One of the largest changes that has come about during the last two decades are the shift from traditional marketing to online marketing methods. The Internet, becoming so prevalent, has become the driving force of economies all across the world. It should come as no surprise that many medical facilities, thus, choose to utilize the Internet in their efforts to secure new patients for their practices. Finding professionals to help with this is great, but it is also important to know some of the basics of both owning a website and marketing that website before you go on a search to find someone to fill that void for you. Without the proper knowledge base you are going to be running the serious risk of choosing the wrong services.
The very basic things that you need to do in order to take advantage of online marketing in this way are fairly simple to explain. You will have to have a website built for your facility to begin with. That is always going to be the very first step. You should have a professional do this. Choose a good designer and then choose a good coder. The designer is going to create the basic design and layout of your site and the coder is going to be the one who actually writes the code to make the site function. In all likelihood, you will need someone to create some payment systems and a database to go with the website as well, so you will have to keep all of that in mind moving forward. The only thing remaining once you have your website designed and coded is to choose a company to begin marketing your website.
Website Basics
Here are some basic things to keep in mind when you are trying to put your website together:
• You need to have a landing page that online ads and some marketing links will send people. This page is specifically designed to take advantage of the interest of potential leads and to push them through your sales funnel.
• Your site needs to have multiple pages. Each page should describe something specific. Common pages are the home page, the services page, the about page, and a sales/contact page.
• Contact information. You need to have contact information everywhere on your website. If you do not have that, then you are simply wasting your time trying to get clients. Anytime they get the urge to call you or contact you in any way they should be able to do that immediately. They should be able to see your information right in front of them and use it to contact you immediately.
Website Marketing Basics
The marketing of a website is not as simple as it was when the Internet first began to take a foothold on the public conscience. Web marketing is something which is very complex and there are factors which are literally adding to that complexity every day.
Here are some of the basics of website marketing:
• Focus on one thing at a time – This is extremely important. Since website marketing has so many aspects, you want to do one thing at a time. Once that first thing has become perfect, then you can work on changing other things and moving on. This is an important thing to keep in mind because, as many people already know, it is literally a self-defeating job to try to do everything all at once. So take your time, come up with a plan and a rough timeline, and get to work in the proper order.
• Do not neglect your copy – Once you get someone to your site, you will have to have something there which will provide a reason for them to stay there. If you do not, then you are going to have problems in the future. There is literally no reason to attract people to your website to begin with if you have no method of keeping them there once they have been attracted. With that in mind, you should do everything that is in your power to try and hold the attention of visitors once they come to your site.
• Adwords – Always focus on Adwords when you can. Having a budget for this is extremely important, especially when you consider the fact that Google is one of the largest advertising agencies in the entire world. Adwords is your way of getting in on that action. For a specified budget per day, you can have your ad appear next to search results for specific keywords. You only pay for what ends up getting clicked, so you can be sure that anyone who clicks your link is also going to have been interested. Paying for what you get is a huge benefit to this type of marketing. Even a 10% conversion rate will be huge in boosting your business.
• Organic Marketing – Organic marketing is unpaid marketing. This is the culmination of the copy, the information, and the blogs that you have on your site. These are leads that you did not spend much time and money to obtain. This is information that you are giving out for free and, in return, hoping to get back increase in web traffic and interested parties. This is a great way to get yourself ranked on search engines as well, over time. These leads are the kind that you want to have coming into your site.
• SEO – SEO stands for search engine optimization. Search engines are always changing, but they use some specific algorithms for determining the relevance of your content and site to searchers online. This means that, if you play your cards right, you can target your site and your content to exactly who you want to see it. This is a great way to reach your clients and to expand the prospects of your business as a whole. SEO is something which simply cannot be ignored when trying to market your website to the people you want to see it.
