Why Physicians Should Invest in Internet Marketing

The inter­net has become a trusted resource for med­ical infor­ma­tion and research.  A recent study showed that 80% of web users go online to find health-related infor­ma­tion includ­ing a physician.  

What are those search­ing look­ing for?

Great ques­tion.  They are search­ing for pro­fes­sional con­sul­ta­tions, infor­ma­tion about health con­di­tions, local med­ical prac­tices and infor­ma­tion regard­ing med­ica­tion and health­care products.

The National Insti­tute of Health did a recent study that showed that between 2003 and 2005 there was an increase of 7% of peo­ple search­ing for health­care and med­ical information. 

In the past doc­tors have fought the stigma regard­ing adver­tis­ing and whether or not it’s eth­i­cal and a pro­fes­sional prac­tice.  Many physi­cians are now real­iz­ing that in order to gain the trust and con­fi­dence of poten­tial patients they must have an online pres­ence.   Peo­ple are sim­ply going online first to find that physi­cian they click with.

This both good news and bad news for the med­ical field. The good news is if they are find­ing you you have prob­a­bly begun to see an influx of inter­net leads that are con­vert­ing into long-term patients.  The bad news is that if they are not find­ing you — they are find­ing the physi­cian in your area that does have an online pres­ence and they are going to them instead.

It’s not enough to have a web­site, you must mar­ket that web­site.  It’s impor­tant to uti­lize search engine opti­miza­tion, so that you are being found by those seek­ing your spe­cial­ity.   Your web­site must also cre­ate a level of trust in order to help them in feel­ing com­fort­able to take the next step and make that phone call to setup an ini­tial appointment.   

If you are not see­ing leads from your web­site, I hate to tell you but there is some­thing wrong.  Every physi­cian should be gain­ing inquiries and leads through there web­site.  The prob­lem could be in a num­ber of areas including:

• Your web­site is not in the search engine results.
• Your web­site does not cre­ate the com­fort level to encour­age them to move to the next step.
• Your web­site does not con­tain the infor­ma­tion a poten­tial patient might be look­ing for. 

I am so con­fi­dent in the ser­vices that we offer at TheP­rac­ti­ce­Pros — a med­ical mar­ket­ing and con­sult­ing agency that I am per­son­ally will­ing to offer you a no-cost con­sul­ta­tion to pro­vide you with a cri­tique on your cur­rent web pres­ence and offer you tips and sug­ges­tions on how you could improve it and turn it into a lead gen­er­a­tor for your med­ical prac­tice.  Con­tact me and let me know you saw the offer here.