Digital Marketing Lead Generation Strategies for Medical Practices

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November 4, 2022 Marketing

A full caseload offers several benefits for medical practices. It ensures profitability and sustainability while creating growth and scaling opportunities. Building a funnel with qualified patient leads is essential for achieving this worthwhile goal.

Digital marketing is the most effective way to connect with new patients and attract them to your practice. Here are some of the top digital marketing lead-generation strategies for medical practices to help you get started.

Invest in Local SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will be a common theme throughout these suggestions as it relates to various aspects of digital marketing. SEO is the act of creating and optimizing content to appeal to search engine crawlers. The goal is to create a piece that ends up on the first page of search engine results.

Local SEO is a subset of overall SEO. This aspect of SEO requires optimizing content to appeal to the local market— an integral effort for medical practices. Unless your practice is highly specialized, you’re unlikely to attract patients from across the country. Local SEO will help you attract qualified leads in your area.

There are four primary steps to take with local SEO:

Claim your Google My Business page and ensure all the contact information is accurate.
Confirm that your address and contact information is on your website.
Use relevant keywords with local tags, such as “physiotherapist near me” or “physiotherapist” with your city name.
Optimize your site for mobile use.

These steps will provide search engine crawlers and potential patients with pertinent information that helps you appear in local searches.

Answer Audience Questions

Take some time to research the commonly asked questions in your field. Creating long-form blog and social media content answering these questions will help extend your reach and resonate with your target demographic.

For example, if you’re putting together dermatology marketing content, some common searches and questions include:

How do I fix a sunburn quickly?
What causes acne?
What are the signs of skin cancer?
Do I need a referral for dermatology?
What causes psoriasis?

Include questions your patients ask and use Google to determine what people are searching. It’s estimated that at least one-third of Americans will Google symptoms and questions before contacting a medical professional. These efforts also contribute to SEO by offering content relevant to keywords and useful to human readers.

Create Compelling Videos

More than 99% of participants in a 2020 survey indicated that they’d continue to use video marketing in 2021. An additional 66% of respondents indicated that they’d increase their video marketing spending in 2022.

Video is the preferred medium for Generations Y and Z, the latter of which makes up one-third of the world population. Video content also appeals to social media algorithms and search engine crawlers. Modern practitioners must embrace this tool to thrive.

Create compelling videos that engage your audience. Some ideas include:

Reacting to videos and dispelling myths.
Educating the audience with science-backed information.
Partaking in trending challenges.
Showing behind-the-scenes (when appropriate).
Sharing patient testimonials.
Using before and after transitions.

Remember to be vigilant when sharing video content to stay in compliance with privacy laws. Ensure patients give written permission to be featured and no paperwork is visible in the background. When in doubt, seek legal counsel.

Work With Influencers

Influencer marketing is a $16 billion business. While many brands capitalize on this digital marketing opportunity, it’s often overlooked by medical practices.

Working with influencers isn’t right for every practice— a general practitioner is unlikely to see great results from an influencer campaign. However, practices that specialize in sports medicine, dermatology, plastic surgery, sleep medicine, psychology, etc., are ideal for influencer campaigns.

These campaigns can also be used to create a patient referral or rewards program. Find an influencer in alignment with your brand goals and put a contractual agreement in place before agreeing to content. Authenticity and transparency are incredibly important when implementing an influencer marketing strategy.

Include CTAs and Contact Points

A website is an essential component of a digital marketing strategy. It’s not enough to only create it; a website must be well-designed and practical. Work with a medical website designer to create landing pages and compelling marketing copy.

Two of the essential features of medical practice websites are contact forms and CTAs. Make it as simple as possible for potential patients to contact you.

Don’t include a long page of text with a sign-up form or button at the top and bottom. Instead, intersperse them throughout the copy so the visitor doesn’t have to scroll. Excess scrolling is a form of customer friction and could deter leads from reaching out.

While having a dedicated contact page is useful, it’s also crucial to have other forms throughout the site. Add a contact form on each service page and within each blog post.

CTAs are calls-to-action, and they play a powerful role in consumer psychology. While website visitors inherently know to click a button and reach out, being told to do so increases the urgency and likelihood that they’ll follow through. Studies show that CTAs like “schedule a consultation today” or “click here” can dramatically increase conversions.

Capture Reviews and Testimonials

Create a review and testimonial request strategy. Capturing feedback from former or current patients is beneficial in several ways. You can use positive feedback to generate social proof through website testimonials and Google reviews. These help qualified leads to move through the funnel by offering social proof. Additionally, positive online reviews contribute to SEO.

Negative feedback is also helpful. Generally, negative feedback indicates an issue within the practice that could be negatively impacting patient retention. Look at these reviews as an opportunity to improve and grow.

Repurpose Content

The beauty of digital marketing is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel; one piece of content can go a long way.

Say you write an article about how to fix a sunburn. The long-form article becomes a blog post that attracts visitors through SEO. You then use that blog post as a script to make a video version to embed on your site, attracting additional organic traffic and YouTube viewers. Then you use the audio recording to make a podcast that reaches people who prefer to listen. Clips from the video and blog become social media videos and static posts, respectively.

Repurposing helps extend your reach, attract new leads, and get the best possible ROI on your marketing efforts.

Implement these effective digital marketing strategies to attract qualified leads to your medical practice.