4 Tips To Effectively Market Your New Doctors Office

In this episode we talk about 4 Tips To Effectively Market Your New Doctors Office:

1. Make sure you have a website. As you start your practice, there a few things that people are going to look at, but your website is on the top of the list. Choose a local website design company to help you build a custom site that will meet your needs. Make sure the site is mobile friendly and is easy accessible for current and future patients.
   
2. Focus on 1-3 traffic sources both online and offline. A few practices online to focus on are local SEO or search engine optimization. When someone needs you the first thing they are going to do outside of asking a friend is to go to Google. You want to be on the first page of Google, preferably in the maps. Another way to drive traffic is online advertising through social media marketing such as Facebook or Instagram ads.
   

3. Focus on what sets you apart. Most doctors are the ‘same’ in the eyes of the consumers, find what makes you unique and exploit that. Do you offer the best waiting areas for kids to help them feel comfortable, are the facilities the cleanest, do you offer a special type of treatment? All of these are examples of some areas that could help you carve out your piece of the pie.
   
4. Send out regular emails, newsletters or direct mail to keep in touch with your current customers and to reach out to new customers. Email is a very personal way to help you stay in contact between visits. Most doctors start with good intentions and then fall off because they do pick up, but to keep your patients and stand out you will need to stay in touch regularly.

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Aaron: [00:00:00] Ola,friends and thanks for jumping in and listening to another episode of TheMarketing Natives. I'm just really curious where you listen to the podcast at.Whether it's in your car, on a run - I don't know. I just...that's really themain two places that I listen to it. But I'm just curious where you guys listento your podcast. And also curious how you guys found out about us. So TheMarketing Natives is focused on local businesses, we give tactical advice andtips for local businesses to stand out online but also great tips and tacticsfor any business. So we talk about a doctor's office. You can still use thisepisode. If you're a restaurant or a lawyer or any type of business. So we havea really good episode for you today. It is four tips to effectively market yourdoctor's office.

Christian: [00:00:52] New.

Aaron: [00:00:52] Newdoctor's office.

Christian: [00:00:52] Thereyou go. Very important.

Aaron: [00:00:55] It'svery important.

Christian: [00:00:56] Youalmost missed that.

Aaron: [00:00:58] Almostmissed it. So luckily you... a little intro actually. So my name's Aaron andthis guy over here is...

Christian: [00:01:05] Christian.

Aaron: [00:01:05] Yes.So you'll hear two voices over here. And we are the typical guests unless youhear up on the or you see it up on the subject line that we have an actualguest. So anyway. Number one...

Christian: [00:01:19] Makesure you have a website. That's you starting your practice. That's one of thethings that people are going to look at. They're going to go on Google andthey'll go look for your website. So it's very important that you have yourwebsite - you have a complete website. We'd normally tell you to hire a localwebsite design agency or a company or a designer to help you with that so thatyou have something unique - that's not cookie cutter like the millions ofdentist websites that are out there that almost all look the same and if youuse one of those..."We specialize in dentist" type of agency. Thenyou're more than likely getting get some kind of cookie cutter templatedwebsite where it's going to look exactly the same as the dentist down the road.

Aaron: [00:02:06] Yeah.I mean we've literally seen this before we've plugged in the information and wetalk about that, so...

Christian: [00:02:10] Yeah,so yeah and other things with having a website, you know, make sure it'smobile-friendly, make sure that they can see images of you and the people inthe office. It's very important. A lot of people don't like to take pictures orbe on video but this is like one of the most important things especially onyour website. You make sure that you don't use those stock images. Make surethat you actually use real people that they're potentially going to see whenthey walk in the office.

Aaron: [00:02:38] Yeah,I think your success rate goes up...a good 100 percent. If you're moreauthentic - have a good website and have real pictures instead of stock photosjust the success rate of actually somebody choosing you.

[00:02:50] All right.Number two is to focus on one to three traffic sources and that's a combinationof online and offline. So for...if you're a new practice and need a doctor'soffice and you have a new practice that you're trying to get new patients for.If you are not on Google, it's going to be very difficult but ranking in thefirst page of Google for your local area is really going to be beneficial foryou especially starting out. So focus on SEOs or search engine optimizationthat's probably one traffic source I would go after the very - very first whenyou're first starting your office. Another one could be social media marketing- running advertising on Facebook or Instagram to people who are alreadyinterested in finding a new doctor or who moved to the area and then don'tignore the offline. I mean sending out postcards is expensive but it iseffective. And if you couple that with online and offline together you have alot better success rates so don't ignore that as well. But you have to figureout traffic sources to bring people to number one - which is your website sothat you can book more appointments.

Christian: [00:04:01] Yeah,and if you're just starting out it may also may not work on the long run but Iwould definitely go to some networking events. Like I said starting out, youmay have more time to actually -You, yourself, personally go out and shake somehands, introduce yourself to the community. And after that maybe you can sendsomeone else or maybe cut back and maybe go do it once a month or somethinglike that but it will be good to get your face out there and have, you knowmeet people who are deeply involved in the community.

Aaron: [00:04:32] Yes.And if you are, like what Christian said that if you focus on the communitythen it's going to pay pay dividends for that because we are involved in thecommunity here. And I can honestly say that there's no doctors that go to anytype of a Chamber event. So you would be a very big fish in a small pond andI'd be probably a lot of people who would switch to you because there's nobodyelse that's kind of in their ear. So let's talk a little bit more about stayingup with them after this little break.

Christian: [00:05:05] Thereyou have it. This is our little ad halfway through our podcast episode. LikeAaron said at the beginning of our show I'm Christian and that's Aaron. We areBitBranding a local marketing agency in Allen, Texas and all these tips and allthe things that we're telling you right now are things we have done ourselvesfor our company - a lot of trial and error. So everything that we're mentioninghere you know has worked for us and it will definitely work for you as a newbusiness. But let me tell you this - if you're having problems starting out onsocial media or maybe you need a new website or maybe you need more reviews oryou need help networking - any of those things. Make sure to contact us. We'llbe definitely more than happy to help you out and even give you more resourcesor even sit down with you or even tell you some of the things that we offer sothat, you know, we can help you introduce yourself as a new business to thelocal community. And by doing that you'll be able to one - grow a lot fasterthan any other of your competition and stay up to date because we stay up todate with everything marketing, social media, website related, so you'll bebasically on the front end of anything new that's coming out with any of thosethings and you can reach us out by go into our website bitbranding.co supereasy or you can reach us out on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn andeverything's @ bitbranding altogether.

Aaron: [00:06:51] Allright, we're back. And number three is for to four hips to effectively marketyour doctor's office is to focus on what sets you apart. So whether you are ingeneral practice whether you work with impedes or pediatrics - making sure thatyou find a way to set yourself apart is going to be crucial because there's aton of doctors offices opening up. There are a ton dentists' office, a bunch ofrestaurants. There's a ton of different competition that are popping up and wealways say this and you may or may not have heard us say this on the podcastbefore but it's better to be different than is to be better because peopleremember things that are different and they don't necessarily know that you arebetter or not. Which it helps to be better, just FYI. But to focus on somethingthat's actually going to set you apart from something else. We have a couple ofexamples here, one of them is that if you're a pediatrics office then it's likethe most fun or interactive waiting room for a kid. Everyone knows a kid who'ssick or a kid who's waiting to see a doctor is antsy and they don't want to sitdown. They don't want to do anything. So if you had a really interactivewaiting room that's going to keep the kid calm and you know that the parentsthat don't have to freak out about it or don't want to take their kids to thedoctor are going to feel a lot more at home here. That's going to help set youapart.

Christian: [00:08:36] Yeah.Yeah, that's very interesting. And also even having I don't know. I mean youput the cleanest facilities but also like the most like modern like, man. Yeah.If I was a doctor, my office would definitely look...like the inside would look- I dunno, I feel like very futuristic...

Aaron: [00:08:48] Likespaceships.

Christian: [00:08:49] Yeah,yeah.

Aaron: [00:08:49] Yeah,that would be cool. I mean it's cool for not only you as an adult but also...Ikeep going back to kids but even adults would appreciate that too, it's like,"This is very modern and this is very cool." So it just kind ofdepends on who the demographic is. But even if you focused on, let's saymillennials, Christian is in a doctor's office - that wouldn't work reallywell. And that's what sets you apart versus somebody who says they want a moretraditional office and they're attracting different people. So those are reallythings that are going to set you apart and going to give you a piece of thatpie of that doctor's office.

Christian: [00:09:18] Allright. So the fourth tip that we have here is to one - right from the get-gofrom the very beginning - start building your e-mail list. From that email listthen send regular e-mails, newsletter,s direct mail, anything you can to stayup to touch with your current customers and potentially future new customers.So e-mail is a very personal way to help you stay in contact with them betweenvisits. Most doctors start with good intentions with e-mail and they usuallyfall off or they don't have a good strategy behind it or maybe they don't havethe software. So it's very important to - right from the get-go. You need to,you know that's one of your priorities to build your e-mail list. And then tomake sure that is segmented correctly as well because you're not going to sendout e-mails to everyone all the time. You have to be very specific about thetype of e-mails that you send especially when you're kinda sending e-mailblasts like that about maybe new offers or there's ways with like Mailchimp andother e-mail software providers, where you know if that person hasn't visitedin the last so-and-so months then send out this e-mail. So you can create a lotof rules and a lot of things for your customers and people who you haven'tseen, you know, in a long time or maybe you have a scheduled appointment andyou're sending, you know, three days before you send them reminders and thingslike that. You can have all that stuff automated with any e-mail softwareprovider, something like Mailchimp or constant contact.

Aaron: [00:11:00] Allright. That is it for this episode. I do want to quickly recap the four ofthem. One, make sure you have a website. Drive traffic to that website and yourlocation. Figure out what sets you apart and then make sure you stay in touchwith your customers. If you do this four things, you'll be messaging us andtelling us that your practice is blowing up like crazy. Your doctor's office isdoing amazing because it is the combination of things to make you reallysuccessful online. So please, like Christian said earlier - make sure that youleave us an honest rating review on Apple podcasts and make sure you tune in nexttime for our latest episode which will be "Three tips to choosing the bestwebsite design company for your dentist office." All right. That is all wehave this week, guys.

Christian: [00:11:48] Alright.See you later.

Aaron: [00:11:48] Bye.

Christian: [00:11:49] Bye.

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