The Pandemic came suddenly and financially wiped out the countries of the world and changed things in ways we could never have dreamed of. The trick is to adapt, adopt and stabilize our businesses as much as possible against the possibility of future similar crises.
Marketing a practice in “normal” times was already getting sophisticated and complicated enough to give you a headache just trying to keep up with the changes. The online portion of marketing/advertising had become so tricky that the average person could no longer do it and hiring “experts” was fast becoming a necessity.
But now that we have been forced online more than ever because of the lockdown situation we went through, everything you need to know has escalated into whole new realms.
3 Parts to Online Marketing
Basically, there are 3 main divisions that you need to be aware of and each one has many subdivisions:
- There is your website and its relationship to Google and other browsers. If it is not properly designed and optimized (Search Engine Optimization), Google won’t find it when users are looking for the very thing that you can offer them. We have a huge 700+ page website, but we just found out from a trusted expert that we are not properly SEO’d and are now on the path of getting that remedied. Getting found by Google when a potential patient is going online to find an answer to their problem or question is the name of the game. Just having a website “there” isn’t going to cut it.
- Next is Social Media … and not being found there is the same as being invisible. BUT, there is a ton of expertise required in order to make your presence felt and attract new patients from it. Just posting stuff on Facebook willy nilly is not going to go very far in most cases. Doing Live Facebook talks, posting videos on YouTube and putting them on your website, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and so on can be done by anyone and are necessary, BUT there is a huge amount of knowledge required in order to get them generating the new patients you want.
- The third online category is posting ads on Facebook and Google and so on. However, if you (a) don’t say the right message to get people to reach, (b) don’t offer them something that they would want to reach for, (c) don’t target the right audience, (d) don’t have a landing page for them to go to in order to get more information and to “sign up” with your practice, then it would all have been a waste of your time and money.
One of the Problems
One of the problems for online marketing NOW is that, more than ever, there is a superglut of ads and messages on all those online venues (platforms such a Google and Facebook and so on) that you have to really know your stuff to get found in the barrage. Being an amateur in this current scene is no longer enough.
Solutions
Spend some money on hiring someone who is really good at all of this. A website designer is not necessarily good at SEO, nor at what content (words, descriptions, etc.) should be on your website to engage prospects, nor are they necessarily an expert at Social Media and marketing. It may take 3 different experts to satisfy all your needs in order to have a workable system in place to drive in new business on your practice.
Throwing enough mud (money) at a wall so that some of it sticks is the old way of doing things. In these unusual times, hiring experts for awesome results and best bang for your buck is the way to go. We have done a lot of searching to find the experts we would recommend. Call if you want help!
Contact us to get the help you deserve!
Call us at 416-466-6217 for a FREE Practice Assessment!
