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It’s common knowledge that the field of medicine has gone through incredible advancements in the last 15 years. But that’s why it’s so surprising to find out that, despite significant advances to marketing since then, many medical practices still advertise through traditional marketing practices and ignore online!
Fortunately, digital marketing is becoming a more common occurrence for medical practices that want to get more traffic, patients, and referrals through their website. And at the heart of a powerful digital marketing strategy is the medical practice’s new content marketing blog.
Not quite convinced that you need to write more to practice more medicine? Here’s a look at five ways content marketing can help you achieve your medical practice marketing goals.
1. Blogs Bring In Traffic
Maintaining a consistent content marketing blog can help potential patients find your medical practice when they search for health-related information and decide to get their care from you. Last year, we wrote about a specialty medical practice that started a business blog and saw a 58 percent boost in website visits from search engines. That’s just one example. In the medical industry, 72 percent of Internet users have searched for health and medical information online, and half of that research is performed on someone else’s behalf. And in real life, 70 percent of adults got information, care, or support from a doctor or health care professional. When you put time and effort into a specialty health blog to attract more patients and patient referrals, it can really pay off when those patients decide to follow up on the information they find on your website.
2. Free Content Is More Popular Than Paid
There is a huge demand for free health information on the Internet -- but not for paid information. In the same Pew Internet study cited above, of the 26 percent of Internet users seeking health information that were asked to pay for it, only 2 percent actually did so. You don’t need to sink your resources into developing paid courses and eBooks that people must purchase. You just need to entice prospective patients onto your website by providing free readable, engaging and helpful health content.
3. Content Sets the Right Tone With Patients
Your content marketing blog also helps to bring customers inside of your medical practice before they visit in person. When you speak in a conversational tone (using words like “you and me”) you help the prospective patient get comfortable with your practice. When the patient is comfortable, he is more likely to make an emotional connection with your website and medical practice, and therefore more likely to choose you when the time comes to select a medical provider.
4. Content Marketing Helps Your Patients
Content marketing certainly helps you reach patients… but it also allows you help patients directly. Instead of focusing on your services and the benefits you provide to your patients, content marketing encourages you to consider the patient’s lifestyle and how your practice can help each patient achieve a better one. The content, therefore, focuses on helping your patient lead a longer, happier life. This sets the tone for a mutually beneficial and considerate relationship before the patient even enters the doors of your medical practice.
5. Medical Practice Websites With Content Marketing Get More Links
According to this QuickSprout infographic, content-rich websites generate 97 percent more links than websites without content. And websites with blogs also fare better with search engines -- these sites have 434 percent more indexed pages than sites without blogs. Both of these statistics go to show that including a blog as a part of your medical practice marketing strategy will help you rank better in search engines, get more traffic to your website, and get links from other websites.
Has your profitability dropped? Do you need more patients to recruit more/better physicians? Could it be worth looking into something new if it would help grow the practice? Many medical practices are making the choice to try content marketing.
If you’re a medical practice considering content marketing, I strongly encourage you to read about the benefits of blogging, and give us a call. We’d be happy to speak with you about the your patient goals, a plan to reach them, and some targeted results you could see from a customized medical practice content marketing strategy.
