8 Reasons Your Healthcare Practice Needs a Digital Marketing Consultant

As a healthcare professional, you’re busy focusing on your patients. But if you’re trying to scale your practice, you’re likely also trying to focus on digital marketing as well — and juggling both can be a demanding task.

At Mod Girl Marketing, we hear from a lot of healthcare practices who want to do more with their website, social media presence, email marketing, and more, but simply don’t have the time. But they’re also not ready to hire a full-time marketing team. That’s where a digital marketing consultant comes in.

With a digital marketing agency by your side, you get all the knowledge of a team of full-time marketing employees, without the expense or hassle of overseeing them. Find out why a digital marketing consultant can be the key to scaling your practice below.

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8 Reasons You Need a Digital Marketing Consultant for Your Healthcare Practice

1. A Digital Marketing Consultant Gets You Found.
2. Marketing Consults Can Help You Keep Your Patients Coming Back.
3. A Digital Marketer Gives You A Fresh Perspective.
4. Digital Consultants Are Affordable.
5. Consultants Enable You to Focus on Your Patients.
6. Marketers Can Give Your Website a Facelift.
7. Digital Marketers Monitor Your Reputation.
8. A Digital Marketing Consultant Becomes A Valued Partner.

1. A Digital Marketing Consultant Gets You Found.

Search engine ranking is important for all healthcare practices. Despite the popularity of social media, the first place most consumers visit to find information is Google or another search engine. And the more visitors your site has, the more patients you can get, plain and simple.

A successful, well-rounded SEO campaign can take your website from virtual obscurity to first page ranking. Sometimes these changes take a few weeks or months to manifest — like if you’ve just started a new content and site-building project. Other times, a few modifications to your web design can improve your ranking literally overnight.

A digital marketing consultant can help you with local SEO, helping you stand out from the competition and become known as one of the leading healthcare practices in your area.

2. Marketing Consults Can Help You Keep Your Patients Coming Back.

After you land a new patient, what happens next? A digital marketing consultant can help you establish follow-ups to keep your patients engaged with your practice long after their first procedure.

The Pareto Principle states that 20% of your customers will bring you 80% of your sales. Follow-up studies consistently affirm that loyal, engaged customers spend the most money, which is why companies invest so much in loyalty programs.

The same is true with patients in healthcare. With an effective follow-up campaign, you can not only ensure your patients had a great experience, but encourage them to leave a review or offer them a discount for a future procedure. Plus, maintaining that relationship with your patients makes them more likely to refer their friends to you!

3. A Digital Marketer Gives You A Fresh Perspective.

It’s easy to get your head stuck in the bubble. Sure, your employees and you might all agree that your website, advertising, strategies, and social media efforts are great. But what does your marketing and lead generation model look like to your competitors, clients, and prospects?

A fresh perspective is extremely valuable, especially if your wheels have been spinning without gaining as much traction as you’d like. Plus, a good digital consultant will also conduct competitive research to see where your top competitors are investing their time and money so you can keep pace.

4. Digital Consultants Are Affordable.

Think about how much it would cost to hire an in-house SEO expert, social media manager, copywriter, public relations manager, web designer, advertising executive, and videographer. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars here — money that a lot of healthcare practices just aren’t ready to spend on marketing.

With a digital consulting firm, you get all the benefits of having a team of experts at hand, without paying a full-time salary for each one.

5. Consultants Enable You to Focus on Your Patients.

Digital marketing is a very demanding job. Oftentimes, healthcare professionals end up trying to do it themselves in smaller practices, juggling blog writing, social media creation, patient consultants, and more. Imagine how much more competitive you could be if someone worked on your social media, SEO, and content on a regular basis, freeing you to focus your time and energy on your patients! Hiring a consultant takes a huge load off your shoulders and gives you a chance to breathe a little.

6. Marketers Can Give Your Website a Facelift.

One of the chief duties of a digital marketing consultant is to ensure that your website looks and functions at its best. You want a look that represents your mission and the general style of your practice. You want a website that is clear, responsive, informative and visually appealing. And you want to make sure everything follows HIPAA rules!

Some healthcare practices threw up a website in the nineties and left it to fend for itself. Not surprisingly, most of these sites are long-gone! You rarely see FLASH or animated GIFs anymore. Old technologies are left in the dust. The most well-recognized brands are always reinventing their websites to stay fresh and relevant in the marketplace, and your practice should make sure to keep up with the latest trends and technology too.

7. Digital Marketers Monitor Your Reputation.

These days, many patients hit up sites like RealSelf, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, and others to share their thoughts. Unfortunately, they can also leave complaints that are unfounded. Someone might leave a review for the wrong healthcare company, or they might leave a bad review over something as small as not receiving a greeting when they walked in your doors.

Whatever it is, they are doing damage. When confronted with disgruntled patients, many a practice has made a wrong move that resulted in even more damage to their reputation. Believe us, it happens to the best of them!

The smartest thing you can do is have someone keep an eye on the conversations involving your brand. A digital marketing expert knows the quickest, easiest, and most efficient ways to keep a pulse on patient sentiment, and knows how to resolve issues when possible.

8. A Digital Marketing Consultant Becomes A Valued Partner.

When thinking about scaling, many healthcare practices feel overwhelmed. The more you scale, the more patients you have — meaning you have to spend time focusing on them, not on your social media!

Hiring a digital marketing consultant brings an expert onto your team to ensure that you can continue to scale without the stress. They are invested in your success, and are able to develop and implement the best strategies to help you reach your goals.

Grow Your Healthcare Practice with Mod Girl Marketing

Ready to hire a digital marketing consultant for your healthcare practice? Contact Mod Girl Marketing today to discover how our team of expert marketers can help your practice scale.

Updated January 24, 2019