Like us on Facebook! If you’ve visited any company or organization’s website or blog in the past couple of years, you’ve seen that plea.
Every business wants to be liked on Facebook – for now, at least – because adults have overtaken teens and college students as the social giant’s biggest audience. There’s a lot of potential revenue tied to getting your social pages seen, liked and shared.
But therein lies the rub: You can have tons of Facebook fans or Twitter followers, and never see a penny of profit from them. They may frequent your page, but unless you have the inbound marketing structure to support your social activity, your visitors will stay just that – visitors. They’ll never get any farther in the life cycle toward becoming a patient or customer.
Healthcare marketing poses a particular challenge in the social media universe. You want your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other channel to engage, educate, reassure and inspire … yet your content must adhere to strict standards regarding patient privacy and liability.
But for every risk associated with social media in healthcare marketing, you’ll find opportunities to build your brand, enhance your credibility and connect with the people most likely to want your services.
It all takes time, of course – but the days of “quick fix” healthcare advertising are largely ended, anyway. Current and potential patients no longer respond to direct mail, coupon books, radio or Yellow Pages like they used to. Instead, they’re looking for information online.
At the heart of all healthcare marketing online is content – high-value, well-produced, spam-free websites, blogs, testimonials, articles, videos and, yes, social media pages.
This content, designed with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, draws the attention of Google searches and places your pages high on the search result pages.
Sharing your content on social media gets it seen and shared more effectively, but that’s just part of the process. Your social sites must also help your visitors take the next step. Within those pages and that content is a call to action – an invitation for visitors to continue to your website’s landing page.
Here is where they can exchange contact and other information for more valuable or exclusive content or offers; their information becomes the basis of your lead-generating efforts.
The credibility built through your social media content and the information your visitors offer on your landing page set the stage for a continued relationship. Personalized emails and other efforts take your leads to the end of the sales funnel – the point where yesterday’s casual visitor becomes today’s new patient.
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