Social Speak Network

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Rod Thomas is a Director of Regional Sales for Scorpion Healthcare, an award-winning digital marketing partner that has helped more than 250 hospitals and healthcare providers improve their digital presence and achieve their business goals.

Rod has consulted on digital strategy for healthcare organizations of varying sizes and services – including individual provider practices, private orthopedic groups, addiction treatment centers, small rural hospitals and major health systems. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and lives in the Chicago area with his wife and two amazing children.

In this interview with Rod, we focused on tracking marketing efforts, sticking to a digital strategy, and making sure your business goals, and patient empathy, stay at the forefront of digital marketing efforts for the healthcare industry. We covered:

- How Inbound Marketing, Web design, and traditional marketing work for healthcare brands.

- Current trends or wellness practices with digital marketing in 2019.

- Why you shouldn't just track Cost Per Click and Impressions with your digital marketing campaigns.

- The top 3 things that a healthcare center should be doing online to see a return from their SEM efforts.

- The top strategy that should be followed, but often marketing teams get wrong.

Learn more about how to use Digital Marketing for your Healthcare center: 

Biggest Takeaway from Podcast

One of the biggest takeaways I have from today's podcast is the role that empathy has in your digital marketing. It is so important to be empathetic and everything that you do online, you need to connect with a customer, with a client, with a patient who is going through a difficult health choice.

Now, maybe the health choice seeing simple for you, potentially, you're a dentist, and somebody needs to come in for a routine cleaning. This could be somebody who is absolutely terrified and has had negative experiences with every dentist that they've worked with up until stepping in your door and sitting down in your seat.

So you need to understand as we've talked about in multiple episodes that customer journey.

What is their patient journey as they're going from recognizing that they might have a problem to finding a solution, to actually calling up and scheduling appointments, and how can we be empathetic to them in their situation, every step of the way?

Yes, the main goal of digital marketing and online marketing is to increase your bottom line revenue, but in order to do that, you need to make sure that your story and your marketing and messaging is empathetic to the customers who are out there.

Click here to learn more about Scorpion Healthcare

As a healthcare practice, it is really important to stay top of mind with your current patients and also future patients. By using digital marketing there are so many ways to stay connected.

One question we get asked a lot is:  

“How do we increase our engagement and promote our practice with digital marketing?”

Well, that answer is a little tricky since there are many different options out there. It’s more of a combination of different tools to make your digital marketing work for you. In the digital marketing world, it is about trial and error, seeing what your audience responds to the most and how to start those conversations. 

In this blog, I am going to talk about 5 ways to help increase your engagement and promote your practice. 

Read the full blog here https://socialspeaknetwork.com/how-to-use-digital-marketing-to-grow-your-healthcare-practice

In today's healthcare marketing podcast we have the privileged of interviewing Stephen Merrigan of Merrigan media. Stephen has a track record for success when it comes to marketing online.

Through a combination of marketing and copy writing for advertisements and sales, Stephen Merrigan understands how to target the right customers and make your product or service appealing to them.

Though multifaceted in the field of marketing, Stephen has become a true expert in relates to developing an online marketing strategy that ties in perfectly around your product or service. With his online expertise, you can rest easily with the knowledge that your website is going to generate interest with eye-catching copy that your future customers are going to want to read.

The link mentioned in this Podcast interview on Search Engine Optimization is:

https://gsnedders.html5.org/outliner/

In this interview we discussed:

• How Inbound Marketing, Web design, and traditional marketing work for healthcare brands.
• Current trends with digital marketing and Search Engine Optimization in 2019.
• The top 3 things that your should be doing online to see a return from your SEO efforts.
• The top strategy that should be followed, but often marketing teams get wrong.

Please click here to read the entire SEO Podcast Transcript

FAQ sections of your healthcare website at one point were incredibly important, they then, however, were looked down at by a a lot of copy writers and website developers because the questions should be answered elsewhere on your website. The professional digital marketers at Social Speak Network used to even argue that an FAQ section would be better served by creating blog posts rather than having each of the questions listed on a single page. Our tune has now changed.

FAQ sections, whether they are single pages devoted to answering commonly asked questions or sections spread throughout a website that appear on specific services specialties pages, can drastically effect the performance of your health center website. These FAQ sections:

• Increase search engine optimization (and possibility of having a Featured Snippet on Google search results)
• Increase the likelihood of matching voice search (increasing Mobile SEO for your medical practice)
• Build brand authority
• Get prospects to know, like and trust your clinic
• Create digital marketing collateral that can then be repurposed in email marketing, initial consultations with prospects, and social media posts.

Additionally, you can still provide expanded answers to these commonly asked questions in the form of blog posts and article.

Read the full blog post on How to Create a FAQ Page that Converts on your Health Center Website.

Shannon Kuykendall (Kirk-ken-doll) is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner and the Founder of Up Automation, Linkedin Lead Generation Services. She started Up Automation in 2015 after working in the Coaching and Personal Development industry as a Technical Virtual Assistant at Creative VA Services for 12 years.

As an agency owner, Shannon struggled to get new clients in the door. She tried building a lead gen funnel, Facebook Ads, SEO, Content Marketing; you name it. Then someone told her about using LinkedIn for lead generation. They said, “that 80% of all B2B prospects are on LinkedIn”. So she put her focus there, and her results have been tremendous. Once Shannon got the formula down, she decided to stop offering implementation and concentrate on helping other digital marketing agencies fill their calendars with their ideal prospects using LinkedIn.

In this interview, Amber and Shannon spoke about:

• How businesses can utilize LinkedIn for lead generation
• Current trends in digital marketing in 2019
• The Before and After Grid as you create content that brings people in
• How do identify your potential client's pain points to be able to gear your messaging around them
• Why your business needs a strong LinkedIn presence
• The top 3 things that a business owner should be doing online to see a return from their digital marketing efforts

It was such a pleasure interviewing Shannon on our Podcast. Shannon is very knowledgeable about LinkedIn and how business owners can use it to it's fullest potential to help grow their businesses

The 3 biggest takeaways for me were:

1. The before and after grid - how to identify your target markets pain points
2. LinkedIn is really about building relationships and asking questions. Your target marketing wants to know what's in it for them when you give them time to talk about themselves and share their story.
3. The key components you need to have in your profile that will attract your target audience

In this week's podcast, I had the honor of interviewing Daniel Goldberg, Founder and CEO of Gold Medical Marketing.

Daniel Goldberg is widely regarded as a pioneer in Medical Marketing and Public Relations and was an integral part of the transition to Direct to Patient Marketing. Daniel’s unique knowledge of the business of healthcare and patient behaviors allow him to create marketing and public relations campaigns that reach specifically targeted audiences that maximize ROI. His ability to identify markets for potential patients allows GMM’s clients to penetrate new audiences and increase patient volume exponentially. Daniel has also lectured both nationally and internationally on the topic of Medical Marketing at some of the most esteemed medical conferences.

Daniel founded Gold Medical Marketing in 2012 after serving as the Director of Marketing and Business Development in a private orthopedic / spine practice and ASC. In the process, GMM has grown to be one of the most successful medical marketing firms and represents medical practices across the country.

In this interview with CEO and founder, Daniel Goldberg, we focused on web design, brand awareness initiatives, and transactional marketing efforts for the Orthopeadic, Spine or Neurosurgery Practice. We covered:

• How Inbound Marketing, Web design, and traditional marketing work for orthopedic brands.
• Current trends or wellness practices with digital marketing in 2019.
• Why you should create a Quarterly marketing budget for your health center rather than an annual budget.
• The top 3 things that a wellness center should be doing online to see a return from their SEM efforts.
• The top strategy that should be followed, but often marketing teams get wrong.

Learn more about how to use Digital Marketing for your Healthcare center.

I had a couple of great takeaways from this health care marketing interview and I'm sure that you will as well for your own medical practice.

First and foremost, it is ever important to make sure your team understands the goals of the marketing programs that you are running.

Are your campaigns geared towards one time transactions and getting somebody in the door the first time they search for a specialty?

Are they built around branding and brand recognition?

Once this is clearly defined, you can have a greater understanding how each campaign actually affects your customer acquisition cost and patient growth.

The next takeaway is to take the steps towards better understanding your patient journey.

It's not just what happens online, but also their experience within your office. For example, if a prospect sees language online that grows enough confidence in your expertise to give your practice a call, is the front desk knowledgeable about the services that you offer?

Can they answer simple questions about the process, the physician, and generally show they place the patient first?

Are you making a good first impression with your website, with your social media, with that first phone call?

And then lastly, and I think that this is the most important, is thinking about your marketing budget, not as an annual budget, but rather on a quarterly basis.

If a campaign is working well for bringing clients in the door and yields a positive ROI from digital marketing for your practice, you do your practice a disservice if the budget for that campaign can't be scaled over time. Conversely, if you are testing a new marketing campaign with A/B testing and optimization, you can't decide after a week that the campaign is a failure. Work the systems, work the processes, and, if after 90 days you still aren't seeing a return, find another avenue to reallocate and test your health center marketing budget.

Rather than thinking about your marketing budget as an annual budget, we recommend putting it into three-month increments and doing a quarterly assessment of how your campaigns have either allowed you to reach your marketing goals or where they leave room for improvement.

Please be sure to subscribe to the Social Speak Podcast for more interviews with experts in digital marketing for health and wellness businesses. To learn more about Gold Medical Marketing visit: GoldMedicalMarketing.com

For more than 10 years, Deb has worked with professionals to optimize their use of LinkedIn. As the founder of Wise Women Communications, a full-service marketing agency, she sees LinkedIn as a vital marketing tool for professionals at any level.

Throughout her career, Deb has worked with corporations and nonprofit organizations developing and maximizing their marketing and public relations efforts. However, senior executives often don’t see themselves as something that needs to be marketed.

Deb developed “LinkedIn for C-Suite” to provide the assistance busy executives require. By spending a minimal amount of time, professionals work with our strategists to create and optimize their LinkedIn Profiles.

With more than 20 years of experience, Deb also has a Master’s Degree in Marketing as well as a Master’s Degree in Communication Management. She has the experience and knowledge to help busy executives make an impact with their LinkedIn Profiles.

Connect with her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahkrier/.

In this interview we discuss:

- Current trends for businesses using LinkedIn for marketing in 2019.
- Tactics that were expected to perform well or had a lot of hype, but failed to take hold in 2018.
- The top 3 things that a business owner or marketing team should be doing on LinkedIn to see a return from their efforts.
- The top strategy that should be followed, but often marketing teams get it wrong.

To learn more about Social Speak, please visit https://socialspeaknetwork.com. Be sure to check out our digital marketing for health care blog.

What is your Medical Practice Buyer Persona?

Rather than grouping all patients together, start by understanding your specialties. Let’s say you work for an orthopedic center and specialize in joint pain and back pain as two key conditions – who are the specific candidates you can target for these two specialties.

Chris Carr, CEO of Farotech, recommends thinking about what are people doing when they need your services. For example, if a specialty is shoulder pain, you could target baseball players, specifically pitchers, or you could target someone who does handy-work around the home and fell off a ladder. What other services, however, are these people going to need? You treat the individual who fell off a ladder, and they might not necessarily have other ailments. You treat the baseball player, and next thing you know they are coming back for knee pain, back pain, and other ailments they may have been putting off.

Another example is knee pain. Most people put off their decision to have knee surgery, are they grateful after they come in? Yes! After a good experience are they more open to considering intervention for their hip or their other knee? Yes! Having brand recognition for these individuals can greatly improve the customer (or patient) lifetime value, something all practices should strive to do. To understand this target market, you need to understand the emotional journey they go through as they take the steps to pick up the phone and call your practice.

The first exercise to understand your buyer persona is to write a list or create a spreadsheet with your practice’s specialties, what patients typically come in for these, and what other services they may need after the fact. Once you have completed this exercise, rank the specific buyer personas based on both low hanging fruit (or who will schedule calls quickly) and typical customer lifetime value (folks who often have more than one procedure once they schedule their first appointment).

Abby Thompson of Salted Stone recommends also performing a quarterly review of who is coming into your practice – what are their symptoms, how did they find you, etc. Actually speak with your patients to understand their journey and to further your understanding of your target markets outlined in the spreadsheet you’ve created.

Once you have a clear understanding of your patient personas, you can start integrating them into your medical practice digital marketing strategy.

3 Tested Tactics to Integrate Patient Journey in your Healthcare Digital Marketing Strategy

Tactic 1: Create Interactive Resources that speak to the main concerns, questions, and pain points of your niche target markets.

Tactic 2: Build advertising campaigns that are specifically geared towards immediate leads and long-term brand recognition.

Tactic 3: Create an in depth FAQ section on your website to address both services and conditions.

When pooled together, these orthopedic center digital marketing tactics work to provide the answers to questions and settle the fears of your prospects as they move through their own patient journeys.

As you are working through ways to incorporate your buyer persona and patient journey, don’t hesitate to reach out for a complementary consultation. Our team works closely with marketing directors at healthcare centers to ensure their marketing is reaching the right prospects as they progress through their own journey. We use a combination of techniques from building brand loyalty to capturing lead contact information, and systematically converting prospects into patients as we help you to grow your practice’s bottom line.

Read the entire write-up at Three Tested Ways To Integrate Your Patient Personas Into Your Medical Practice Digital Marketing Strategy

In this podcast we switch things up to give a training on how to create an editorial calendar for your healthcare center digital marketing.

Having an editorial calendar allows your marketing team to:

• Be more proactive rather than reactive with your marketing
• Have peace of mind that you are best taking advantage of National events and observances
• See real growth in your website traffic and practice bottom line. 

Amber Irwin and Caitlin McDonald, co-owners of Social Speak, give actionable advice about how to best create and use an editorial calendar to manage your health center digital marketing strategy.