If you've read much or been to many conferences lately, the subject of marketing and medical practices seems to be a hot topic. Ten or more years ago, this seemed not to be the case. But things are changing and the consumer driven economy of today seems to be pushing our industry in the direction of advertising, marketing and consumer satisfaction that the rest of the business world has maneuvered for years. We as medical practice leaders can be met with many challenges along the way as we chart out a path of appropriate marketing for our businesses. Hesitant owners, tight budgets, expensive media and a populace wary of all the changes in healthcare can make our marketing ambitions nightmares.
Changing ways of society and computer innovation has lagged behind somewhat in the medical industry and we have been having to drag our staff and owners kicking and screaming along the way when it comes to doing things different than "the way we've always done it."
A Harris Interactive poll in late 2010 stated: "Almost nine in ten online Americans (87%) use social media and, of these, there are different levels of connection they feel with various groups. Over half say they feel very connected or connected to close friends (58%) and immediate family (52%), while 42% say they feel this way about extended family through their social media use. Around one-third of social media users feel connected or very connected through social media to friends of friends and/or acquaintances (36%) and old classmates (32%). For business, the same feeling of connection is not quite there yet, as only one in five social media users (19%) say they feel very connected or connected through social media use to business associates."
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/mid/1508/articleId/590/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/Default.aspx
The internet age has somewhat given magazines, newspapers and even TV the label of "old news" and people, especially those entering the consumer spending age group, are getting their information in different ways and methods than those of us who have entered middle age and beyond.
Enter an opportunity - using social networking sites for advertising and marketing. There are many sites out there to allow you to get your name, website, services and all sorts of information in front of your patient base, community and practically the whole world. You don't have to look far to find recommended sites and methodologies to assist you in this realm.
Our medical practice has ventured into the world of social networking through Facebook. We entered the fray about a year ago and have seen generally good results and have had excellent feedback from our patients on our Facebook page. We have grown to about 380 people who "Like" us on Facebook. (I think the old term "fans" was a better term.)
We have utilized the Facebook Ads function with our page and have received good results at very little expense compared to other marketing media. We normally will run our Facebook ads for two to four weeks at a time and will normally pay from thirty to fifty dollars a day for the ads. The ads are fully customizable and allow you to choose demographics and user profiles that allow you to choose users who are in your area, of certain ages, have like interests, etc. You are limited to a certain number of characters per ad, so you do have to be resourceful in your ad structure.
I would like to share some data from one of our ad campaigns. Although the data is anecdotal, a recent ad campaign produced the following for our practice:
Expense for two weeks: $560.00
Times the ad was viewed: 3,731,108
Times the ad viewers clicked on our ad: 1062
We paid approximately 52 cents for each person to go to our website and from our website statistics, we had 84.7% new visitors to our website over the two week period. We paid .01 cents for every view of our ad. Looking further into our website statistics for the two week period prior to the ad and the two week period after the ad, we obtained the following data:
Before ad During ad After ad
Website Visits 775 1303 637
Web pages viewed 2324 3378 2403
% new visitors 80% 85% 78%
We saw an increase of 68% in website visits during the period of the Facebook ad and a 45% increase in web pages viewed during the ad period. New visitors to the website also increased as expected during the ad period. We continue to venture into the Facebook ad function and are utilizing the ads and our two daily postings to inform our patients, give a presence to our practice and inform of special events and the like. Just as any advertising and marketing efforts, we continue to refine and evaluate the methods, but we can say for now that the usage of social media networking has helped us inform our patients and increase usage of our website.
The efforts to start a social media page/account are minimal and the upkeep of postings and usage are also minimal when it comes to the time involved. We have been satisfied with the entrance into the market and will continue to perfect our methods. I would add a few words of caution to those of you who are currently using social networking for you business. Make sure the person with the responsibility of posting and monitoring other's postings to your site is dedicated to checking your site daily. We have had only a few inappropriate postings, but we get emails immediately when something is posted to the site. We have removed the postings almost immediately and have had no negative repercussions from any of these postings or removals. Also, be creative in what you are doing and enjoy venturing into a new realm of communications for your practice.