how to market a doctors office 2015 guide

+TidalWaveMarketing
5 Tudor City Place
New York, NY 10017
Phone: 347-690-5571
E-Mail: web@tidalwavemarketing.net
Web: www.tidalwavemarketing.net
Medical Marketing
How to market a doctors office
2015

+Tidal Wave Marketing
Medical Marketing Agency
2
Email: web@tidalwavemarketing.net
Phone: 347-690-5571
One Size Does Not Fit All
This guide is an outline to successfully marketing within the medical
industry. A key point to remember while going through this guide is that
these techniques and suggestions must be tailored to your industry,
location and demographic. Every practice has different goals for their
marketing efforts.
Marketing Plans
No matter your industry a marketing plan needs to be meticulously laid
out. Before getting into specific marketing channels and outlets time must
be spent understanding the practice itself. We will describe the four
steps above and how they relate to a medical practice.
Once we have a strategy defined and ready to be put in place, we will
then go into specific marketing techniques and the most effective
channels to use.
Measure Your Success
Educate and Align Your Staff
Develop and Outline Your Strategy
Define Your Goals

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Step 1: Define Your Goals
Defining your goals is the first priority. Are you looking to increase
patient volumes? Highlight a new procedure? Bring brand awareness to a
practice or center? How you answer those questions with change the
approach to your marketing plan. The examples and questions below are
based on the goal of increasing patient volumes.
A successful marketing campaign will not just bring you more patients; it
will bring you more QUALITY patients. Through a mixture of financial
research and personal preference of the doctor you should clearly define
what your ideal patient would be. Below are some questions that should
be answered to help define your practice goals:
Doctor Preference:
1. What is your ideal patient?
2. What demographic are you catering towards?
3. What specific procedures or treatments do you want to do?
4. How many patients do you want to see each day/week/month?
5. How do you want your practice to be perceived? (Ex. Boutique, High
Volume, Specialist, etc.)
6. Do you want to be an in-network or out-of-network provider?
7. Do you want to accept insurance at all?

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Often times doctors believe their patient demographic is not something
that would be captured with digital marketing. According to Google
research studies, Health and Wellness search volumes are almost
identical across all generations.
Financial Questions:
1. What are your highest paying procedures or treatments?
2. What insurance pays the highest percentage of billed amount?
3. Where did those patients with high paying insurance come from?
Referrals? Online source? Private Company?

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These are just a few questions to start with that will help clearly define
your goals. Having a concise focus on patient type, insurance, procedure
and treatments will help greatly in defining your marketing efforts.
Step 2: Develop and Outline Your Strategy
Your strategy will be based around your goals. Taking the goal of
increasing patient volumes as our example you must develop a strategy
that you are comfortable handling and investing in.
Based on some of the answers to the previous steps questions a target
patient volume should be determined.
What is your average revenue for the “ideal patient” that you are
focusing on? Take that number and based on your financial needs/goal
create a target patient volume.
Daily Target –
Monthly Target –
Yearly Target –
It is important to remember that this number is only a target. It may
fluctuate based on insurance, practice changes and things outside of
your control. But by creating this target it provides a tangible number for
your marketing efforts to aim at.

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When outlining your strategy the initially determined goal with sway
what outlets you will focus on. If you are branding, re-branding or
launching a location or service more traditional marketing avenues such
as TV, print, and newspaper may be incorporated. With this goal
viewership or impression make take first priority or as least be co-
prioritized with direct patient bookings.
With our goal of increasing patient volumes it is more difficult to draw a
direct correlation from traditional marketing methods to patient
bookings compared to digital marketing methods.
The next two areas to determine are based around time and revenue.
The intuitive answer that first comes to mind is, immediately. But you
need to objectively look at your practice and determine at what time
frame are you comfortable with seeing a notable uptick in patient
volumes.
The reason that this question is important is because existing and non-
existing marketing efforts that may or may not be in place can greatly
effect the time a particular channel needs to succeed. If you already have
a doctor/practice website in place with long-term value that will aid in
seeing a quicker turnaround. Based on your needs and what could
already be in place you should then determine which outlets to focus on.
Below is a general overview of some sample outlets and there time on
return.

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Channels:
Doctor / Practice Website: Long term (for non-branded keyword)
Medical Directories/Review Outlets: Mid range term
Paid Marketing Channels (Ex. Adwords, Yelp, ZocDoc): Immediate
Having an idea about the immediacy of your marketing efforts can help
determine whether or not to remove certain outlets or shift more time
into one channel.
The next question in laying out your strategy is tied to the time
requirements and its budget. Of course as long as there is a certain
percentage return on your investment the budget would be limitless. The
idea to determine a comfortable budget ties into the answer to your
question on time. If you are comfortable with part of your budget
building an online presence for you, such as a practice website, that will
generally take longer to see returns on then you will also generally have
a higher budget.
A budget is relative to each doctor and practice and it is important to
establish one that you are comfortable with. Additionally it is important to
have some consistency throughout the initial stages to easily be able to
measure the different channels efficacy. Setting a budget can quickly

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become overwhelming. Between a blend of availability to invest and time
needed to see a return you can build a comprehensive budget specific to
your practice. Below is an itemized list of some possible expenses.
Marketing Expenses:
Brand Development
Website Development
Content Creation
Profile / Directory claim and build
Paid Marketing Channel Management
Reputation / Review system creation and management
Building or sourcing a developer to create a modern RESPONSIVE site is
important. If your site is not mobile and tablet friendly you are missing
out on high volumes of traffic and could potentially be penalized by
search engines. Additionally mobile researchers are 10% more likely to
book appointment then traditional desktop researchers.

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Step 3: Educate and Align Your Staff
One of the main objectives in creating and marketing a digital presence
for your practice is to give the prospective online patient researching
you a glimpse into what your physical practice is like. If your online
presence is able to make a patient comfortable, fell welcomed and
already have a positive attitude towards your capabilities it has
succeeded greatly.
Where a connection can be lost in when that online patient makes their
first physical connection with your office. Be it scheduling an
appointment online or calling the office that digital feeling must carry
over into their physical experience. This has two very large implications
towards your practices success.

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1. Customer Service – patients are given numerous platforms to voice
their concerns, pains, reviews, content and any other emotion. They
are also inundated with a “perceived” large amount of choice. They
are one click or page view away from searching for or booking with
another doctor. Giving the perception of a high level of patient care
digitally should be carried over when the patient connects in
person.
2. Explaining your services or specialty – the initial inquiry from a
potential patient usually is made with your staff. What is it that they
both have in common? No medical training. Like any private
company your practice is a business. Your potential “customers” or
patients first line of contact should be with an educated member of
your practice. Your staff should clearly and concisely be able to
answers questions about you, your point of differentiation, and the
areas that you focus in. Such as:
a. Your medical background, training, and board certifications
b. Any associations, medical groups or medical placements you
hold
c. The procedures that you offer, and experience with them
Below is a line graph showing the average number of searches a patient
does online before committing to contact a doctor or practice. If you have
made it through their entire digital research process you must make sure
not to lose them at the point of contact.

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The education of your staff is so key that is could be hindering your
efforts in bringing in new patients without you realizing. Take the below
conversation for example:
Caller: Hi, is this Dr. Smith’s Office?
Office Staff: Yes it is, what are you calling about?
Caller: I am looking for an ENT that specializes in rhinoplasty. Is that
something Dr. Smith does?
Office Staff: Yes, Dr. Smith specializes in the nose and performing
rhinoplasty procedures.
Caller: Great. I was recommended to find someone that does open
rhinoplasty procedures. Does the doctor offer that?
Office Staff: I’m sorry, no. All his rhinoplasty the doctors’ procedures
are considered closed.
Caller: Oh ok, thank you for time anyway. Good-bye.

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The office staff was polite and handled the customer service aspect of the
calling well. But did they have a clear understanding of the doctors’
experience and procedures? No. We have seen these types of phone
calls hundreds of times and had them going unnoticed for a long time.
After the staff is educated on some experience, certifications and
distinctions in the procedures offered by the doctor the conversation
goes differently.
Caller: Hi, is this Dr. Smith’s Office?
Office Staff: Yes it is. What are you calling about?
Caller: I am looking for an ENT that specializes in rhinoplasty. Is that
something Dr. Smith does?
Office Staff: Yes, Dr. Smith is highly experienced in rhinoplasty
procedures. He has been performing them for over 10 years. He is also
double board certified in otolaryngology and facial plastics.
Caller: Great. I was recommended to find someone that does open
rhinoplasty procedures. Does the doctor?
Office Staff: Dr. Smith only performs a closed rhinoplasty.
Throughout all his experience he has always preferred this method for all
his patients. Would you like to schedule a consultation with the doctor so
he can explain your different options?

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Phone: 347-690-5571
Caller: That would be great. Can I come in tomorrow?
Office Staff: Yes, we have 3pm available. Does that work?
Caller: Yes, I will see you tomorrow then. Thank you, good-bye.
Which method do you think helps bring in more potential patients?
Step 4: Measure Your Success
It is important to create a system where you can have some measure of
your marketing efforts level of success. Many practices are simply
content if the plan as a whole is a success and the patient volumes and
revenue are increasing. This is a top-level measure of the success of your
practice and can be enough if the margins are high enough.
Our recommendation is always to place some points of conversion into
the plan to have a better understanding of the success of each channel
within the plan. Below are a few examples of some measures you can
implement to track your successes and failures.

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1. Online Appointment Scheduling – with goal or event tracking
2. Call Forwarding – use of a masking number to measure a particular
sources inquiries
3. Secondary / Backline Phone Placement – use of secondary office
lines as inbound call line for a particular source
4. Key Conversion Pages – office location or contact information with
goal or event tracking
5. Email Collection or Newsletter Signup – if you are collecting or
distributing an email list

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Marketing Channels and Techniques
Researching, building and maintaining a digital marketing campaign
within the medical industry is very unique. There are many options and
outlets within the 3 key areas to focus. But having an understanding of
each, as its own interconnected entity is paramount to seeing their
necessity and use.
Uniformed Practice / Doctor Information
There are numerous sources that pull businesses information and feed
that out to hundreds of business directory sites. Google has stated that
over 70% of medical searches were name specific. Patients are looking
for you or your practice by name. With multiple review and directory
outlets doctors must ensure that key contact information like address,
name spelling, specialty and more are up-to-date and uniformed across
all those outlets.
Focused Marketing Channels
Reputation Development and Management
Practice / Doctor Information

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Phone: 347-690-5571
The best method is to use the template file that Google provides in their
article here and keep this uniformed in any business submission or
description.
Google Business Listing Article -
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3370250?hl=en
When this area is overlooked many times you could be losing direct off-
line referrals or be losing that referral to another doctor doing online
marketing towards your specialty.
While business listings and medical directories often contain the same
information it is important to realize their difference. Often times medical
directory sites like HealthGrades, Doctor.com, and Vitals use a
combination of data sources. This is your business or practice
information along with your medical data provided in NPI databases. The
source of the data can vary state to state but often times you already have
an account with profile information that you can update immediately.
National NPI Database –
https://nppes.cms.hhs.gov/NPPESRegistry/NPIRegistryHome.do - can be
updated by phone
New York State Physician Search –
http://www.nydoctorprofile.com/dispatch?action=display_search_parameters -
attached to ecommerce state account. Varies state to state.

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Phone: 347-690-5571
New York State Health Commerce System –
https://commerce.health.state.ny.us/public/hcs_login.html - physician
information section. Online source varies state to state.
Ensuring your information is up to date in all these areas is important. But
fully utilizing the profiles within each medical specific directory is also
important. Each site has different options in terms of what can he
highlighted and what kind of content you can showcase. This is where
distinguishing between business directories and a health directory is
important.
Going into the individual health directories and completely optimizing
the accounts is pivotal but also developing unique content in the
“About/Biography” sections and “Procedures” section is important too.
These explanations about you should be unique because you need to
consider them an extension of your website. If you are just copying
information and pasting across all of them, search engines can see this as
duplicate content and suppress the listings.
As you can see below branded medical sites are shown as having the
highest percentage of time spent on them when in the research phase.

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Phone: 347-690-5571
When someone is looking for you by name or practice you want to have
control over as many of the listings as possible. By crafting unique
content it allows as many of these medical profiles to rank along with
your website. This gives you control over a high percentage of your
digital reputation. While the content should be unique there are a few
key points to keep uniformed in the descriptions.
1. Doctor or Practice Name
2. Practice Address
3. Practice Phone Number
4. 3-5 Keywords that cover your area of specialty or procedures (Ex.
Deviated Septum Surgery, Sports Chiropractor, HIV specialist, etc.)

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Phone: 347-690-5571
This is information about you and your practice that should never
change. If it does change that a complete digital update would be
required.
Reputation Development and Management
The meandering path of patient research can go through dozens of
“digital touch points” where you are being judged by prospective
patients before they even meet you. Your outstanding patient care and
command of specialty must extend from the walls of your office. Firstly,
simple paths must be established for your patients to review you in key
outlets. Secondly, those and other source data outlets must be constantly
monitored to maintain your positive reputation. Medical reputation
management is key to building the first connection of patient trust.
In a recent online study the reputation of a doctor was placed at a higher
priority than whether it was clear if the patients insurance was accepted.

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Phone: 347-690-5571
While there are hundreds of reviews sites the top three regardless of
industry are:
Google Business Listing - https://www.google.com/business/
Bing Business Listing - https://www.bingplaces.com/
Yelp Business Listing - https://biz.yelp.com/

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Phone: 347-690-5571
Within the medical field there are some more specific signals to search
engines that a listing is pointing to a doctor. These have been identified
as the top ten sources.
While you cannot post reviews on all these sources it is important to
claim and optimize them all and monitor the ones you can. After the top
three listed above these should be focused on creating natural, positive
reviews on.
Collecting emails can be a helpful tool in many regards. But the easiest
and most direct use is for asking patients to review you in a specific
outlet. If you have the time and resources within your practice is it best to

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individually select who you are going to request a review from. This is
beneficial for two reasons.
1. You can select the people who are most likely to post because of the
rapport you built with them
2. You can include something specific to that person in the email. We
found it very effective to mention something personal that they
shared in your meeting them. Whether is it a birthday, sports team,
trip or restaurant personalizing the request for a review helps get
more and impresses the patient further.
If you do not have the time or resources to dedicate to this personalized
approach there are many services that can help in creating and
distributing to mass email lists.
Real Self – http://www.realself.com/ - can send bulk emails through your
account
HealthGrades – http://www.healthgrades.com/ - prints review cards that
can be distributed in person
MailChimp – http://mailchimp.com/ - email gathering and tracking
service

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Phone: 347-690-5571
There are numerous services and ways to build up your online reviews.
The most important thing is that you are getting them naturally and
consistently. More recent reviews give a better signal to potential
patients and to search engines, which can greatly affect your rankings.
Focused Marketing Channels
Your doctor or practice website should get the most exposure. After that
the top three results usually interchange between Yelp, LinkedIN,
Google Plus, Healthgrades and several more. Maintaining your
information on those sites will capture people searching directly for you.
Marketing yourself to specific procedures and ailments within these
channels will allow you to capture patients looking for your expertise.
The idea of focused marketing channels relates to the idea of being
focused in terms of what is it that you are showcasing. What procedures
you offer, what ailments you treat and what medical specialty you are
under. This focus can relate to several marketing channels, which are but
not limited to:
1. Content – articles, photos, videos and graphics
2. Google and Bing Adwords – search results ad placement
3. Featured Doctor or Listing – within review and medical directories
4. Re-targeting – focused ad placement to past site visitors
5. Social Media – ad placement, showcase profiles and online
connections

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The methodology of how you target your content or specify the
demographic targeting in paid ad placement is the same. There are three
tiers that your promoting should cover.
The image below is a snapshot of how people research and eventually
book medical appointment online. Where most doctor or practice sites
are “external” in the sense of high promotion of brand and practice
specific treatments, these are the two lowest volume areas in terms of
patient research.
Layman terms and Symptom Targeting
Speciality and Procedure Targeting
Brand Targeting

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1. Brand Targeting – This is the simplest and most direct form of
targeting. These are a person already searching for you by name,
brand, address, phone number and anything else that is unique to
only your practice. Capturing these searches should show the
quickest results. This relates to the uniformed business / doctor
listings that was covered in the beginning of this guide. There is an
added benefit when marketing for terms that are unique to your
practice. You are capturing additional space in the results pages
that you control directly. Often times people may be brought to your
profile within another companies website. To have access to or
contact you through the other companies website there is often
times a barrier of account creation or some other additional step. By
capturing and driving branded traffic to a site you control
completely you remove any barrier to contact.

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2. Specialty and Procedure Targeting – This is one step further away
from your branded terms but directly relates to your medical
specialty and specific procedures that you offer. This is where you
will determine what category or categories you want to showcase
and market your practice as. Also what exact procedures you want
to be offered. Examples such as:
a. Specialties
i. Otolaryngologist / ENT
ii. Facial Plastic Surgeon
1. Both A and B if you are offering functional and
cosmetic care
iii. Infectious Disease Specialist
iv. Ophthalmologist
v. Podiatrist
b. Procedures
i. Septoplasty
ii. Rhinoplasty
iii. Testosterone Replacement Therapy
iv. Cataract Surgery
v. Plantar Fasciitis
These are medical categories and terms for your specialty and the
procedures that you offer. It is important to extensively layout any of the
possible labels that you could be put under and any and all services that
you offer. This list should be consulted on the build of every new
marketing outlet so all key taxonomies and tags can be highlighted.

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3. Layman terms and Symptoms targeting – this is the category you
should spend the most of your time on. Online keyword research
with free tools like Google Keyword Planner -
(https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner) and Bing Keyword
Volumes - (http://www.bing.com/toolbox/keywords) will be
helpful. Additionally asking your patients what terms they associate
to your specialty and how they went about researching their
medical needs would also be extremely helpful. Below are a few
examples of questions you should ask yourself to help create a list of
keywords to target:
a. What are the signs and symptoms that cause the ailments and
procedures that you offer? – Examples follow.
i. Chronic Sinus Infections
ii. Deformed Nose
iii. Vision loss as you age
iv. Muscle loss from disease
b. What are some of the things someone might be experiencing
that could be a precursor to your specialty? – Examples follow.
i. Puffy eyes and dark circles
ii. Partial blindness
iii. Unable to regain muscle
c. What are some things that a potential patient might be going
through? - Examples follow.
i. Excessive snoring
ii. Extreme vision loss

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iii. Floaters in eye
iv. Extreme fatigue and muscle pain
d. What are non-medical terms associated to my specialty and
procedures? - Examples follow.
i. Nose Doctor
ii. Nose Surgeon
iii. Eye Surgeon
iv. Foot Specialist
Once a comprehensive list is built out covering the three areas of brand,
specialty, symptoms and layman terms this should be your reference
when setting up any focused marketing channel. Whether you are
writing content, creating Adwords groups or choosing taxonomies to
market, your list should be laced throughout all of them.

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Overview
Each of the three areas are noticeably different in there approach and
execution and should be given ample time to research and structure
separately. But it is also important to understand the interconnectedness
of them as well. Determining which areas to place an emphasis on will be
unique to your practice and its needs. While these tools and strategies
can be implemented by anyone it is our suggestion to consult and work
with a specialist in the medical marketing field.
Thank you for taking time to read the 2015 Guide, How to Market a
Doctors Office, written and presented by Tidal Wave Marketing.
To contact Tidal Wave Marketing, Medical/Doctor Marketing specialists
you can reach us at the information below.
Phone: 347-690-5571
Website: http://www.tidalwavemarketing.net/contact-us/
You can also follow us online to learn about medical marketing articles,
insight, posts, and papers at:
Google Plus Page -
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/105882932904000777259/+TidalWaveMarketingNewYork/posts
LinkedIn Page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/tidal-wave-marketing
Thank You

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