I believe that attracting patients through SEO is the best way for doctors to grow their practices. But how do you maximize your online messaging to patients with all of the competing noise?
Here are some helpful tips born out of experience helping doctors start and grow their personal brands online:
Treat patients like friends
Whether online or in the clinic, you want your patients to have a genuine connection to you. Treat them well, and treat them like friends.
The doctors who succeed the most when it comes to SEO, online marketing, and social media are the ones whose patients rave about them online.
If you make an effort to treat patients like friends, you’ll be a huge success.
Keep Your Messaging Simple and Clear
You might think that your online messaging needs to be very polished, almost like a published paper, but I’ve found that the doctors who keep their messaging simple and clear have the best success. Communicate with patients on their level.
The key is to remember who your audience is. Things like readability scores matter with SEO while helping the patients understand and engage with the message.
Lean in All the Way
SEO is not something that happens overnight, nor is building a solid online reputation. Quite simply, you have to put in the work in this area too.
Being diligent about creating consistent content and online marketing habits will pay huge dividends.
As Dave Ramsey is right when he says, “You’ve got to be excellent in the ordinary. Diligence, diligence, diligence, all the time.”
Be Yourself
I always encourage the physicians I work with to have the same personality online as they do in person.
When patients have an idea about what to expect when they meet you for the first time, you’re more likely to create a meaningful connection with them. Conversely, if a patient expects you to be a certain way and experiences something else, it’s disconcerting.
Authenticity online is more important now than ever. Just be yourself, and your message will resonate.
Connect to Your Why
At the end of the day, you need to have an understanding and conviction about why you’re building a personal brand and marketing online. Without clarity and connection to the reason you’re doing what you’re doing, it’s easy to get off course.
Staying connected to your why will help you consistently deliver value and maximize your online messaging to patients.