Medical practice marketing is more crucial than ever in helping your business succeed.

To see patients, medical practices first need to be seen – online and off. In an environment where the average person has thousands of sources for medical information, not all trustworthy, a marketing plan is imperative. It is your opportunity to support patients between visits.

That lets you craft a lasting and meaningful relationship.

It’s often difficult to know where to begin when it comes to medical practice marketing. There are many options, and each one has potential. How can you narrow down all the possibilities to a handful your team can execute with consistency? What really works and what’s just for show?

Your patients should be your biggest inspiration. The better you know their wants and needs, the more effective medical practice marketing will be. Luckily, there are a few valuable starting points on the trail.

Let’s look at the top three priorities to focus on in medical practice marketing:

1. Branding: The Starting Point for Medical Practice Marketing

All companies have to start by answering the same basic questions:

• Who are you?
• What do you do?
• Who do you do it for?
• Why should we trust you?

Your practice could be one of the most prestigious out there, and answering these questions might feel like a hit to your ego. But no matter who you are and what you’ve accomplished, you always start from zero with people who have never heard of you before. Every meeting is a fresh opportunity.

Luckily, branding isn’t a mystery.

It means a consistent, intentional experience – including “look and feel” – in everything you do.

There are three big pieces to the puzzle:

Meaningful Brand Development

Like a Transformer, brand development is more than meets the eye. Everything starts with knowledge of your business and patients. If you’re using a Central Florida marketing agency, they should be just as interested in the details as you are. From those facts spring the intangibles: Things like your values and mission. These are crystallized in your brand’s voice and the promised experience your patients expect.

A Clear, Cohesive Visual Identity

Logo, typeface, colors – when someone sets eyes on a piece of content from your practice, they should know precisely where it came from. That infuses all your communication with the kind of reliability and professionalism patients count on for their most important life decisions. Logo design is critical, along with the ability to step back, recognize the implications of a design, and iterate until it really works.

A Full Set of Offline Collateral

Medical practice marketing exists online and off. Even with the rise of telehealth, most patients need to see you in person. With that in mind, your marketing messages should extend through all the common customer collateral. Don’t go without business cards, both for the practice and for individual physicians. Get into the patient’s shoes to think about how handouts, fliers, and more can aid their understanding.

2. Website: More Than Just a Digital Brochure

A website is more than just a list of doctors or conditions treated. It’s your online identity.

It’s also the hub of some valuable patient activity:

• It’s where most prospective patients will meet you for the first time
• It’s where current patients look first for the information they need

A seamless, convenient experience is essential. Balancing your medical practice marketing with all of the functionality your patients need requires modern medical practice website design. This is one place Central Florida digital marketers come in handy: It’s vital to dive into the details and get technical.

There are two keys to making your website truly valuable:

Make Sure It’s Useful to Patients AND Prospects

Each medical practice website has two main audiences, patients and prospects.

Patients need to know where to schedule an appointment, how to refill and take their medications, and how to get in contact with their doctor in an emergency. All these tools and more are usually gated behind a login that allows the website to comply with HIPAA and other regulations.

While patients have specific goals, prospects are usually in search of information.

They want to know where you are, who you are, and what your capabilities are. Existing patients may have little interest in a biography or a “Meet the Doctor” video, but this is the type of content your prospects will seek out first. They should be able to find it quickly and with a minimum number of clicks.

Design for Mobile Users, Even if Patients Are Older

About half of all online traffic is mobile. That figure is continuing to grow.

In rural and underserved areas, a rising number of people are using their mobile devices as their main or only source of online connectivity. Even elders are adopting smartphones in greater numbers. About 85% of Americans own a smartphone, including 83% of those 50-64 and 61% of those 65 and older.

A medical practice website truly hinges on its convenience in mobile.

User experience experts in your digital marketing team can make certain your website is easy to use on phone and tablet. This is also important to Google and will help you appear more prominently in search.

3. Social Media: Staying in Conversation with Your Patients Between Visits

Social media starts by knowing where your patients are, then meeting them there.

Whether you choose Facebook, Twitter, or the rest, consistency is key.

That means posting every day with content that’s:

• Branded
• Fun
• Educational

Your content has a role to play in keeping your patients informed, well, and safe. But they are less likely to absorb your message if it looks like the same plain old thing they could find anywhere else.

Visual content, especially video storytelling, can bring your social media to the next level.

Social feeds move fast, and nothing stops scrolling thumbs better than a dash of visual interest. With doctor-led video content, you can amplify that effect even more. Compared to plain text, video is more likely to be seen, remembered, and acted on. That helps your patients reach their care goals.

And social media can help you win over first-time visitors, too.

Social posts should be fun and exciting, but they also need to feel professional. Don’t leave social media management to an intern: Call an experienced team.

New York Ave Delivers Complete Medical Practice Marketing in Central Florida

Have you ever gone to a snazzy local business and discovered that the bathroom is a wreck?

Medical practice marketing can take a lesson from this situation. You can never assume in advance what a patient will hear or see, where they will wander, or what knowledge and preconceptions they’ll bring into a situation. Knowing that, ensuring your brand is fully prepared for them is a must.

Expert digital marketing lets you present your brand’s best face to the world every time.

To learn more about medical practice marketing or get started, contact us today.