What is the fastest way to bring new patients to your practice? Every practice owner wants a simple answer, so when the phone rings, and some snake oil vendor starts talking; It can be easy to get suckered. And then stay paid monthly for a service that does little or nothing at all.
Here, how to avoid selling, and instead find an online marketing marketing company that provides value. Ask these 5 questions.
- Do they measure success in terms of tracked new patients?
- Do they engage in monthly or block people in long-term contracts?
- Can they provide evidence that the services (services) generate new patient calls?
- Are they transparent or hide fees?
- Do they manage your marketing for you?
- See below for details.
If you have a practice, the goal of medical marketing is to do only one thing, which is to get more new patients who call and email your practice. This is not the number of ad impressions or views of Google, branding or page impressions or even the total number of calls you receive. None of these things can be transformed into new patients and sales.
Most medical marketing firms try to bury you in data about materials that do not have tangible benefits. Some will even ask you to put a special encoding on your website, discarding current marketing figures. Instead, find a marketing firm that uses call tracking and form filling to determine exactly how many new patients contact you each month.
2. Do they engage in monthly or block people in long-term contracts?
Long-term contracts should be a big red flag. A sales strategy for selling services to people wants to reset for a month or two, which makes you pay 6-12 months for not doing anything. Be sure to select a medical marketing firm that charges monthly. Thus, they will have to continue earning their business every month.
3. Can they provide evidence that the services (services) generate new patient challenges?
Has anyone ever called to give you a “geoobject screen”, “redirection”, “banner ads”, “newspaper ads”, “magazine advertisements” or “marketing beacons”? The most important thing you need to know is that none of these works and one are illegal. There is no evidence that using these marketing tools will attract the only new patient. However, there is much evidence that these are just ways to charge for your services for services that do nothing.
The Geo-fence screen displays text messages to potential customers for your practice. This is not only annoying, and if it works, it will ruin our planning. In fact, this does not lead to conclusions. Great idea if you had a bar in a sports stadium. Bad idea for a medical practitioner.
Retargeting is a great idea for many local companies, but Google considers this a violation of HIPAA. Use of redirected advertising may put your practice at risk.
Advertising banners? Again, there is no evidence that they generate new patient calls and plenty of evidence that they are a waste of money. The same goes for newspaper ads, magazine advertisements, and lighthouse marketing.
First of all, before subscribing to marketing, make sure that the service is working to generate new potential customers, and then talk to several customers who have used it.
4. Are they transparent or hide fees?
When it comes to price, you will be interested to know what you are paying for, right? However, the overall overclocking strategy in the industry is to charge for pay-per-click advertising based on the mythical advertising cycle, say $ 1,000 per cycle. The firm then refuses to actually provide information on how much of that money goes to the actual costs of AdWords compared to their pockets.
The only transparent way to charge for a medical PPC is to charge a monthly management fee and then pay AdWords expenses directly on your credit card. So you know exactly how much you are paying a marketing firm to manage your medical PPC and how much went to Google.
5. Do they manage your marketing for you?
There are many low-cost online marketing services that give you access to software so you can manage your marketing yourself. For example, there are several companies that sell online viewing software, and almost no one teaches your team how to use it and make sure it works for you.
Getting access to powerful online marketing tools is excellent, theoretically, if you have a PhD. in online marketing and 40 hours a week to save. On the other hand, if you already have a job that helps patients, it's just a big waste of time and money.
Be sure to check if the marketing firm is working, so you can focus on what you do best, what helps patients. What is the fastest way to attract new patients? Make sure that for every dollar you invest in lead production, you get leading positions and a positive return on investment. It's simple. And avoid any nonsense about geoobjects, redirection, banner ads and other things that do nothing for your medical practice.
