...and Why It Is Vital for Your Practice
Exerpts from an e-book by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, OD
This article, which is an exerpt from my electronic book, will help you to get started with the main components of marketing your practice using the Internet and email marketing. Of course, most of this stuff has been around for a while. Even in other health professions, these methods have become important core components for effective marketing. It’s hard to say why there isn’t a lot more marketing information out there for eye care professionals.
If you are reading this, you’re probably like me—you love what you do and you are open to possibilities for truly growing in a way that complements how you practice. The good news is that the methods I present here have stood the test of time. Information marketing, using email and the Internet will revolutionize your entire approach to marketing.
Internet marketing is driven by keyword searches as done by users. As you may know, Google drives its huge amount of revenue this way, by directing targeted ads to users based on what they search for. This drives web traffic to certain sites that are keyword-based, from Internet ads or just from the web searches themselves. Success breeds success with Internet marketing, and as people find out about your practice online, your web page will be driven towards the top of the search results for your kind of business. This is the whole basis, in fact, on which Google’s search engine has become so useful and successful. As well, many popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! now have local search capacity: this means that people in your area can easily find out about
your business.
So, as you can probably tell, you first need a website. But what information should you put on it? How do you make a website that will bring you business? Many healthcare practice websites function as electronic brochures. They’re usually designed by a third party who doesn’t know the business, and they largely just sit there doing nothing. If you want to get your website to do something for you, it needs to be part of a larger Internet marketing strategy.
Your website needs to be designed with a specific audience in mind — potential patients.
Look at well-designed websites and quick guides (you can easily find them on the web) to get a sense of what makes websites user-friendly and easy to navigate. Your website should be designed for the explicit purpose of getting people to make an appointment. You can have people sign up for your newsletter and promotions by entering their email addresses. And, although this will take some more expertise to set up, you can even add the ability for patients to schedule appointments via your website.
To learn more about creating a targeted and optimized website for your practice with integrated appointment scheduling, click here to order this e-book by Dr. Lewis.