It has NEVER been harder for a small private practice to win and keep patients.
-
- You have more competition than ever before
- And your prospective patients have better access to choice than ever before
On top of this, the common marketing channels that may have worked just 5 years ago are “dead in the water”
-
- You’re never going to out-spend your big competitors on Google or Facebook ads
- The gimmicks of “free hearing tests” and “trials” no longer work
- You’re not going to rank #1 for ‘Hearing Aids’ on Google
- Throwing money at ZIP-code mailer will be lucky to get you a handful of phone calls
- And you don’t have the deep pockets to throw money at building a brand over many years
So, the question is, what do you do to create exposure, generate inquiries, turn them into patients and then keep those patients doing business with you?
Well, in this 2-part article, I’m going to explain the exact approach that we use for our ‘Inner Circle’ members, and what I believe to be the smartest and most sustainable way to WIN long-term through smart and strategic marketing.
Step #1 – How to Sustainably Attract Inquiries Through Content Marketing
I’m sure you’ve been told how great Google Ads are, or why you need to be doing Facebook ads, or maybe that mailers are the best-performing marketing that you can do.
The problem is, they all fundamentally have the same challenge.
They require you to continually spend X amount of dollars in order to generate responses.
You don’t have any form of sustainability, nor are you actually building any assets that will continue to perform for you. You’ll always have to invest in order to get some form of outcome.
Whether today or in ten years’ time.
Not to mention what happens if your Facebook advertising account or Google advertising account is suspended, which as most digital marketers will tell you, is incredibly common.
Instead, the approach that we take is to attract traffic and inquiries sustainably.
It’s work you do once that will serve you for years to come.
This is done through content marketing.
Every day, thousands of people are asking Google questions about their hearing, or about a challenge they’re facing, or if their insurance will cover them for devices.
What we do is research what people are actually asking Google, then create articulate articles/blogs to comprehensively answer these questions.
Naturally, Google sees them as helpful content and ranks them in key positions.
We then have our articles/blogs set up to make it very easy for the reader to take a next step and inquire through a web-form.
Let me share some examples for you…
For one of our members who specializes in insurance and has the in-house processes to check benefits at scale, we researched Google and found out there are over 4,000 combined searches each month for people looking for information on whether Blue Cross Blue Shield have hearing aid coverage.
So, we helped her to create an in-depth article called ‘Do BlueCross BlueShield Insurance Cover Hearing Aids’.
The article answered the question comprehensively, provided incredibly helpful information and then mentioned that if the reader would like us to check their insurance benefits on their behalf, then they can complete a form on the website.
Within the first month, the website started to rank in the top 3 positions on Google, eventually sitting in the number two position.
In the last 90 days, this article has received 2,603 visits.
This has resulted in 23 inquiries.
17 people have requested to check their benefits, 5 have downloaded a free guide about the first signs of hearing loss and one person has requested a call-back.
This was by identifying what people are searching on Google, creating a piece of helpful content to answer the question and then tactically placing call-to-actions throughout the article to convert the attention to inquiries.
Here’s another more sales-focused angle.
When the ReSound ONE was launched in September 2020, one of our members was quick-off-the-mark and run a trial of this new technology with a hand-selected group of her patients by following this campaign.
Naturally, when new technology goes live, the search traffic quickly follows. In terms of the ReSound ONE, it started to receive upwards of 6,000 searches per month as you can see below:
The article created by Dr. Hubik was full of helpful reviews from real-life patients and providers, creating a powerful piece of information for anybody looking for advice/recommendations on the ReSound ONE.
Unsurprisingly, it flew to the top of Google and now sits in the third position and first position for terms such as ‘ReSound ONE Review’ and ‘ReSound ONE reviews’.
In the last 90 days, this has brought 741 people to the website, with three of them then scheduling a hearing assessment.
-
- Do they have to spend for every visitor? No
- Do these inquiries cost them? No
- Does this require a big budget? No.
This is a case of being smart, performing great research and writing content that actually helps the reader.
If you do this, then you can rely on Google’s very intelligent algorithm to decide on whether your content is as helpful as you think it is. If so, then expect to start appearing in the top positions and winning traffic.
The part where this gets exciting is when you can compound your efforts.
There’s nothing stopping you from having more than one great article on your website. Some of our long-standing members have 100+ comprehensive articles for an array of searches.
This is where things get interesting, as you then have 100+ different ways to attract traffic and inquiries through your website, that are all sustainable and will be in these key positions for years to come (as long we continue to update them and give them SEO love)
It requires work and it requires effort, but it’s sustainable and regardless of if the business spends another dollar on marketing, they’ll continue to receive traffic and inquiries as a result of doing this piece of work.
In the second part of this 2-part series, find out how to maximize your database and win ‘patients for life’ through micro-campaigns. Stay tuned!
