How do I use YouTube to promote my medical practice?

You hear a lot about Google being the largest search engine yet rarely do you hear who is in second place.  Did Yahoo Search come to mind?  YouTube is the second largest search engine. The Youtube has 2 billion views a day.  Some of which are delivered through Google searches ever since Google integrated video hits into their search results page.  The average person spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube and often finds themselves itching to share what they have found with others.  YouTube has integrated with social channels and currently has over 3 million people who auto-share to at least one social network.  An auto-share tweet on twitter usually results in an average of 7 new visitors to the youtube.com website.

Most practices interact with their patients primarily on a face-to-face basis and by telephone.  They will remember your face and associate the physical appearance of your office, your voice and your staff with your practice’s brand.  YouTube allows you to share all this information about your practice before they step foot into your consultation room. It allows a potential patient to know what to expect and gives them comfort before booking an appointment.  Creating a video that introduces someone to your practice helps build a positive practice image. The video can provide a tour of your office, introduce your staff, answer commonly asked questions and perhaps show a particular procedure. 

Another advantage to YouTube is that there is a way to insert or embed the video into another page.  This would allow you to make a video, upload it to YouTube (where it would be a part of your practice’s YouTube channel), and then embed it into your practice website.  The YouTube video player has been embedded into millions of websites.  All of these videos leading back to youtube.com help for YouTube’s search ranking. Subsequently, your practice web site’s search ranking is often easier to get on the first page of Google for highly competitive keywords with the use of video than with regular optimization alone.  Lastly, a user will tend to spend 5 times as much time on your web site initially if you have a video than without, before determining if you have relevant information.

For more enquiries, please call us at 852-25801058 for more information.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

How can medical marketing tastefully market without hurting reputation?

The answer: It's all in how you do it.

It is no secret that many doctors and healthcare organizations remain "marketing-shy". Many doctors still feel uncomfortable because they are worried about coming across as "needy, cheesy or greedy."

If that sounds like you, we certainly understand your concern. After all, your most precious asset is your reputation, and you certainly wouldn't want to jeopardize it through distasteful or unethical marketing.

What's important to remember, however, is that the way you market your practice or business — and therefore the reputation you build — is completely up to you. Think of it this way:

Hong Kong Medical Marketing is an important channel for positive influence in shaping how others think of you. You're telling patients, prospective patients, colleagues and others what you do, and reminding them when, how and why to think of you and your organization. The message that's received depends entirely on the message that you send, so you want to control and direct this process.

Medical marketing—done professionally and using the right strategies and tactics — will produce professional results in measurable growth, and actually enhance your reputation in positive ways. (And, of course, the reverse would also be true.)

The starting point for marketing is like a blank canvas: people who don't know you are completely unaware of what you do and have no image of you at all. The professional marketing messages of your practice communicate your credible, impressive, ethical and highly professional image and reputation.

Medical marketing is a positive tool to inform and influence people toward a better quality of health and life.

Unfortunately, like most tools, marketing can deliver a disastrous outcome if you don't know what you are doing or understand how to use it properly and effectively. So, you'll want to do proper homework and then seek out expert guidance prior to embarking upon a new marketing program.

For more enquiries, please call us at 852-25801058 for more information.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

What kinds of problems can medical marketing help us solve?

The answer: Plenty...let's list just a few. The bottom-line objective in healthcare marketing is usually—but not exclusively—to grow the practice. Often this means attracting more patients, but a well-rounded marketing plan will achieve much more for the provider. Effective and ethical marketing opens the door to benefits for providers to: Attract cases that the doctors either enjoy or have special expertise for; Protect and grow share of voice (SOV) of patients; Build the professional reputation of the provider with the community and peers. These high-level objectives also translate into answers for challenges and opportunities such as: Attracting better paying or more profitable cases; Reaching "ideal patents," directly and cost-effectively; Changing the mix of patients or types of cases; Winning more professional referrals; Supporting a new location, provider or technology (or all of these); Transitioning to a "all-referral" practice; Standing out from the crowd in positive ways; Answering competitive challenges; Finding more personal time and greater professional enjoyment; and Tastefully building and extending your reputation.

For more enquiries, please call us at 852-25801058 for more information.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

Think about Twitter as a place to build relationships - Adapted from best practice of “twitter”

Instead of approaching Twitter as a place to broadcast information about your company, think of it as a place to build relationships. Put into practice, that means you could do things like:

Include in your Bio and/or custom background the names (or @usernames) of the people twittering from your company account. It’s also a good idea to include additional contact info, like email addresses.

Listen regularly for comments about your medical products—and be prepared to address concerns, offer customer service or thank people for praise.

Tip: In addition to keeping an eye on your @messages, you can use our Saved Searches feature to easily track mentions of your medical services, etc. From your Twitter home page, simply run a search, and then at the top of your results page, click “Save this search.” A link with your search term will appear on the right side of your page, and whenever you click it, you’ll get real-time results for that query. To delete a search, just head to the top of your results and click “Remove this search.”

Use a casual, friendly tone in your messages.

While you shouldn’t feel compelled to follow everyone who follows you, do respond to some questions or comments addressed to you.

Post links to articles and sites you think folks would find interesting—even if they’re not your sites or about your company.

Make sure your tweets provide some real value. You know better than we do what is valuable, but here are few examples to spark ideas:

• Offer Twitter exclusive coupons or deals
• Take people behind the scenes of your company
• Post pictures from your offices, stores, warehouses, etc.
• Share sneak peeks of projects or events in development

Don’t spam people. Twitter’s following model means that you have to respect the interests and desires of other people here or they’ll unfollow you.

For more enquiries, please call us at 852-25801058 for more information.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

How Medical Marketing is Like Drilling for Oil

There's a five-step process that makes for best practice success.

Medical marketing is very much like drilling for oil. Success requires a proven system not a shovel.

Suppose you want to drill for oil. You can begin making random holes in your backyard, or you can use a method that's based on knowledge, experience and the right tools. You could begin looking for oil by randomly drilling in your own backyard. Then you try your friend's backyard. And then you start buying properties until the zoning commission shuts you down. It's highly unlikely that you'll hit a gusher, but some people try.

OR

You can hire a geologist to locate land with a defined set of characteristics that have proven to yield oil. The first field you try may or may not be fruitful, but over time, you are much more likely to find a gusher than if you go out haphazardly and start digging - like most people do when it comes to marketing.

Even though there is always an element of risk in marketing, you vastly improve the probability of sustained success with a well-considered, best practices approach.

It turns out that there are only five key steps in drilling for oil. It's a page from heavy industry that transfers nicely to successful healthcare and medical marketing. And the comparison is useful to medical practices, healthcare organizations, hospitals and others who want to minimize risk and maximize results.

FINDING OIL

It's wasteful to drill where there isn't any oil. Marketing is not about being everything to everybody. It's about answering a specific need with a specific solution. Geologists look for the right conditions for oil. Market research helps define the audience (demographics, psychographics, geographics, etc.) and the products and services that are in demand or will appeal to this target. You also define the media that communicates with them.

PREPARING TO DRILL

A 12-month marketing plan sets strategies, tactics and budget in place to achieve defined goals. What considerations (and possible adjustments) are needed for seasonal variations, operational steps, facilities and equipment? Is everyone aware of the plan and goals? And properly trained for their role? And, perhaps just as important, have responsibilities been assigned?

SETTING UP THE RIG

Experience counts; you need the right tools to get the job done. The creative make-ready steps define your compelling message and produce the professional marketing tools (ads, brochures, billboards, broadcast, online) necessary to reach the oil - ah, audience.

DRILLING

Drilling operations begin with a starter hole; it's the marketing equivalent of testing, tracking and making any necessary adjustments in advance of roll-out. Do the test results validate the preparation assumptions? Is the media mix right? How about the price or the offer? The testing cycle further reduces risk and expenses, and increases the prospect of bringing in a gusher.

EXTRACTING THE OIL

Gushers are a great visual for movies, but are actually wasteful. What you really want is a reliable, producing oil well that delivers results consistently. If one well pays off, the oil industry knows to drill additional wells in the same field. In marketing, you grow with reliable and repeatable results. When you've got a producing marketing formula, drill again. And then repeat the steps in this process for continued growth and success.

Random oil drilling is worse than a crapshoot; the professionals don't do it that way. It's also true for marketing in healthcare, hospitals, pharmaceuticals and provider practices. There's no reason to guess. And there's every reason to get professional marketing help right from the start.

For more enquiries, please call us at 852-25801058 for more information.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk