a few tips that could work for you. Think About What You Would Write Start with the services you offer, then ask yourself what you would write if you were to head to Google to find a provider or learn more about a condition. Make a list—a long one—with all the phrases you can think of. Then, add your location to them to help them be more specific. Now, you have keywords to incorporate into your website. Look at Competitor’s Pages Back to Google. Search the following phrase: [your type of practice] + [your location] So, if you are a podiatrist in the Bay Area, search “podiatrists San Francisco.” Then, click on the top three results—not ads—and see what keywords they are using. Try to mimic these in your content. Turn to Professionals Keyword research for the medical industry isn’t easy, and you don’t have to do it alone. Digital marketing companies specializing in healthcare can locate the ideal SEO keywords for your practice. In fact, Sequence Health excels at this. If you need assistance in creating a robust digital marketing campaign, we are here to help. Schedule a consultation today.
Creating the PPC Campaign for Your Medical Practice Written by Jeff Tormey on April 20, 2021. Posted in Connect, Other. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns in healthcare internet marketing yield immediate results in the form of website traffic, interested clients, and patient appointments. Organic SEO strategies are important in building the ranking of your website. But healthcare SEO needs time, patience, and lots of adjustments to succeed. In the meantime, PPC can jumpstart the traffic to your website and place your content and medical practice in front of interested patients. In fact, paid search listings outperform organic search results by double the number of clicks. Here’s how to create a PPC campaign for your medical practice. Customer Research This investigative stage aims to find out the search queries or terms your patients are likely to use or have used to find your services. You may already have a few buyer personas in your marketing plan which can guide you in finding these terms. These initial seed keywords will be used to target the right audience and save you from wasting money on too wide a net. Keep all the relevant keywords. Culling comes later. Check Keyword Demand Here the go-to tool is Google AdWords Keyword Planner. It will help you narrow down your list to the keywords that have the most weight. On the Keyword Planner, click the option that says “Get search volume data and trends.” Enter all the Keywords you had come up with and Google will supply these metrics 1 Average monthly searches 2 Competition level 3 Suggested bid cost for the keyword Keyword planner is a completely free tool provided you have a Google account. There are many in-depth tutorials on how you can research your keywords on the planner. Organize Your Keywords The next step is to group all your keywords according to related subjects. Some examples of these targeted keyword groups are: 1 Brand terms that encompass the practice name and recognizable taglines 2 Competitor terms are specific to your competitor 3 Generic terms which are names of services and procedures 4 Related terms refer to any phrases your patients might use while searching for your services. Identify Negative Keywords One of the keys to a successful PPC campaign for healthcare practices is targeting. So far you have found the right phrases and search queries to target. The other side of the coin is negative keywords. Negative keywords flag certain terms or phrases and prevent your ad from showing up for these search phrases. The idea is to consider the user’s search intent and how it relates to your ad. What answer are they looking for? Without negative keywords, your ad might show up for a search query that has the same generic terms as you but is not what you offer. You end up paying for clicks that were not interested in your product. Using negative keywords will improve your click-through and conversion rates as well as saving you money. Good Ad Copy and Your Call to Action In a nutshell, the recipe for creating effective ad copy is: 1 Personalization 2 Presenting the unique selling proposition of your business 3 Outlining what you customer can expect to find once they click the ad Your call-to-action (CTA) gets your customer moving. For example, “Schedule a Free Consult Today! Your CTA should be interesting and deliver a clear message about what to do. PPC campaigns are excellent ways to reach out to your patients and convert their interest into appointments. The learning curve may seem a little convoluted and that’s where Sequence Health comes in. Contact us today to discover our patient engagement solutions and how we can help you create PPC campaigns for your practice.
3 Major Challenges Facing the Healthcare Industry in 2021 & Their Solutions Written by Jeff Tormey on April 13, 2021. Posted in Connect, Other. 2020 was a difficult year for all sectors and probably most of all the healthcare industry. Many healthcare providers saw their financial plans decimated. Virtual care rocketed and patient behaviors went through a drastic change. Some of these challenges will carry into 2021 and the solutions for healthcare will mostly focus on finding a new normal. Adjustments in Telehealth Delivery In 2020 the pandemic led to a rise in virtual healthcare. Providers had to meet patients where they were. There were mixed results due to the varying degree of telehealth experience among caregivers. This did not hinder the 50% boom in telehealth which grew from an alternative to a primary healthcare delivery method. However, telehealth is not a one-size-fits-all, and therein lies the challenge. Certain medical specialties like mental health and obstetrics benefit from virtual delivery while others don’t. Senior patients with Alzheimer’s or dementia require face-to-face sessions. Additionally, the lack of personal interaction in some telehealth models led to a subpar experience for the patient. Key Insights In 2021, healthcare providers will be looking beyond providing basic telehealth. They will need integrated solutions that create a care pathway for virtual patient visits to run smoothly across departments. Industry providers will need to determine which specialties most benefit from virtual visits and which ones don’t. Better customer experience and fewer dropped handoffs facilitated by care coordinators will be crucial targets. Payers will also have to iron out which telehealth services to reimburse and how virtual care fits within the larger healthcare ecosystem. Building Digital Solutions To Ease Physician Load Apart from the patient load, physicians’ workload is choked with detailed administrative tasks and the challenge of inadequate electronic health records systems (EHRs). Never-ending drop-down menus and regulatory reporting requirements impair physician’s efficiency and make it harder for them to provide a good experience for their patients. Key Insights In 2021, payers will need to invest more in enhanced portals to automate patient handoffs between systems as well as having access to different claims without manual intervention. Nearly, 91% of executives in healthcare and life science businesses plan to prioritize clinician experience in 2021. This will entail investing in healthcare digital marketing technologies to devise targeted outreach strategies for physician liaisons. They will in turn create demand and make the physician referral process better. These marketing solutions will be integrated with scheduling and patient outreach platforms to reduce cancellations and improve the clinician experience. A Resilient and Responsive Supply Chain Long-Term One of the biggest problems in healthcare arising in 2020 and rolling over into 2021 was the realization that supply chains had become rigid and were built on outdated frameworks. The medical supply chain needs to be more nimble, transparent and diversified. Key Insights Healthcare industry stakeholders will need to triangulate supply chain risks and increase transparency with their suppliers’ suppliers to avert shortfalls and supply interruptions. They will need to secure the supply chain with manifold measures such as 1 Onshoring manufacturing 2 Consolidating data across the network to improve supply chain visibility and capacity 3 Dual sourcing strategies 4 Diversifying geographies and material sourcing The above are only 3 of the biggest challenges facing healthcare in 2021. Providers will need a multi-pronged approach to these healthcare issues. A combination of robust strategies, intuitive technologies, and key partnerships with patient engagement services providers and healthcare advertising companies will help them improve patient uptake and delivery of services.
A Guide to Transitional Care Management Written by Jeff Tormey on April 8, 2021. Posted in Manage, Other. Chronic medical conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, dementia, COPD, and others require a transition period between the in-patient phase and the patient settling into care at home. The same is true for major surgical procedures. Transitional care management provides consistent after-discharge care to both groups of patients to avoid a relapse or readmission. What Is Transitional Care Management? Transitional Care Management (TCM) services facilitate the hand-off of patients from an inpatient facility to their community or family setting. Designed to last for 30 days, TCM allows the healthcare provider to guide the patient and family on the road to recovery while minimizing the chances of relapses occurring. TCM usually falls into 3 broad categories: Interactive communications Non-face-to-face service delivery Face-to-face visits Interactive communications are made within the first two days of discharge to ascertain the status and transitional needs of the patient. Healthcare call centers are key solutions in carrying out this stage of TCM. The results of the call can then be, face-to-face visits are carried out seven to 14 days after discharge. Non-face-to-face service delivery fills in the intervals between in-person visits. They can be carried out via phone call or medical patient portals. What Is the Purpose of TCM? The purpose of TCM is to aid the at-home caregiver and the patient in the following areas: Reviewing discharge information Management of medicines and assistance with prescriptions Education and support regarding the treatment regimen and recommended daily activities Assistance in scheduling appointments for follow-up checks or tests Assessment of the need for additional tests or treatments Liaising between patient and the relevant health care professionals Who Qualifies For Transitional Care? Qualifying for TCM is dependant on the facility that discharges you and the recommendations of the attending doctors. Examples of qualifying service facilities are: Skilled nursing facility Inpatient acute care hospital Hospital outpatient observation Partial hospitalization Inpatient psychiatric hospital The patient’s medical record must also state that the patient will need aftercare from a physician, clinical staff, or other healthcare providers. The extent of care providers’ involvement in a patient’s transitional care management is contingent on The risk of serious complications The complexity of medical records and diagnoses made The number of diagnoses Recovery management options Billing Requirements for Transitional Care Management Since transitional care management is temporary, the billing is usually submitted by the healthcare provider at the end of the 30 days. To bill for TCM, a care provider must check off the following criteria: Direct patient contact within two business days of discharge A face-to-face visit within seven or 14 days after discharge Moderate to highly complex medical decision making As regards insurance, the specifics of TCM coverage vary. The patient needs to find out beforehand monthly premiums, deductibles, and copay amounts related specifically to TCM. What Is a Transitional Care Hospital? Patients with complex conditions or who need either an extended recovery period or inpatient rehabilitation are often discharged into a transitional care hospital. They will typically stay in such a facility for upwards of 25 days. These long-term care hospitals offer more specialized care than what a patient can get in skilled nursing facilities or home care. Transitional care management is crucial for the seamless recovery of chronic conditions. It improves the quality of life for the patient and prevents costly readmissions. Invest in TCM solutions to help your chronic care management run efficiently.
Instagram Marketing for Doctors – A Guide to Patient Outreach Written by Jeff Tormey on March 30, 2021. Posted in Other. Instagram Marketing for Doctors – A Guide to Patient Engagement Instagram has put video content on the front burner. Whether it is IGTV, Reels, or Instastories, video is easy to consume and share. This is ideal for healthcare businesses looking to diversify their content and grow patient engagement. Healthcare advertising companies use video marketing to boost leads by 66% per year. Internet users spend, on average, 7 hours a week watching videos. With 1 Billion users worldwide, Instagram claims a significant chunk of this watch time that you can tap into to grow your business. Read on to learn how you can use Instagram to build brand awareness and patient engagement. Create a Business Account Your first and most crucial step is to create an Instagram business account. This is different from a personal account for the following reasons: You can add a phone number and email contact button At the 100 follower mark, you can get detailed analytics on who is engaging with your content 10,000 followers and above allows an Instagram business account to add direct swipe-up links Business accounts have these specific tools and more to help with engagement. Follow HIPAA Regulations Some of the most popular medical content online such as patient transformation posts (before & after) can present ethical issues. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) has clear directives on protecting the privacy and security of patients. Always request explicit permission to share patient experiences Blurr out our hide personal identifiers such as patient name, location, age, etc. Hashtag Strategy Hashtags are basically a searchable directory on Instagram that will enable your patients to find you. Healthcare hashtags on Instagram will grow your account since posts with hashtags receive 12.6% more engagement than those that don’t. Additionally, hashtags can also improve your brand’s medical SEO since they are indexed by search engines. Here’s what you should know about hashtags. You can use up to 30 hashtags in a feed post and up to 10 in your Instastories No special characters or spaces are allowed in your hashtag but numbers can be used You should use a variety of hashtags whether they fall under community, branded, or campaign categories If you want to know how to grow a medical practice on Instagram, create a flexible and relevant hashtag strategy. Here are some ideas. Identify the best medicine Instagram accounts or those in your specialty and note their hashtags Create several groups of hashtags that can be rotated post by post Engage in the comment section of other related posts that rank in the hashtags you choose for your business Consistency vs Frequency These two words are often used interchangeably in the content marketing world. They are different and consistency is superior. The frequency of posts does not positively or negatively affect your engagement. Clearly, the more sustainable option is to create a content plan and schedule and stick to it. Consistency builds trust and reliance on the part of your audience. Automation with tools like Later and Buffer can also help you nail the consistency problem Create a Style Guide “Don’t forget that you are using your Instagram account to promote and attract customers to your healthcare business. “Having a cohesive content style, tone, font, and aesthetic makes your posts highly recognizable and shareable. “Use branded images tastefully to get more eyeballs on your brand. A style guide also means you can easily outsource the social media part of your digital marketing strategy Get Help From Healthcare Advertising Companies Speaking of outsourcing, consistent posting on your business Instagram account can be a full-time job. That’s why healthcare advertising companies have honed these digital and social media marketing skills so you don’t have to. Contact Sequence Health today for a free evaluation and a digital marketing program that will elevate your patient engagement.
Healthcare Marketing Predictions: A Guide to Crushing 2021 Written by Jeff Tormey on March 29, 2021. Posted in Other. Healthcare Marketing Predictions: A Guide to Crushing 2021 2021 will be a rebound year for many businesses. Healthcare advertising is a key area that will help businesses crush their objectives. Whether it is more informative video content, innovative communication strategies, or better native advertising, marketing must prioritize the customer. Let’s take a look at some of the healthcare digital marketing trends that will dominate 2021. The Resurgence of Telehealth The global shift that came with the pandemic in 2020 has forced businesses to change how they work. None more so than healthcare providers. The telehealth trend will continue into 2021 with physicians carrying out telephone consultations for cases that do not require face-to-face meetings. For marketers, this trend means creating dedicated landing pages to funnel old and new patients to this new service delivery method. Most importantly get the word out! Email campaigns, text broadcasts, targeted ads, and content marketing will have to be geared towards letting patients know they can still safely get healthcare. Reputation Management Will Be Key Studies predict that 7 out of 10 people will lose trust in brands if they are perceived to be putting profit above people. Token gestures and poor customer service will be highly scrutinized in 2021. This is especially true for service-oriented businesses such as healthcare providers. There is a silver lining to this though. The same study reports that 78% of people still believe in the credibility of doctors to communicate about the current pandemic. Healthcare digital marketing strategies will need to focus on PR that highlights the brand’s support for community-based initiatives and causes. There will also be a huge emphasis on transparency and authority in all content. Your patients need you to hold the line as a credible and transparent source of information. Marketers should not neglect to review programs and community engagement on the various platforms since reputations are strengthened or broken online. Healthcare Marketing Will Rely on Innovative Services 2021 will continue the novel marketing experience of unchartered territories. Most healthcare businesses are discovering new ways to deliver essential services to their patients. They are all trying to Make patient’s experiences better Disseminate information in a clear, concise, and quick manner Keep the community as safe as possible New medical care apps, chat integrations, live broadcasts, and AR simulations are some of the tools being adopted by healthcare providers. To boost the uptake of technological innovations, healthcare marketing will have to focus on creating awareness amongst patients about the how and why of the innovations. Healthcare Advertising Will Evolve Many cities have experienced lockdowns and service disruption. All the same, the demand for high-value content and the need for organic search volume and advertising have not disappeared. They have simply changed. Digital marketing in the healthcare industry will need to shift the marketing spend into content that best supports patients now and builds a brand reputation for the future. Some of the implications of this trend will be a greater focus on local SEO since more people are using “Near Me” searches. After all, movement is limited and the need for nearby urgent care has increased. Instead of self-touting ads, patients want rich content that offers guidance, solutions, and alternatives for example back-to-school safety guides or at-home physiotherapy exercises. Before collecting those emails, consider the value-add of your marketing campaign. As you evaluate your business’s current marketing strategy, don’t forget to be bold and patient-focused. For comprehensive healthcare marketing solutions, don’t hesitate to call us.
Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy: Getting Started & Tips Written by Jeff Tormey on March 26, 2021. Posted in Other. Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy: Getting Started & Tips Viral videos of physicians dancing while giving health tips are a dime a dozen. However, healthcare content marketing is much more nuanced than that. From online review forums and social media to healthcare advertising companies, patients and healthcare providers now have a slew of tools to help them find each other. What’s the first thing you do when you’re unwell and don’t know the cause? You Google it! You and 77% of Americans use online reviews to find medical information and new physicians. Patients want more detailed information about who they entrust their lives to. They want to make a connection. This is where medical content marketing comes in. 4 Tips for Successful Healthcare Content Marketing Only if you do healthcare content marketing right. Here is a quick cheat sheet on getting started and best practices for healthcare content marketing. Who Is Your Target Audience? Only Your audience is your first stop. It’s important to understand what makes them tick. What questions can help you create your target audience persona? What demographics do they fall under? What are their passions, fears, or anxieties? What problem do they need to be solved? What hot topics are they interested in? Do they want technical or simplified content? Zero In on Quality and Expertise Healthcare content falls under the YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) category according to Google. The stakes are high for this type of content which can adversely impact your reader if poorly researched or communicated. These sites need to contain the highest levels of Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness E-A-T to be ranked well by search engines. Stick to what you know. If your medical practice specializes in dental health, you shouldn’t have content about kidney stones. Focusing on your expertise will cement you as an authority to both Google and your audience. They will keep coming back. Make Your Content Interactive and Highly Shareable The average person online has an attention span of 8 seconds. Unless they are looking for in-depth information on a topic, they will be in and out of your website by the time you’re settling into your introduction. The solution? Make your content easy to skim with images, infographics, lists, and tables Interact with your audience through polls and quizzes Diversify into shorter, highly shareable content such as pins, infographics, quotes Make it fun and easy to consume with podcasts and video Get Digital Marketing Help We get it. You’re good at delivering quality healthcare but digital marketing feels like an alien planet. PPC, SEO, and inbound funnels might as well be foreign languages. So why slog through it alone? As digital marketing experts, Sequence Health has perfected online healthcare marketing techniques. We boost your web presence, rank your practice competitively and handle reputation management. We ensure new patients can find you and that their feedback opens more doors for you. Contact us today for a free evaluation of your healthcare organization and find out how our solutions can take you to the next level.
Guide to Improve SEO & PPC For Doctors in 2021 Written by Jeff Tormey on March 19, 2021. Posted in Other. Guide to Improve SEO & PPC For Doctors in 2021 The first page of search engine result pages (SERPs) receives the lion’s share of clicks and conversions. To improve healthcare SEO and PPC for your practice you need to implement organic content marketing as well as paid digital marketing. Organic search results rely on a well-optimized site. However, Google also ranks your site according to user experience and how long patients stay on the site. To improve user experience consider adding supportive off-site tools such as medical call centers and patient engagement solutions. That said, let’s look at the best practices for improving your medical SEO and PPC in 2021. Best Practices For Medical SEO in 2021 Evaluate Your Current Medical SEO You can’t fix what you don’t know. Some of the areas to evaluate for your medical search engine optimization are: Website loading speed on mobile and desktop determines whether patients prematurely click away Google Analytics regarding the traffic to your site Missing content or metadata Inadequate or poor internal and external links Optimize Existing Content Improving the content already on your site can increase traffic to your site by over 100%. You can optimize old content in these straightforward ways: Refresh blog posts with new research and better writing Add better quality images and graphics Make the content relevant to your practice Fix 404 errors Change your hosting service to increase website loading speed Update local SEO with accurate business information (Name, address, telephone number) Develop a Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy Content is king is an overworked cliche but it consistently proves true. Patients are not looking for a digital salesperson on your website. Your site content and social media pages need to add value to their lives and create a trustworthy connection with their healthcare provider. Improving your medical SEO ranking requires you to consistently add new expert, authoritative, trustworthy content with well-researched keywords. You can outsource the content creation if you cannot keep up the consistency in-house. A great tip is to integrate your website and social media pages so that the content is syndicated across platforms saving you time and resources. Best Practices For Medical PPC in 2021 Pay-per-click (PPC) is one of the best ways for a website to rank on the first page of search results. PPC and SEO work together to increase the relevance, authority, and presence of your site in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Google collects site interaction and traffic data collected from your PPC ads to helps its algorithm with organic ranking on SERP. What can you do to improve the performance of your PPC ad campaign? A Foundation Of Great Content Just as in SEO, PPC for doctors requires you to have an engaging and cohesive story across your ad copy and landing pages. The ad should have a clear and captivating value proposition. Your potential patient should see the ad and immediately understand the benefit of choosing your practice. Lastly, great content should build trust. Think patient testimonials and peer endorsements on the landing pages. Concise but informative doctors’ biographies and credentials add to your practice’s trustworthiness Well Targeted Ads PPC works by bidding on the keywords of your choice. When patients search the keywords you bid on, your ad appears in the search results. Consequently, thorough keyword research and search query mining will form the basis of a successful medical PPC campaign. Long-tail keywords and specific search queries comprising four to six words are cheaper and perform better than broad, short keywords. Reduce wasted marketing spend by also compiling a list of negative keywords. These will prevent your ad from appearing to fine-tuning people outside your target group. Evaluate and Tweak Daily Successful ads are more art than size. There is no one-size-fits-all. You need to evaluate the analytics of your ads daily and adjust where needed. This fine tuning of your bidding strategy is done to achieve any or a combination of the following aspects. Lowest possible cost per click (CPC) for maximum clicks Enhanced CPC to enable Google to automatically increase or decrease your keyword bid Automatically adjust the cost per acquisition (CPA) for maximum conversion on landing pages Boosting SEO and PPC performance can be a complex undertaking especially for the technical aspects of website backend and keyword bidding. Schedule a consultation today to take your pick of the medical marketing services we offer.
Bariatric Digital Marketing Services: To Help You Compete and Grow Written by Jeff Tormey on March 14, 2021. Posted in Other. Bariatric Digital Marketing Services: To Help You Compete and Grow Bariatric marketing is the competitive edge you need to put your practice in front of an online audience of 1.3 million searching the web annually about bariatric procedures. The bariatric surgery industry in North America is expected to hit $1.84 billion in value by the year 2024. To get a piece of that pie for your practice, traditional referrals methods and the overworked before and after testimonials are insufficient. To get new patients and retain old ones, you need a balance of passive and active marketing strategies for bariatric surgery practice. Why should your practice hire a bariatric Digital Marketing agency? Balance Your Caseload With Elective Cases Elective, cash-paying bariatric surgery cases yield more revenue than their HMO and Medicaid counterparts. Achieving the balance of more high-revenue patients is the sweet spot for bariatric surgeons. To this end, bariatric marketing experts can help to vet and onboard insurance verification services companies. The purpose of these companies is to eliminate the headache of figuring out which patient’s insurance will fully reimburse and which one will not. You will be able to say goodbye to reduced reimbursements and welcome higher revenue. Reputation Management Bariatric surgery has been repeatedly flogged over the years by the press as an unnecessary or dangerous procedure. Bariatric marketing strategies must factor in for re-educating patients and referring physicians as well as debunking misguided information about bariatrics. Reputation management refers to building a high volume of patient reviews online that are positive. This healthcare marketing strategy also addresses any negative reviews and turns them around to grow the online ranking of the practice. Search Engine Optimization and Paid Search SEO and paid search and two sides of the same coin. Search engines crawl your website and rank its content and user experience. Search engines also monitor the response of your audience to paid ads. Metrics such as click-through rate, bounce rate, and conversions all supplied by paid ads help your site to rank favorably. Google makes thousands of changes to its search algorithm every year. This makes successful SEO and paid marketing a specialized field. It is a game-changer to partner with digital bariatrics marketing experts who have already built tried and tested strategies for medical online marketing. Social Media Marketing 43% of adults in the US find it appropriate to follow and contact their doctor on social media. Even more surprising is that 80% of social media users use these platforms to search for health information. Social media is a powerful tool for brand awareness and creating direct engagement with potential patients. A robust and precise social media campaign is much more effective than Google ads because it allows you to specifically target prospects by interest, location, and past behavior. Medical online marketing is what word-of-mouth referrals have morphed into. While you focus on your core business, hire bariatric marketing experts to build an effective marketing strategy for you.