Why did I come up with this article- digital marketing for doctors; There is a short story behind it.
One day my mother fell off in the kitchen. She finds it very difficult to walk. Immediately I took her to the nearby clinic. After taking an X-ray, the doctor advised her a few exercises and prescribed medicines.
After fifteen days of treatment, I took her to the clinic again, and by that time she was back to normal and perfectly fine.
But that’s not the point here. The thing that amazed me was, the doctor told to search his clinic name in Google and asked me to rate a five-star with positive feedback about the clinic. He also asked us to share the experience of the clinic and the treatment.
After hearing all these, my mind started filling with many questions, why do doctors need digital marketing? Is it hard to acquire patients in a country like India having such a massive population?
Does digital marketing for doctors in India is really necessary?
The answer is both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’
Yes– Because there are so many doctors out there in the market, that creates high competition among themselves.
No– Because few doctors in the field have already succeeded in capturing a high reputation and fame.
The one who chooses ‘No’ today would probably choose ‘Yes’ if they asked the same question ten or fifteen years back. And the one who chooses ‘Yes’ today wants to reach the stage of answering ‘No’ after a few years.
There is a thick line between these two answers. Reaching the stage of answering from ‘Yes’ to ‘No’ requires a lot of experience, reputation, hard work, fame, etc. Every newbie doctor wanted to achieve this kind of state in their specialization.
In this article, let’s discuss how digital marketing for doctors helps acquire more and more patients in less time.
Why digital marketing is important for doctors?
In the olden days, it took years or decades for doctors to capture a high reputation and fame through word of mouth in society, but today it’s a digital era. Most people are connected to the internet and are very familiar with search browsers. They search their queries on the browser and find a solution, simple right?
Today people are smart enough in finding solutions to their day-to-day queries on the internet, and the healthcare/medical sector is not out of it. So considering digital marketing for the medical and healthcare sector is also an important criterion. Digital marketing for doctors is very much essential in this age.
Today we have everything at our fingertips viz. Google. These days people are asking everything to Google. It might be restaurants, theaters, beauty parlors, gyms, bakeries, grocery shops, food marts, yoga classes, organic stores, salons, and much more.
Likewise, the search also consists of clinics, doctors, hospitals, healthcare equipment, surgical, medical services, online healthcare consultations, and medicines. We can easily term all these search queries for the question what is medical digital marketing?
Benefits of digital marketing for Doctors in 2022
Let’s assume a person is new to the city and he/she wanted to consult the doctor. What he/she will do? He has two options. He might ask the people around him and collects data about different doctors available in the city, or he will search on the internet and find the results.
When he searches for the nearby clinics or best doctors in the city for a particular illness, the doctor or clinic who had an online presence like good rating, positive feedback from other patients, website, and positive reviews make him rank top on Google.
All these results act as social proof so that the patient develops a positive mindset toward the doctor. Here the doctor succeeds in gaining patients’ confidence which builds trust in patients towards their clinic that make patients visit them. It is not meant only for acquiring new patients but also help to provide a better service for the existing ones. That is why doctors, clinics, and hospitals need digital marketing.
How to do digital marketing for doctors?
There are various digital marketing methods for doctors to choose from depending upon their respective healthcare services. Here I’m discussing a simple digital marketing technique for doctors that everyone can get on with it right away and reap the benefits of digital marketing.
If anyone asks me how I market my doctor online?, the first step I would suggest is to list it on Google My Business. It is a very great platform for everyone to begin with; irrespective of the nature of business.
Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is a fantastic platform for everyone to appear on Google search results quickly and very easily. The best part about Google My Business is that it’s completely free!
Google My Business is listing your business in Google with a location on Google Maps. It displays a lot of information about the business like opening and close timings, contact information, photos, videos, adding a link to your website, and much more. GMB improves local SEO also.
How can doctors engage digitally?
The first step is to list their clinic or hospital in Google My Business and update all the necessary information. The best part of GMB is, it allows one to collect reviews. The patient who is satisfied with the treatment and service can drop a comment and review it by sharing his experience. Here doctors can also ask the satisfied patients to rate and review them in the GMB profile.
And most importantly, responding to all the reviews and comments makes it much better. Even if you received a few negative ones, don’t ignore them. Responding to all the reviews shows that you are very serious about your work. These all increase the engagement rate which acts as social proof and builds trust.
GMB is one of the most powerful tools to give an online presence to any business. It is very helpful for finding the best results for local search queries. GMB is the first and best solution for digital marketing for clinics.
For example, let’s assume a patient search for ‘best orthopedic doctor near me’ or ‘good orthopedic doctor in the city’ these search terms refer to the local search queries. Now Google starts showing 3 to 4 results from GMB profiles which are just one step away from attracting patients and it is very important to optimize GMB profiles regularly to stand out from the competition.
Even if you already have a web presence like a website and social media channels, it is essential to have a GMB profile to get on top of the local search engine results.
And also it is advised to keep the GMB profile always updated without any misinformation because misinformation leads to bad customer experiences that might miss the good opportunities. Don’t miss out on the benefits of Google My Business.
Conclusion:
Every business must showcase an online presence these days because most people are connected to the internet and are smart enough to find a solution for their queries in search engines and it is the same for the medical and healthcare sector also. So it is necessary to consider digital marketing for doctors also.
Further articles to read:
Read another article to know about various digital marketing methods that you can easily consider depending upon the nature of your business.