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Here’s Why Your Medical Practice Needs To Stop Using Stock Photos

I understand the temptation of using stock photos for your website and content marketing. Many of these images are clean, simple – and, of course – free.

But would you walk through Walmart, purchase a set of picture frames, and hang them up with the stock family photos inside? No, of course not – because that’s not your family, it’s not your dog, and it’s not your backyard. It’s someone else’s . . .

So, why would you use stock photos on your practice’s website or in your brochures? That’s not your staff, and it’s not your office. You want to show your patients and prospects why your practice is better than your competitor’s. How are you going to achieve that when you’re putting another medical practice on display?

Stock photos don’t provide the kind of benefit that you assume they should. Here are a few reasons why your practice should stop using stock images all together.

You Look Cheap

Once your audience identifies one of your photos as what is clearly stock photo, there are a few thoughts that start running through their minds.

The first and most obvious one is, how cheap can they possibly be?

 

Having professional photos taken isn’t going to break the bank or blow your practice’s entire marketing budget and the money you spend on photos will pay for itself when patients that are on the fence end up choosing you over a competitor – the one who’s flashing generic stock images across their website . . .

You Look Suspicious

But they’ll never know that it’s not my company!

No, they absolutely will. Stock photos are extremely easy to spot. They’re ambiguous and generic, and they’re that way for a reason – so that they can be used more often!

And this becomes a problem because you work in the medical field. Potential patients expect to be able to trust you with their health; and if you’re not using real photos of yourself or your staff, you’re likely scaring away some patients who would have been considering your medical practice otherwise.

Your Look the Same as Your Competitors

Yes, there are millions of stock photos that you can grab from the web. But some are better than others; and you can bet that competitors within your niche are thinking the same way and are targeting similar photos.

How tacky does it look when you’re sharing stock photography with your competition? Verytacky . . .

If a potential patient runs a number of Google searches for local practices, chances are that they’re going to arrive at a few sites that are using some of the same stock images.

Definitely not a good look for your practice!

You Look Inconsistent

If you’re using stock photos while also trying to brand your medical practice, you’re fighting an uphill battle.

Those photos don’t represent your brand; they represent someoneelse’sbrand. And that produces inconsistencies within the story you’re trying to tell.

Stock photos are also bad option for your medical practice if you have specific products or facilities that you need to showcase on your site. How are you going to market these things properly when you don’t have professional photos of them?

So, maybe it’s time that you invested in having some professional photos taken for your website or your next brochure – in which case, filmMED might be exactly what you need. We have a professional photography team that is not only exceptionally skilled, but also understands how to brand and market medical practices.

Contact us today. Let’s talk about what you need and schedule your next session!

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Medical Reviews Killing Your Advertising?

Today, let’s address an issue that defangs the advertising campaigns of medical practices – I’m talking about negative medical reviews.

Like seemingly everyone else on planet Earth, I regularly scroll through Facebook, Instagram, or elsewhere on social media, and eventually come across an ad that piques my interest.

If it’s a medical practice with a great ad campaign, you know what I do? Probably the same thing that mostpeople do . . . I run a Google search for that business.

Google can be a business’s best friend or its worst enemy. Far too often, I’m left disappointed with what I find.

One of the first things to flash across the screen is the business’s rating or review score. It’s shocking to me just how many medical practices pump thousands and thousands of dollars into advertising, but don’t think twice about the medical reviews and ratings that they’ve received online.

The problem here is this: the thousands of dollars spent on advertising? It’s going down the drain. It’s not doing anything for the doctor’s business because when prospects find the business online, they see something totally different from what advertised.

Marketing and advertising are such powerful tools – in the right hands.

There’s an order in which medical practices need to go about these things. Branding and building a positive reputation comes first. Advertising follows.

And if your practice has accumulated a number of negative medical reviews, you might now be in full-on panic mode.

So, what am I supposed to do now? How do I possibly reverse the bad medical reviews I’ve collected?

 

A bad reputation is as difficult to shake as a good reputation is to build. But nevertheless, you need to fix your practice’s issuesbeforeyou try to advertise it.

At FilmMED, we provide solutions that can help your medical practice turn its online ratings on end.

FilmMED specializes in branding and marketing; but before we advertise your business, we’re able to work on your medical reviews so that you have an overwhelmingly positive reputation online before you start your ad campaigns.

Here’s how our process works:

 

Step #1: We Gather All of Your Medical Reviews

 

FilmMED will get you set up on Listing Cloud, which allows us to sync all of your listings online and begin monitoring them for poor medical reviews.

Step #2: We Build a Funnel to Generate Good Reviews

Next, we’ll bring in positive reviews from your patients and use our funnel to distribute them to various sites where your ratings are low, offsetting any poor ratings with glowing reviews.

Step #3: We Help Raise Your Overall Ratings . . . and Start Advertising!

 

After we’re able to raise your 1 and 2-star ratings to 4 and 5-star ratings, you now have a strong foundation on which to build your advertising campaigns. We will utilize Google, Facebook, and YouTube ads to generate site traffic, develop leads, and bring in new prospects for your business.

Remember – if your practice has negative medical reviews online, know that your advertising efforts are going to be in vain. Let’s turn around your ratings, so that you get the most out of your advertising!

Contact us today to start this process, or simply to learn more about how FilmMED can help your business grow!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Is your practice’s website secured with SSL?

Are you aware that your practice’s site is going to see changes as soon as this next month? Google has started a new initiative around SSL and TLS technology, that protects users from unsecured websites.

This means that unless you see a “lock” symbol next to your domain name in the browser bar, your practice may be losing a lot of potential patients . . .

First, what are SSL and TLS?

Simply, these are two different security protocols that encrypt the connection between your browser and the website you’re visiting. This way, people are unable to intercept your personal data, as long as you’re on a secured website.

filmMED secure example
An example of the “secured” icon indicating SSL or TLS on the filmMED.com website.

unsecure example
An example of how a site that isn’t secure shows up.

Online security is an ever-growing concern, and it is at the point now where the subject is a staple in mainstream media.

From the alleged 2016 election tampering to the recent Facebook data breach, cyber attacks and data leaks are becoming the norm. It is one of the main reasons why money-safe technologies, such as cryptocurrencies, have picked up so much steam in recent years.

People just want to be safe online.

And being safe when they visit their doctors or potential doctors website is no exception. Besides the risk of your own personal information being stolen, there are two reasons why online security affects your practice in a big, big way.

 

An Unsafe Site Hurts Your SEO

That’s right. Google, in a concerted effort to keep the Internet safe, has already begun to down-rank sites that aren’t secured via SSL and/or TLS technology.

If you have any aspirations of your practice’s site ranking in search engines, know that your chances of doing so without a secure site that uses SSL or TLS are zero.

 

Customers Don’t Trust Unsecured Sites. Soon Browsers Won’t Either.

Don’t think that neglecting to secure your site is only going to only result in poor SEO.

Customers are more cautious than ever; and if there is any risk of their information being stolen – whether personal, financial, or otherwise – your practice is bound to lose business. Worse yet, your practice could damage its reputation or get involved in unnecessary legal trouble.

In fact, this is such a hot topic that Google has announced new security changes in it’s upcoming July release of the Google Chrome web browser. Chrome is currently the most popular web browser among Internet users. This means that the chances of a potential or current patient visiting your site while using Chrome are extremely high.

When the July update is released, Google Chrome will notify users every time they visit a website without an SSL certificate, letting them know it is unsafe and to use extreme caution or to just flat stop using that page!

This means that your practice’s site could take a massive hit in visitor traffic as early as this next month!

Of course, you want your site to rank high on Google, and you also want your customers to trust you.

 

How to Secure Your Site and Protect Your Patients

So, what’s the obvious solution? Well, invest in website security and work with a team that understands it.

At filmMED, security is one of our biggest priorities when developing sites for our clients. Particularly if you do or want to provide online payment methods, site security is of the highest importance – and we know that.

That’s why every single website we build is secured at every stage of development, even before we launch it in our testing phase, to prevent any breaches of privacy or data.

Are you afraid that your site might not be fully secure? Are you wary of the possibility that your patients’ information could be compromised? Maybe you’re reading this after the July date and you’ve received warnings when visiting your site.

Contact us today, and we will ensure that your practice’s site is completely safe and secure moving forward.

Online security is not an area to be neglected. Don’t wait – take action today!

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5 Reasons Doctors Avoid Branding

Branding? I work in the medical field. Why do I need to know about branding?

This is something that physicians express all the time. And I’ll be honest – most of the branding within the medical field is, well, lacking . . .

So many doctors have put off building their practices’ brands for an array of different reasons. Perhaps you find yourself in this same position.

In all likelihood, your lack of effective branding might boil down to one of five following factors.

1. You Don’t Yet Recognize the Importance of Branding

Not sure whether you want to get involved in branding? I get it! After all, you’ve dedicated so much of your life to studying your craft and learning the human body. Building a brand isn’t exactly in that wheelhouse . . .

And of course, when you’re busy learning how to preserve life, the last thing on your mind is marketing or branding. In fact, throughout your years in school, it’s likely that no one emphasized the need to build a brand – at all.

Nevertheless, it’s essential to the long-term growth and success of any business. Particularly in the digital world we now live in, a lack of branding or marketing puts you at an immediate disadvantage, regardless of your niche, your skill, your experience, or your reputation.

2. You Don’t Know How to Build a Brand

Branding is tricky. It’s not just about having a cool logo or a website with all the bells and whistles.

Rather, you need to identify your strengths and weaknesses, and begin to carve out your own lane within your niche. You need to adopt a style (which includes choosing elements for a style guide) and develop your own voice.

These are things that can only be cultivated with plenty of thought and effort. It’s not the same as paying a developer to build a run-of-the-mill website for you so that you can finally check that box and claim that you’ve branded your practice.

There is so much that goes into branding, but it’s an investment that is well worth your time, effort, and resources.

3. You Don’t Understand 21st Century Branding

You might have a website. You might be sending direct mail to potential customers. You might be delivering a monthly newsletter. You might be sending out surveys to your customers to ensure that they’re happy.

And these are all good things!

But is your website is outdated, slow, and not optimized for search engines? Did you know that social media is the single most important marketing platform in the world today? Are you utilizing strong copy to make your newsletter attractive, useful, and enticing? Are you aware that social media listening is the most effective method for obtaining customer feedback?

There’s a chance that what you think makes an exceptional brand doesn’t actually meet the threshold of what is required in a digital world.

4. You Don’t Think You Need Branding

If your practice has a steady flow of patients, it’s easy to get comfortable and just keep on doing what you’re doing. Maybe it’s because your business has yet to hit a bump in the road. And from that position, it’s easy to assume that branding is nonessential.

Besides, you’re busy! There aren’t enough hours in a day to run your business and address building your brand head-on. All doctors and practitioners know this to be true.

But if you have any aspirations to grow and to ensure that you’re never slow or without constant work, effective branding is something you’re going to need in order to fill in those deficiencies.

5. You Don’t Stand Out from Your Competition

Many of us joke that the medical field provides jobs that are unlikely to disappear.

After all, people don’t stop getting sick!

That’s not to say that you’re free from competition. There are dozens of doctors in your state, and probably even in your own town!

So, it’s important that you provide your patients with something that they can’t get anywhere else. If you have yet to identify what that is, doing so is an important next step for your brand.

But here’s the good news – since most branding within the medical field is either poor or nonexistent, you have an opportunity to set yourself apart from your competition almost immediately.

So, if solid branding will allow your business to stand out and create more room for growth, what’s holding you back from branding the right way?

Is it the lack of time? Knowledge? Expertise?

Whatever the roadblock is, we specialize in developing brands for practices just like yours.Let us help you market and brand your business in such a way that your image and voice are consistent with the person your customers know you to be.

Hiring us to handle your branding and marketing efforts is easy. Contact us today to find out how we can help you!

We have the right treatment to grow your practice.

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Not all traffic is good traffic

It seems the world has gone analytics mad lately. The problem with that is that with all the new metrics the web has brought us many people are getting distracted from what really matters, getting patients and growing your practice. In fact if you only ever looked at one stat again it should be your growth. You should be asking yourself is what I am doing helping me grow my practice? Unfortunately there are many people that don’t understand that and as a result we seen a surge in traffic. It takes the form of getting a practice more calls and more website visitors, but it doesn’t always end up leading to growth.

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Real quick lets stop and talk about what traffic is and where it comes from. Most of the time when talking about traffic it is about visitors to your website, but traffic can also refer to calls to your practice or even in some contexts patients or potential patients through the door. The important thing to remember is that in the realm of marketing traffic does not equal sales.

In terms of a website we would talk about traffic vs conversion. Conversion is when a visitor goes from being just that a visitor to becoming a patient. In a more specific sense you would look at conversion of items on your site. For example when a visitor subscribes to your newsletter they are converting. You could also track clicks on a phone number for your mobile site as a conversion metric.

So why doesn’t the phase “Any press is good press” hold up for traffic. The answer to this is pretty simple it’s about knowing your patient. The answer is pretty simple and it’s not something new. You need to get your message in front of the right person. For example if you are looking to cater to a sophisticated patient looking for cosmetic work chances are that traffic from people looking to price shop most likely isn’t your niche and they most likely won’t call to do anything except shop around. This can be made worse if you are paying for ads to be ran and that is the type of traffic that you are getting as a result of the ads. When it comes to driving traffic much like social media it is important that you know who you are targeting and that you are building what you do around them.

At the end of the day the traffic you get can either help you grow or become an expense with little return. Part of what we do at filmMED is to help you become laser focused on your traffic so that you are only driving the right traffic to offers tailored to them so you can maximize your efforts. To learn more about how filmMED can help you ensure you are getting the right traffic contact us today!

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Is Your Social Media Just You Shouting Into the Void?

If you haven’t been living in a barn or under a rock chances are you are social media. In fact even if you had been living in a barn or under a rock you would most likely still be sending tweets from your smart phone! It’s a part of life that is here to stay and it’s an incredibly powerful tool that you can use for your business, but before you start posting all your best cat videos it time to ask a simple question, “When you post are you just shouting into the void?”. Now you may be asking what I mean by that so let me clarify it a bit. What I am really asking is, “Are you posting things that provide value and/or entertainment to your followers? or are you just posting to post?”.

Most of the practice social media pages I see are shouting into the void and they don’t even know it. They aren’t doing it on purpose, but they are doing it none the less. They are full of what seem to be completely random post or they have a single post type they just repeat over and over. In fact, I have even seen pages that are ran by companies that claim to be experts in social media that do the same thing. The reason you see this is that there are more misunderstands and mis-conceptions about social media than there are facts. So lets talk about some of my favorite myths.

Myth: You have to post to social media everyday

Reality: If you don’t have something worth posting it is actually better to go a day without posting than posting for the sake of posting.

Myth: The only way to get traffic from social media is with ads…

Reality: If you setting up your blog and other content correctly you should be quickly and easily about to cross post between your website and social media. That means you will be able to get people interacting with your social media to go over to your website

Myth: Social media is place to be random and have fun

Reality: This is one of my favorites. The reason I like this myth so much is that there is actually a grain of truth hidden with in it. Your social media accounts are definitely a place to have fun, but you should always know why you are posting something.

This last myth actually leads into one of the most important and overlooked parts of social media. You should always have a goal in mind when you are posting. In general I tend to think about these in 2 ways. There are posts that entertain and there are posts that provide some kind of value. Sometimes the post that provide value will actually drive the person to either a website or capture form and that’s ok too. If your posting correctly your posts will fall into one of those 2 categories and if you are able to fine a correct balance you will be able to really increase your reach.

Now lets tackle what provide value actually means. I see doctors and practices all the time who through out facts or things could provide value, but don’t. The first key here is knowing your audience and what they find important. You also want to make sure that you are appealing to the correct group. If your social media followers are not either your patient base or your potential patient base you need to stop look at what your doing and figure out how to make a change. All in all there are a few things you want to keep in mind when posting.

When you post ask yourself does this provide value or does it provide entertainment?

  • If your providing entertainment – Are you posting at least twice as much value as you are entertainment?
  • If your providing value – Is what you are posting going to provide value to your audience and it is something they will find compelling?

The sea of social media can seem hard, but it doesn’t have to be. At filmMED we have years of experience with social media management, training and ads. We can help you turn a stale account into a great new way to get patients. To learn more visit our contact page or call us today.

 

 

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SEO vs SEM The Race To Be Number 1 On Google

If there is one question I get asked more than any other it’s this, “How do I get to be number 1 on google?!”. Many times it’s how clients start meeting with us about their brand or website. The easy answer is to have awesome at SEO, SEM and keep your site updated! As easy as that sounds it can be a total handful to put into practice so I wanted to take today to talk about two of those three SEO & SEM. If you are looking to learn about keeping your site updated you can look at our post about keeping your site up to date here, but for the purpose of this post we are going focus on SEO and SEM.

Let’s start with SEO first since chances are it’s the one most people will be familiar with. First let’s change that from a weird set of letter to it’s real meaning, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Really that is just a fancy way of saying you are setting you website and the individual pages of your site up so they are favorable to a website. In most cases you are even going a step further and targeting keywords or phases. To give you an example this post was setup specifically to be something that could be found when people are looking for “SEO”, “SEM” or “Be Number 1 on Google”. The first things you will notice is that all 3 of those items show up in the title of post, the first paragraph and pop up again through the post. That is all part of the SEO of this page. When I was writing this I knew that I would have to incorporate my targets into my post. I also knew that I would have to do it in such a way that it wasn’t obvious or overdone. So what I did was make sure that the targets were at the core of what I was writing about. In it’s simplest terms that is what SEO is your a picking targets and setting things up to get the search engines to rank you highly for those topics.

If you haven’t heard the term SEM before that’s ok your not alone. It is not anywhere near as popular an acronym as SEO, but just as important a process. The term SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. In general these are the ads that you see at the top and bottom of search results when you use Google or Bing. In some cases they may also refer to any add that is shown with search results. The work in a similar way to SEO with one major distinction. Instead of trying to get a search engine to rank you highly for a keyword or phase you are paying to have your ad, description, and link rank highly for the search results. In most cases this is done with what is PPC or Pay Per Click. Much like an auction clicks are sold online. Depending on the number of searches and people buying them the price of a click may vary. Since this can be a bit of an abstract concept let me give you an example.

A dentist may be looking to buy the keyword phrase, “best dentist”. The fewer people that search for that term on a regular basis and less people that are buying that phase as well the cheaper it will be. So if you had 2 dentist buying that phrase with very few people searching for it you might only be charged $2 a click, however if you had 10 dentist searching for that phrase and it was a very popular search term you might pay $15 a click.

Seems pretty straight forward and simple right? Now imagine that it is all taking place in real-time. The system is constantly looking at how many searches are made, who is buying and then in addition to that it is also scoring the ad. This scoring looks at how long users spend on that page and tries to figure out if the ad was a right match for the person who searched for the topic.

At the end of the day it can be a bit complex and it helps to have someone to help you navigate through the sea of SEO and SEM to try and land on that number one spot. In many cases you may find that depending on where you are and what you search with your rank on Google or Bing may fluctuate and that’s normal. Looking at that and helping clients figure out where they need to be number 1 and what metrics to measure is actually something we spend a lot of time on here at filmMED. We help our clients make sure they are creating productive ads, with good results that help achieve their goals. We also constantly monitor the changes that the various search engines make to their rules and algorithms so that we can help give our clients and edge. If your looking to get more out of your SEO and SEM or maybe looking to have some put in place filmMED can help. Just drop us a line by phone, email or our contact page.

We have the right treatment to grow your practice.

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10 Reasons You Need an Explainer Video

Part of Google’s algorithm for search rankings considers the amount of time visitors stay on your website, which is one reason online video is seeing explosive growth. Explainer videos have boomed in popularity over the past year due to their affordability and proven effectiveness in growing a business. This makes explainer videos an excellent marketing tool. Increasing your conversion rates, clarifying your product, and boosting your sales are just 3 of the 10 reasons your business should have an explainer video.

 

1. Increase Conversion Rates

According to a recent survey conducted by Video Rascal, 85 percent of people are more likely to buy a product once they see an accompanying explainer video. Explainer videos help budding business owners keep tally of how many visitors on their sites could become actual customers. Although most businesses manually count sales to see what products are most popular, explainer videos keep track of what product or service potential customers are interested by displaying the number of views on each video.

2. Clarify the Objective of Your Product

Text can be tricky since there are so many ways people can interpret what they read. Explainer videos take the guess work out of explaining the usefulness and basic function of a product or service. People gain a better understanding of a product or service once they see and hear someone explain it. An explainer video helps you to connect better with your potential customer by explaining what your business can do for them and why they should choose you over other competing businesses.

 

3. Generate Increased Interest

More and more businesses are choosing to use social signals to spread the word about their businesses. They do this by using media such as images and videos to generate interest in their product. According to a study published in The C100, over 70 percent of Internet users watch videos online, and over 50 percent of the population will watch videos this year!

 

4. Rank Better in Google Search

Statistically speaking, stale websites don’t do well. Websites that contain endless pages of block text and images rank low in Google search, which means less exposure. This also scares away customers who want to quickly understand a product, and purchase it right then and there. In most cases, the average person takes less than a minute to make a purchasing decision. An explainer video will get their attention immediately.

Note: According to Spork Marketing and several others, websites with videos rank higher in Google universal searches.

5. Increase Web Traffic

Going “viral” is a term that has been around since the dawn of YouTube. A viral video is one that seemingly pops-up out of nowhere and gets a large viewing in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, there is no set formula for “going viral”, but quite a few products have gained popularity through viral videos, including some of the brands we know and love today.

 Some popular examples are:

  1. Dollar Shave Club (over 25 million views)
  2. GOOGLE PIXEL 2 (over 2 million views)
  3. Project Fi (ovwe 20 million views)
  4. Iphone X (over 33 million views)

6. Help Your Audience Retain Information

The average person retains only 10 percent of what they hear, but 50 percent of what they see according to a study conducted by Wharton Research Center. What does this mean for your business? An increase in word-of-mouth advertising. Word-of-mouth continues to be the main way that businesses attract customers. If the customer likes your product, they’ll share your video.

 

7. Liven Up Your Pitch

A paper pitch is…let’s face it-boring! Liven up your pitch by using an explainer video. PowerPoint slide shows and pamphlets with a bunch of words and pie charts don’t do much to engage your audience. However, a well produced explainer video with a solid script and engaging visuals can capture the attention of your audience immediately. Explainer videos are especially helpful if you have a complicated product or service.

 

8. Grab Audience Attention

You can only go so far with traditional web content. In a failed attempt to bring more interest to a product, some business owners cram loads of pictures, flashy animation, and colorful fonts on their web page, which does two things:

  • Confuses the potential customer.
  • Slows down the load time of the web page.

Both of these results are total disasters for businesses. Why not take all of those cool ideas and have them played out in a video. It keeps the website looking clean, while providing enough material to engage a potential customer.

 

9. Easily Shareable

An explainer video doesn’t necessarily have to be confined to just YOUR site. In fact, free video hosting sites such as YouTube and Vimeo have useful tools that allow you to upload your videos and use keywords to draw interest to them. The added bonus to using these sites is that they are Smart phone compatible, whereas your site may not be viewable on handsets. Videos are easily shareable, unlike text web pages. People are more likely to share and watch videos on the Internet than read text blocks on a website.

 

10. Showcase Your Personality

The number one thing that makes a customer become a repeat customer is your personality. It is important that a customer can put a face to your name. This is especially the case for online businesses where the customer will have little, if any contact with you directly. It helps a person to gain a sense of trust in you and the products you sell if they can see you and create a ‘virtual’ connection.

 

Aside from boosting sales, gaining popularity for your brand, and explaining your product successfully, there are so many more benefits to using an explainer video that we would need an explainer video to list them all. People all over the world create videos about everything from cause awareness to reviews, proving that videos are the most popular medium for people to share information and advertise.

 Have you used an explainer video for your company? If not let’s talk stragegy and plan one for you.

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Funnels Are For More Than Just Water

If you haven’t spent much time around sales & marketing chances are when you think of a funnel a cone shape comes to mind. If your hungry maybe even funnel cake is what you think of. In sales & marketing funnels are talked about as part of your patient journey and you strategy. It is a marketing plan that is designed to take potential patients in through the largest part of the funnel and then point them where you would like to go. So what does this look like in practice?

A funnel will normally have several stages and in this case we are going to keep it simple with a 3 step funnel.  The funnel itself is going to be based around a pitch for hearing aids. It’s a simple pitch and the idea behind it is this, “Get a free dentist appointment for children under 2”. The hope here is that the child will be brought in for the free appointment and then transitioned into a patient as they grow. So what does this look like? Our three parts of the funnel will be as follows.

  1. Top of the funnel – An ad offering a free under 2 healthy teeth checklist if they provide their email
  2. Middle of the funnel – A page containing the list and information on the practice and offer to schedule a free appointment to have a professional evaluation
  3. End of the funnel – At the appointment the next appointment is made and the family are now ongoing patients

Although this could be more complex it is a very easy to understand funnel. You are hoping to get a few actions here.

  • First a click on the ad
    • Then the potential patients email
      • Then the initial appointment
        • Then they become a patient

When looking at this you may ask why not just ask them to come in for a free visit. The answer to that is pretty simple, they won’t. The smaller each commitment is the more likely they are to make it. By offering them free content they can consume now you give them a low risk high return commitment. You also have a way to communicate with them in case they don’t take the next step so you can ask them to in the future.

Everyday we at filmMED help our clients build funnels similar to this one for a variety of targets and desired outcomes. It is by building these funnels that we are able to ensure that when ad dollars are spend we are to help our clients just the most out of them. If you looking to improve your return or the ads you are running we would love to talk to you. Either drop us a line or give us a call.

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How to Drive Patients to Your Patient Portal

It seems that almost every website you visit these days wants you to login in one way or another. However, unlike social media and other sites your patients may visit for fun, you can’t have them use their facebook account to login or give them easy one-click access to your portal. By its very nature a patient portal is designed to be its own unique secure system for patients to access their information. That means yet another username and password for them to keep track of and yet another barrier to having them use it. That said it is no wonder that practices of all types and sizes have a tough time getting patients to use their online patient portals. To help you with that big task we are going to cover some of the reasons why patients may not be using your portal and what you can do to fix it.

 

Make sure your patient portal is user-friendly

You need to make sure the portal solution you are using is easy to operate and isn’t confusing to your patients. We have seen some portals that make even the most simple task head spinning. This isn’t social media and your patients are not going to hang out on your portal. Chances are when they login it will either be to setup their account for the first time or to complete a specific task like access a secure message for you. When they do login they need to be able to quickly and easily accomplish the task they set out to do. If you portal makes it too difficult chances are they won’t spend very long trying to figure it out and won’t come back to use it again after that.

 

Know your patients

Your online Patient Portal is only meant for one person your patient. If your portal doesn’t appeal to them and provide them the ability to make use of it then they won’t. If your patients aren’t using your portal the easiest way to diagnose the problem is to just ask them. Find out if they know you have portal and how to access it. Ask patients if they have and aren’t using it. If you know they aren’t simply ask why they don’t use for you portal. The more information you can get by just asking your patients the better equipped you will be to address the issue. This will give you a better idea of things they would like to see included such as secure messaging, patient reports, and the option to submit prescription refills. You need to have a firm idea of what type of patients you are serving and how they specifically use your portal if your ultimate goal is to increase usage of it.

 

Make it look secure to your patients

Lately it seems that the internet is for stealing and hacking. In the past few week alone the technology world was rocked by two major security holes, Spectre and Meltdown. This isn’t the first time either there was Heart-bleed, A rash of Ransomware and even a major credit bureau was hacked last year. That is why it is more important than ever to ensure that your patients know that their information is safe and secure on your portal. Something as simple as a SSL Certificate ( the little lock that shows up in the address bar when you visit a secure site ) on your site can go a long way. You also want to make sure you let patients know that their safety and privacy online is a priority to your practice. This will help make patients who are concerned with their information online or worried about security understand they are in good hands.

 

Explain the benefits to your patients

Although most us in the medical industry understand the purpose of an online portal and the typical features most patients don’t. They don’t understand what they can and can’t do through a patient portal and for the most part what a patient portal really is. If you are trying to increase the usage of your portal you want to make sure that you are making clear to your patients what your portal can do for them and explain to them how to use it. Help them see the benefit and what is in it for them. They need to know what they will get out of using the portal and why using the portal is good for them.

 

Marketing is key

Although it may seem a bit obvious another key to making sure your portal is being used by your patients is simply making sure they know it is available to them. You need to make sure that you are marketing your portal to them and reminding them that they can access it whenever they want to. Something as simple as asking them if they have registered for your online portal at checkout can go a long way.

At the end of the day a big part of getting portal usage comes down to patient education and their buy in. Part of what we do at filmMED is to help you create marketing strategies to market your online patient portal. We also help practices ensure that the portal is considered and featured as part of the web design process. This makes it easy for a patient to login and find your portal regardless of what kind of device they are on. To learn more about how filmMED can help your practice, contact us today!

We have the right treatment to grow your practice.

Get your free quote

Was that Helpful?

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