Branding: The Underrated Step to Building a Successful Healthcare Practice

By: Aiman Ghori

Why Build a Brand?

With hundreds of healthcare professionals providing similar services and carrying similar qualifications, skill, and experience, it’s difficult to convince prospective patients why they should choose your practice over another. This is where branding and marketing communications come in to help polish how your practice is viewed.

Branding is essentially the image your healthcare service conveys to an audience. Good branding practices will contribute positively to your practice’s overall reputation. Patients will choose to go to a service provider they can relate to and trust, which builds brand loyalty. Loyal patients will then be more likely to refer trusted services to others, and this gives your practice a competitive edge over other similar providers.

Related Article: How to Turn Your Company in a Killer Brand Name

Design: Branding Basics

If you have an established business or practice, it’s important to find out the reputation you already have. A simple Google search can reveal how patients see your clinic and what they think of your services. Key elements to look for are, what patients already like about your service, and where does it require improvement? This will help you later, when selecting the qualities and/or services you want to empathize through your brand. It is also a good idea to look up your competitors, identify their brand, and see what they’re doing successfully to build that brand. This will give you a better picture of the marketplace and what you’re up against. This could lead to identifying an untapped niche audience you could possibly target.

Search Engine Optimization: What You Should Know As A Dental Practitioner

 

By: Will Koziey-Kronas   As a dental practitioner, any investigation into dental marketing has no doubt involved encounters with the term "SEO" - and for good reason. "SEO", short for "search engine optimization", is a crucial component of a practice's marketing presence. To understand why, we have to start from the beginning: how are prospective patients finding dental practices?

Alongside referrals, another predominant source of patient traffic to dental practices are search engines. Prospective patients will generally search for the service they desire along with their location, such as "dental veneers Mississauga". From there - at best - they may browse the first two or three pages of results before finding a suitable practice. At worst, they won't make it past the first page, or even the first few results.

Now consider that your geographical area is likely home to well over ten competing practices. Then consider that search engines only display about ten results per page. The challenge is apparent: if your site isn't appearing within the first page or two, you miss out on a vital source of traffic - and with more than 10 other practices vying for those limited spots, the competition is stiff.

The snapshot of results for a Google Maps search of "Dentist Mississauga" (each red icon marks a practice). With that much location-specific competition, you need SEO to stand out.

 
This is the role of SEO: deliberately tune your practice's site so that it appears in the first few pages for searches such as "dental service + your location". So where does SEO begin, and what does it look like?

Top 3 Digital Marketing Trends in 2017

By: Noha Abou-Hashima

The digital world moves fast. And it can be overwhelming to keep track of all that happens in this fast-paced environment. So to mark our passage into the second half of 2017, we summarize the top digital marketing techniques for the year, and add our own perspective on some of the latest developments.

Content Marketing and Data Collection

For the past few years, digital marketers focused on tailoring their content (advertisements, promotions, emails, social media posts, etc) to their consumer base with the help of data mining. According to data from Smart Insights, content marketing remains the number one digital marketing technique preferred by marketers.



Although personalized marketing is not new, marketers in 2017 have shifted their focus from creating static content to generating interactive content that engages their audience and provides them with a more meaningful experience online. Research by Content Marketing Institute shows that almost half (46%) of marketers used interactive content early in 2017. Used by 52% of marketers, infographics were the most popular type of interactive content in 2017. Infographics were mainly used for content marketing purposes, as a way to make large amounts of information more palpable and interesting. However, in terms of achieving content marketing objectives, contests were rated as being the most effective during the first stage of awareness/discovery.

The Facts and Controversies of Google's New Ad Blocker

By: Will Koziey-Kronas

Ask anyone what Google is, and you're likely to hear "a search engine company" or "information providers". Ask a digital marketer, however, and you'll get a consistent response: "an advertising company". It's true that Google is a search engine, and a handy map, among many other forms of information distribution - but Google is above all else an advertising company, with 89 percent of their 60 billion a year profits coming from ads.

That's why it seemed odd for Google to confirm last month that they're developing an ad blocking extension for Chrome - ad blockers, like the popular Adblock Plus and uBlock - block ads from displaying on sites. Why would an ad company have any interest in making their own? In this post, we'll answer that question by looking at the facts and controversies you should know about Google's new ad blocker.

The Facts

Google's new extension has made the rounds under the title of "ad blocker" - but it's technically an ad filter. Whereas Adblock Plus removes all ad content (with exceptions the user can determine), Google's extension only filters out ads deemed unacceptably intrusive and annoying. That leaves us with two questions: what constitutes unacceptable annoyance, and who gets to decide?

The body of ad formats considered unacceptable are derived from an industry group called the Coalition For Better Ads. The group consists of several dozen digital advertising conglomerates, including Google and Facebook, who united to set new, better standards for web advertisements. Thus far, they’ve identified 12 ad formats that "rank lowest across a range of user experience factors", both on mobile and desktop.

How Dental Practices Can Benefit from Online Video Marketing

By: Noha Abou-Hashima

Video marketing is becoming more popular on the Internet than ever before. 78% of users watch videos online every week. 55% watch online videos everyday. Studies show that video content can increase conversion rates by up to 80%. That's a pretty big percentage. And if these numbers aren't convincing enough, consider what this dentist had to say about the benefits of using video marketing for her dental practice:

“I've had a lot of new patients join our office because of the feel they got from our website,” explained Dr. Lavigne. "Patients have commented that they felt like they knew me before booking an appointment. It's scary to choose a new provider, whether it's a dentist, an internist, or a hair stylist! The more they know about me and my practice, the more educated a decision they can make in deciding if we're the right fit for them. [...] “In 2016 patients want to be educated and informed about your practice, you and your team, and your philosophy," said Dr. Lavigne. "We've given a web personality to our practice and set ourselves apart through the use of video.”

Related article: Keeping Up with the Rise of Video Advertising

It makes sense, doesn't it? Customers looking for a service will want to gather as much information as they can about the service provider. And when it comes to dentists, knowing what to expect makes a huge difference, especially for those who already deal with dental anxiety.

The good news is that the short attention span of viewers means shorter videos, which means less work for you if you're producing them yourself. Although a better alternative is to leave the video production to a professional. Transitions, music, and other-post production changes can make a difference in how your video is perceived.

One benefit of video marketing is that it can seamlessly blend in with your current digital marketing strategy. Videos can compliment your existing website, adding to the content you already have, as well as work to improve your SEO. Additionally, you can host them on video-sharing platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo. The advantage of these platforms is that they’re online and can be linked to on your website, or blog.

Tip: Maximize your market strategy by using videos to advertise the dental services your practice offers. You can place these directly inside or outside your practice, such as in-window, in the waiting area, or in an elevator if your practice has one. Note that the content of your video has to align with the medium you plan on using.

Now let's talk about content you can place in your videos.