Finding the Right Patients with Authentic Marketing FAQ

With any luck, you caught our most recent webinar where we talked about the importance of an authentic approach to marketing and discussed some of the best practices to maket your clinic. (If not, you can catch the replay here.) Our audience always brings great questions, and far too many to get to during the allotted time. So, we’ve answered them here. 

Social Media

We have 42 locations; some were acquired, while some were started by us. Each location currently has its own Instagram and Facebook page. Would it be more efficient or optimized to have just one main page on these platforms, or is the local approach better?

The answer to this question is nuanced. Having multiple Facebook and Instagram pages for different clinics helps you appear in local search results and allows people to reach out directly to the nearest clinic to them, so there is a benefit to keeping all your accounts. On the other hand, it’s hard to find 42 people (or more) to manage 42 different social media accounts, and it can make it difficult to coordinate if you're looking to have consistent messaging and engagement across every account and location. 

There’s also the question of having to possibly rebuild your follower count if you opt for a single Facebook or Instagram account; while Facebook does allow you to request to merge pages, we can speak from experience that they can be particular. In short, the best answer is to have an active account with engaged followers, whether that’s better accomplished with one account to rule them all or individual clinic accounts with dedicated managers for each.  

Reviews

Can you expand on or give an example of review responses? Is it important to respond to every positive review?

As we cover in this blog on responding to online reviews, a great response to a positive review addresses the patient by name, thanks them for the review, and then includes a nice personal detail if possible. What it doesn’t do is go over the top in thanking the patient for the review, or trying to turn that review into a sales pitch. It certainly shouldn’t be a canned response; take the time to write a genuine thank you to your reviewer, even if it takes a couple of minutes out of your day. And yes, responding to every positive review should be the expectation; folks take the time to go on Google to write a review that helps your business—even the bad ones offer you insight into what you need to change. So responding to every review should be the standard.   

SEO

Do you have any recommendations for resources for learning the basics of SEO?

As mentioned on the webinar, Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO is a great resource for people just dipping their toes into keywords and Google rankings. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our own guide to SEO basics for rehab therapists as well; there’s plenty to learn about SEO if you're just getting started, so do all the research you can from experts in the field (like our friends at Moz.   

Email

When sending an email blast for specific body parts, should this be done monthly?

Finding the right email cadence is more art than science; ultimately, your audience will tell you how often they want to get information from you based on their open and click-through rates (the percentage of people clicking on the links or buttons in your emails). Starting out at monthly and seeing how the response to your email is might give you some indication of the right frequency. If you’re getting good open rates (anything above 30% is traditionally considered good, with 40-50% considered great) and strong click-through rates (in healthcare, 0.88% is average), you might consider sending emails every two weeks to see if they get the same reception. If you see a dip in opens or clicks, it’s a sign that you might be sending too frequently.