Cary began her career working for an advertising and public relations agency after graduating Cum Laude from Lynn University with a BA in Journalism and Mass Communications. Cary has successfully helped companies create and implement marketing and social media strategies, and developed anything from brochures to websites.

At Whitecoat Designs Cary manages all active creative projects and helps doctors'/clients' visions come to life. When Cary is not working, she enjoys spending time outdoors with her two beautiful children and husband.

Internal marketing is a strategy that focuses on maximizing patient retention through consistent communication and of course, good patient care. Tools such as social media and online review sites make it easier than ever for practices to reap the rewards of investing in internal marketing in order to earn the illustrious patient-to-patient referral.

Most business owners, whether they run a restaurant or a clothing boutique, will agree that it’s more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to retain current ones. The same goes for patients. Make no mistake, your practice is a business and that means treating your patients as valuable customers. Here are three key components of implementing a successful internal marketing strategy for your practice:

1. Stay Top of Mind: You’ve probably heard the saying “out of sight, out of mind”. Staying top of mind with patients is the best way to keep them (1) thinking about you so there’s a greater chance they’ll come in for more than the once a year visit, and/or (2) talking about you so they’re more likely to make a referral. For good or for bad, we’ve entered a new age in medicine where patients will Google just about anything. In fact, 59 percent of U.S. adults searched online for health information in the past year according to a 2012 study by Pew Research Center. Because patients are so digitally savvy (also known as e-patients), this presents a unique opportunity for doctors to now communicate with patients in a way that’s convenient, cost-effective, and timely.

Social media is one example of how practices can take advantage of this e-patient revolution. Start simple by just trying one platform at a time such as Facebook. Doctors are often intimidated by concerns of HIPAA and other legalities but with thousands of practices now using social media to communicate with patients, there are plenty of resources out there to help minimize such risks. Use social media to stay top of mind with patients by posting links to educational articles, helpful health tips and practice news.

E-newsletters can be used in the same way. Now with either free or extremely inexpensive e-newsletter programs like Mail Chimp, Constant Contact and iContact, it makes it easy for practices to send out monthly or quarterly communications to patients. Just be sure to get permission to use patient emails first. For those practices with a patient portal, you can also use the messaging feature to blast out announcements.

In order to reach patients who aren’t so digitally connected, try ideas like mailing a postcard that contains a magnet for the refrigerator or a letter wishing them a New Year and reminding them of annual health checks. The options are endless but the point is to find ways to keep your patients connected beyond the waiting room.

2. Give Patients a Reason to Come Back: Communication tools like social media and e-newsletters are also a great way to spread the word about new or existing services within your practice. When it comes to marketing, if you’re not saying it then you’re not doing it. That means if you aren’t telling patients about your other services then they probably don’t know they even exist. Sometimes patients need a service but don’t realize your practice performs it (such as mole removals at a family practice), and sometimes you offer a service that patients don’t know they need (such as NovaSure at an OB/GYN practice). This is when you have to put on your marketing hat and take the opportunity to upsell patients on other services you offer.

I see many medical practices investing in ancillary services in order to increase revenue (from weight loss to in-office x-ray), but I’m surprised how few actually market these services. If you take the mentality of “if you build it, they will come”, you may be waiting a very long time. Healthcare has become increasingly competitive and the days of simply hanging a sign over your door are long gone.

You already have a captive audience in your current patients so take the opportunity to better communicate your services. Don’t make the mistake of sharing your message only once though. Sometimes doctors think if they told their patients once then they already know. If that were the case, then we wouldn’t see the same commercials play on TV over and over. Patients need to hear a message several times before they commit it to memory. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself.

3. Make it a Positive Experience: Ok, so you probably knew this one was coming… the patient experience. It’s a waste of time and funds to implement an internal marketing plan if you have no hope of retaining patients because their experience at your office was negative. From the way your staff answers the phone to color of your walls, it’s all part of the patient experience. Your staff needs to understand that they are not just part of the administrative or clinical departments but that they are a part of marketing as well. Whether your staff is checking a patient out or drawing their blood, every interaction shapes the patient experience. And with the internet, every experience is up for scrutiny.

I’ve seen far too many great doctors lose patients due to bad staffing. Invest in customer training for your staff, don’t put up with negative attitudes, and you may even want to consider an incentive plan. I’ve seen plenty of practices incentivize their staff for scoring certain levels on patient satisfaction surveys and even for upselling services to patients.

Finally, listen to your patients. Your patients can be the best source of ideas to make your practice better. Whether the ideas come from patient surveys, your social media page or even online review sites, take the feedback to heart and be open to change.

Customer service is the new public relations. That means that by responding to complaints online with practical solutions, patients will be far more impressed that you took action than the fact that the complaint happened in the first place.

A good marketing strategy starts from the inside out. By staying top of mind with patients, giving them a reason to come back for other services, and making their experience positive, you’ll create an effective internal marketing strategy that will enhance the ROI on your external marketing campaigns, and thus make the most impact on the growth of your practice.

About Amanda Kanaan:
Amanda Kanaan is the Founder and President of WhiteCoat Designs – a medical marketing agency providing doctors with online marketing services as medical website design, search engine optimization (SEO), social media management, e-newsletters, blog writing, graphic design, referring physician outreach and more. To contact Amanda or to learn more about WhiteCoat Designs, visit www.whitecoat-designs.com.

The good news is that marketing to current patients is often the most cost-effective form of marketing, because it can be achieved through strategies as simple as improved communications. Some examples of ways you can utilize these communications include; enhancing patient satisfaction by sending timely updates about early closings due to inclement weather, increasing repeat business by informing patients of other services your practice offers, or positioning yourself as the medical expert by sharing or commenting on recent health news and articles.  

Here’s a three step process of how you can use one message or article across three different communication mediums to save time and costs when marketing to current patients:

Step 1 – Write a Blog Post: I recommend that every practice incorporate a blog into their website. Most practices title their blog something along the lines of “News and Updates” and will have their most recent posts listed on the homepage. It’s a quick and easy way to get a message to your patients, add fresh content to your site, feature services, and even share educational articles. 

It’s also really good for your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts to enhance your Google rankings. The average blog should be about 400 words in order to get the full benefit from SEO. Read articles online to learn how to optimize your blog with proper keywords. Or you can always hire an SEO agency to do it for you.

Step 2 - Social Media: Once you’ve written your blog news/article, you can then post a link to the blog on your social media pages to act as a megaphone for announcing the message. Use social media to engage patients in the content and most importantly, get them talking about it. According to a Pew Internet Survey, 50% of all adults use social media; the fastest growing age segment of which is 50-64 years of age.

This is one of your most affordable and effective tools to spread the word to your target audience. You can even ask your peers to post it as well; for instance, if you are an infertility clinic ask the OB clinics you've befriended on Facebook to post your blog link. Just be sure you’re willing to return the favor.

Step 3 - E-Newsletter: So once you’ve written your blog and posted it on your social media channels, then the third step is to include it in an e-newsletter to your patients. If you currently aren’t collecting email addresses for patients, you should start. Email addresses are invaluable when it comes to using digital communications to stay top of mind with your patients. Not to mention, it’s something patients want; 65% of patients who use the internet say they are willing to switch to a doctor using digital communications to engage them (Pew Internet Research Group, 2011).

Using this three step process, you can take just one piece of content and deliver it across various mediums to get the most impact for your efforts. While each of these methods is extremely inexpensive, I always caution practices against thinking they are free. There is definitely time involved to carry out this strategy, and we all know time is not free. However, as compared to relying on traditional snail mail, a digital approach is much more budget-friendly, time-sensitive and preferred by most patients.

About Amanda Kanaan:
Amanda Kanaan is the President of WhiteCoat Designs – a Raleigh-based medical marketing agency providing doctors with online marketing services as medical website design, search engine optimization (SEO), social media management, blog writing, graphic design, referring physician outreach and more. To contact Amanda or to learn more about WhiteCoat Designs, visit www.whitecoat-designs.com.

www.regionalcancercare.net

By: Amanda Kanaan

A piece of marketing advice I often share with physicians is “if you’re not saying it, you’re not doing it.” That means that if you aren’t effectively communicating your services to the medical community then don’t expect referring physicians to know what you do. Specialists constantly tell me that they want more referrals. It’s probably their number one marketing wish. Yet they don’t put a plan in place to make that wish come to fruition. The simple answer to this dilemma is the addition of a physician liaison program to your medical practice.

A physician liaison’s role is to support and grow your practice by representing and promoting the practice’s clinical services, physicians and programs. Your physician liaison will become the voice of the practice in the medical community. The ultimate goal is to increase patient referrals from existing providers and secure new business from non-referring physicians.

Their main priority is not to hand out brochures and bagels, but to build meaningful relationships between you and the referrers. That’s a necessary skill of any successful liaison, and not all liaisons are created equal. A good liaison has professional training and experience and will call on your referring offices consistently, not hand out their card once a quarter.

Establishing new relationships and enhancing current relationships with referring practices are key components of a physician liaison program. The physician liaison focuses on growing new relationships by identifying the needs of the new practice and responding to the areas of concern. Enhancing established referral relationships is achieved through listening to feedback from referral providers and physicians. If problems arise, the physician liaison is available to quickly address the issues and make any necessary changes.

On a visit to a primary care practice that had previously referred patients, my physician liaison was surprised by the response that she received when speaking to a physician. As she was discussing a new service that her practice offered, the physician quickly interjected “your practice would not see my Medicaid patient last week.” Had it not been for her diligence in digging deeper into this matter and resolving the physician’s concern, the two medical practices could have dissolved their relationship and chances of future referrals along with it.

As the saying goes; out of sight, out of mind. By working closely with a physician liaison, your practice and services will be brought into the forefront of referrer’s minds on a consistent basis. This may be achieved through direct physician meetings, lunch sessions, or educational materials used to add value to the relationship and position you as the expert in your field.

Liaisons not only deliver information to referrers but also bring market intelligence back to the practice. This is a great way for you to stay on top of news within the medical community. For instance, you’ll be aware if one of your top referrers is about to retire, if a practice just added another physician that you want to meet, or if your competitor is marketing a new service. This is an advantage most physicians don’t have.

Physicians refer to practices they like, trust, and believe are both competent and successful. By adding a physician liaison to your practice, you are consistently strengthening the practices’ and physicians’ reputation among peers and in the community. Referrals from outside practices constitute the majority of new patients entering into the practice. In fact, nearly 70 percent of all referrals are sent to specialists from the primary care providers. Therefore, specialists and sub-specialists are the practices who have potential to make the greatest gains from a physician liaison program.

The addition of a physician liaison to the medical practice will not result in overnight success. Rather this is ongoing process that involves the establishment of clear goals, timelines, and commitments from both the liaison and the medical practice. While many practices feel that they could benefit from a physician liaison program, the added cost of this new employee can cause them to take pause. However, the physician liaison can be an affordable option when hired on a contract basis rather than recruiting a full-time employee.

When the benefits of growing referrals, enhancing relationships, and gaining community exposure are considered, adding a physician liaison program to your practice can be just what the doctor ordered.

Amanda Kanaan is a medical marketing specialist whose company, WhiteCoat Designs, provides physician liaison services, award-winning medical website design, online marketing and social media management to private medical practices and health care organizations. Email Amanda at amanda@whitecoat-designs.com, call at 919-714-9885 or visit the website at www.whitecoat-designs.com.

Q: “How many doorways do you have into your Medical Practice for patients to get in?”

So the next time someone asks you about the doorways into your medical practice don’t forget the telephones!

Sheridan Robinson is a practice management consultant with 15 years of experience and received her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Meredith College in 1998 and then entered the healthcare community full time. She has been involved with business office operations, managed care relations, multi site operations and patient satisfaction. She has a passion for helping practice managers and owners find creative ways to increase patient and employee satisfaction and have a positive effect on the overall success of the practice. She can be contacted at Sheridan.robinson@earthlink.net

About Applied Medical Systems:
Applied Medical Systems (AMS) provides superior medical billing, coding and practice management solutions to practices across the country. They have been caring for the health of practices since 1979. By utilizing the latest in technology-driven solutions, AMS produces claims paid with minimal denials which means expedited cash for your bottom line, literally. As a result AMS has helped providers and practices across the U.S. to maximize collections, optimize compliance and streamline operations.

See Triangle CRC's website here:

See Carolina Leg Treatment Center's website here:

To learn more about the meeting held annually at the Grove Park Inn, please visit www.ncafp.com

When: Wednesday, November 14th at 12pm-1pm

Who: North Carolina Medical Society (NCMS)

Register for free by CLICKING HERE

Social media can be a powerful tool in terms of helping physicians both gain new patients and retain current patients. However, it can also be a source of liability if used improperly. Although healthcare is innately social, policies like HIPAA have created barriers between physicians and patients who wish to interact outside the confines of the office.

Whether you cite HIPAA, a lack of time, or a lack of computer skills as reasons for not pursuing social media, there's a strong possibility you could be missing out on a major opportunity to use social media to your advantage.

In this seminar, presented by Amanda Kanaan of WhiteCoat Designs, we’ll discuss:

• Why consider social media

• What are the liabilities and how to avoid them

• What to post and how to fit it into your busy schedule

Article published by The DO - AOA's Membership Magazine

By Rose Raymond / Staff Editor 
October 8th, 2012
 
Physicians are often quick to adopt the latest tools when it comes to treating patients, but they don’t always see a need to update technology in other areas of practice management, such as marketing.

Today’s physicians can’t afford to ignore the potential impact of Web and social media engagement on their business, said Amanda Kanaan, the president of WhiteCoat Designs, a medical marketing agency that caters to physicians. Eighty percent of Internet users have searched online for health information, according to 2011 Pew Internet research. Web-shy physicians are missing chances to gain new patients, she said.

In an OMED session Monday, Kanaan gave tips to physicians on creating or revamping a website, driving traffic to it and using social media.

For physicians who have yet to dive into the Web realm personally, Kanaan offered a painlessly easy first step: Google yourself.

“Get out your computer, Google your name, Google your practice, and see what your patients are seeing when they Google you,” she said.

Physicians who haven’t done this yet will be fascinated by what they find, she said—and will see the opportunity to market themselves online. 

Read the full article
 

Kanaan will be speaking about Web Marketing for Doctors and will cover everything from medical website design tips to online marketing and social media for healthcare providers.

OMED 2012, the 117th Osteopathic Medical Conference& Exposition, will take place in San Diego from Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012, until Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012. Thousands of D.O.s across various medical specialties with gather to attend the events to be held at the San Diego Convention Center. For more information, visit www.osteopathic.org.

Kernodle Clinic West, located in Burlington, NC, is a 75,000 square foot medical facility providing services in twelve medical and surgical specialties, fully supported by Kernodle Clinic's laboratory and radiological departments. Additional in-house ancillary services include echocardiography, nuclear imaging, ultrasound, stress-testing, LEEP, EMG, nerve conduction studies, carotid and peripheral vascular studies.

Kernodle Clinic Easttown provides services in four medical and surgical specialties, with on-site laboratory and radiology services. The 23,000 square foot facility is conveniently located in the central part of Alamance County.

Kernodle Clinic Mebane, with an emphasis on family medicine, as well as internal medicine, pediatrics, orthopedics, cardiology,endocrinology & diabetes is located in the eastern portion of Alamance County. This facility, which opened in March 1997, also houses its own laboratory and radiology departments.

Kernodle Clinic Elon, located on Williamson Avenue near Church Street, offers family medicine and pediatrics services. This office, which opened November, 2001, also includes laboratory and x-ray services.

To learn more, visit www.kernodle.com

Originally featured in Triangle Physician Magazine

Physicians are eager to embrace new advancements in medical technologies, but as a whole they tend to be late adopters when it comes to progressive communication tools such as social media. Although healthcare is innately social, policies like HIPAA have caused what I believe to be an unhealthy fear for physicians to interact with patients outside the confines of the office.

Whether you cite HIPAA, a lack of time, or a lack of computer skills as reasons for not pursuing social media, there’s a strong possibility you could be missing out on three major opportunities to use social media to your advantage.

Are Patients Really Using Social Media?
First, let’s take a look at the numbers which don’t lie when it comes to patient interaction online. According to a 2012 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, a survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults revealed:

· One third of consumers now use social media sites for health-related activities;
· 40% of consumers have sought out reviews of treatments, physicians, and other patient experiences;
· 45% of consumers say information from social media sources would affect their decisions;
· 73% would welcome social media-based tools like make an appointment, or ask a question

A separate survey by the National Research Corporation reported that over 40% of respondents rely on social networking for health information and nearly all of those people (94%) turn to Facebook. Additionally, they found that Americans using social media for healthcare are affluent, and on average, 41 years of age.
It’s clear that social media is not a fleeting trend and patients find it to be a valuable resource for healthcare information and interaction. So now the real question is “what’s the advantage for doctors?”

Three Advantages of Social Media for Doctors
1. Cost-Effective Marketing
While there are many advantages to social media, one of the major benefits is the ability to attract new patients. Social media acts like a megaphone, amplifying your message across various channels and potentially reaching those who may have no idea who you are. This is especially effective when it comes to patient testimonials and connecting with other referring doctors online. It’s a powerful branding tool in enhancing the reach of your reputation. Facebook now even offers analytics for your page so you can monitor the impact you’re having online and analyze what type of content resonates best with patients. This makes the ROI much more trackable.

2. Patient Centered Relationships
The reason patients are eager to connect with their doctors online isn’t so they can see where you went to dinner on Saturday night. They want to use social media as a tool to better manage their health. This is prompting health care organizations to rethink their social media strategy to not just focus on marketing but on an overall business strategy to improve outcomes and lower the cost of providing care.

The physician-patient relationship is a two way street and social media provides the opportunity for both to speak, listen, understand and learn from one another. Embrace the opportunity to educate and interact with your patients to help better manage their conditions and coordinate care. Just be careful to never give personal medical advice or reveal patients’ private health information online. Think of your online interactions as communicating with your patient population as a whole in order to avoid HIPAA concerns.

3. Competitive Edge
Social media is an extremely powerful platform that allows physicians to position themselves as an expert in their specialty (for example, maybe a doctor wants to position himself/herself as an expert in robotic surgery within the OB/GYN specialty). While their peers sit on the sidelines, doctors have an opportunity to take a leadership role and put themselves ahead of the competition. Now is the time to build up your social media network online and show your patients that you are not only a leader in your specialty but also in terms of the progressive way you interact with patients.

Although social media may not be an option for all practices, the advantages of participating are at least worth considering. Negative reviews will happen whether you like them or not. The good news is that social media at least gives you the opportunity to be part of the conversation and show off your customer service skills. If you decide to pursue social media, you need to ensure you have the time to interact consistently and if not, who you are going to trust to manage your page for you. Also consider putting social media policies in place so patients understand what type of behavior is acceptable on your page.

Start the Conversation
Have an opinion on social media for healthcare? Want to ask Amanda Kanaan a question about getting started with social media? Send us a message on Facebook or on Twitter.

Nearly 80% of internet users search online for health information - 44% of which are looking for a provider and/or treatment. For the latest tips and tricks on how your practice can best capitalize on this new "e-patient" revolution, please inquire directly with the event hosts below.

Thursday, August 23rd @ 8am
Greensboro Medical Group Manager's Meeting
Womens Hospital of Greensboro
Event Details Here

Friday, August 24th @ 1pm
North Carolina Medical Society
(Practice Management 101)
222 N. Person St., Raleigh, NC
www.ncmedsoc.org

Talks to include topics of medical website design, search engine optimization and social media for doctors.

If interested, please send the following to amanda@whitecoat-designs.com:

Amanda will also assist in the management of the various medical marketing projects managed by WhiteCoat Designs, including website design, practice brochures, articles and social media.

Amanda Chay began her career in the medical field after graduating with a Bachelors in Psychology and a Masters in Counseling. As a coordinator for a medical company, she worked directly with physicians and medical professionals on grand round programs. Her next career endeavor was as a pharmaceutical sales representative with an American company. Combining her experience in marketing and sales, Amanda established her own business to assist medical device companies and pharmaceutical companies on building physician relationships and patient outreach. Now at WhiteCoat Designs, Amanda serves as Practice Development Director.

Amanda can be contacted at marketing@whitecoat-designs.com

If you are interested in WhiteCoat Designs' physician liaison program please contact President, Amanda Kanaan, at amanda@whitecoat-designs.com.

Here's the latest from just a few of our clients...

Congratulations Cornerstone Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine on your new and improved website - www.cornerstonepediatrics.org. We had a lot of fun working on this project as you might guess by the bright colors and cheery design that inspired the site. Features such as online appointment requests, patient forms, a practice survey, integrated Facebook feed, and an interactive symptom checker also make the site extremely functional and patient-friendly.

Coastal Surgical Specialists in New Bern, NC officially changed their name to Coastal Vein and Vascular and a new logo was designed as a result. See our portfolio to check out the new look.

Regional Cancer Care in Durham, NC  designed a new practice brochure to better represent their new tagline "State-of-the-art Treatments You Need, Personal Care You Deserve".

Brown Fertility in Jacksonville, FL also designed a new practice brochure to update their branding and prepare for new office locations.

Applied Medical Systems (Billing, Coding and Practice Management) and Fast Chart (Transcription Services) in Durham, NC designed new logos for a fresh look and as a preliminary step for upcoming new websites to more strategically focus their brands and messaging.

July 5, 2012: NCAFP Mid Summer Family Medicine Digest (Myrtle Beach, SC)

August 23, 2012: North Carolina Medical Group Managers - Greater Greensboro Chapter (Greensboro, NC)

August 24, 2012: North Carolina Medical Society (Raleigh NC)

October 8, 2012: American Osteopathic Association OMED 2012 (San Diego, CA)

November 29, 2012: North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians Winter Meeting (Asheville, NC)

The position offers very flexible hours (part-time or full-time), competitive base salary or hourly wage, and a generous bonus potential.  Position requires heavy travel in the Triangle area, but no overnights since the travel is all local. Candidate must be highly motivated to learn the business and very results-driven. This is an extremely unique opportunity to obtain valuable training in the medical marketing industry.

Ideally candidate will have 1-2 years of marketing or medical experience, but new grads will be considered as well. Please send your resume and wage requirements to amanda@whitecoat-designs.com or call for more information at 919-714-9885.

Carolina Endocrine: Welcome new client Carolina Endocrine in Raleigh who has partnered with WhiteCoat Designs to design a custom physician outreach program in order to grow referrals. The practice will also use website updates and search engine optimization to strengthen their presence online. www.carolinaendocrine.com

Triangle Chiropractice and Rehabiliation Center: Welcome new client Triangle CRC in Raleigh who has chosen WhiteCoat Designs to help improve their website rankings through search engine optimization. www.trianglecrc.com

HD Treatment Center: Congratulations HD Treatment Center in Raleigh who just launched an updated version of their website and is about to embark on an email marketing campaign. www.hdtreatmentcenter.com

Brown Fertility: Congratulations Brown Fertility who hosted a successful patient education seminar this week in honor of National Infertility Awareness Week. www.brownfertility.com

Medical marketing isn’t exactly something they teach in medical school, however a large number of physicians choose  to serve as their practice’s marketing department. While this approach may work for some doctors, a large majority will not be nearly as successful  without the assistance of a medical marketing specialist. Why? In my experience of working with physicians, there are five major missteps I see time and again.

1.       Creating a Do-It-Yourself Marketing Strategy
When doctors attempt to create and implement their own marketing strategy, they face two major challenges; a lack of medical marketing training and a lack of time. The problem with inexperienced marketing is that you can easily create a strategy that is expensive yet ineffective. In addition, doctors already have a full-time job taking care of patients. The last thing they need is to add marketing responsibilities to their busy work week.  Either the doctor, the patient, or the practice’s marketing efforts will suffer for it. It’s for this reason that while doctors may believe they are saving money by doing their own marketing, in the long run they may actually spend more.

2.       Neglecting to Maximize their Online Presence
When doctors create their own marketing strategy, they too often rely on their own perspective and not enough on the patient’s. Because they personally read the newspaper or use the Yellow Pages, they assume patients do as well. Not the case. They end up neglecting major mediums, such as the internet. In fact, more than 80% of internet users look for health information online, 44% of which are specifically looking for a provider. Yet physicians who claim to offer state-of-the-art treatments represent their practices online with websites that either look like they were designed in the early 90’s or have lack luster messaging that fails to differentiate their services. Even worse, some practices have incredible websites but no one can find them because they haven’t been optimized to rank in the search engines. It’s not enough just to have a website, it also needs to convert visitors into patients and be easily found through search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

3.       Failing to Differentiate Your Practice
When it comes to messaging, making claims such as “we offer compassionate care” or “we provide experienced specialists” will not differentiate your practice, especially considering your competitors probably say the same thing. In fact, it will make it difficult for patients to tell you a part from your peers (i.e. you’ll be generic). Start by researching what claims your competitors are making about their care and then decide what sets you a part. For instance, maybe you are the most experienced urologist in the area with 20 years in practice, or perhaps you are the most advanced as the only provider of robotic surgery. Whatever you decide your differentiator will be, make sure it is unique and make sure you keep the messaging consistent on every piece of marketing collateral you produce. Even your staff should be trained to talk with patients about your differentiators. In order to create a powerful brand, your messaging should really infiltrate every part of your practice.

4.       Forgetting to Market to Current Patients
New patients aren’t the only way to grow your practice’s bottom line. It’s just as important to market to current patients as well since they can be a valuable source of repeat business and patient referrals. If you’ve heard the saying “out of sight, out of mind” then you know that ongoing communication is vital to building a lasting relationship with your patient. You may see your patient once a year, but I guarantee they don’t think of you the other 11 months out of the year.  Some cost-effective ideas to maintain patient communications and stay top of mind include an e-newsletter (simply collect patient emails at check-in or have a sign up box on your website), add a blog to your website where you can contribute short educational articles, or take the leap into the world of social media (it may be intimidating at first, but it is well worth the extra effort).

5.       Wasting Marketing Dollars on Bad Customer Service
You can spend all the money in the world on marketing, but if your practice faces customer service issues then you are throwing dollars down the drain. Before you even begin to think about investing in marketing, you should first conduct mystery shopping research. This involves asking or hiring a pretend patient to experience your practice from start to finish and report on their findings. You need to know if the phone operator was short or the nurse was unfriendly. These are small issues that can make a big difference when enough patients feel uncomfortable and decide to seek care elsewhere. A medical practice is just like any other small business in the sense that patients expect a certain level of service. If you don’t exceed or at least meet their expectations, then there are plenty of other providers to try out. We live in a society where we are taught to shop our options. Be prepared to deliver on the level of care you are claiming to provide.

While successfully marketing your own practice is certainly not impossible, the five missteps above prove that it can be difficult. Heed these cautions and you will have a much higher chance of reaping the greatest return on your marketing investments.

If you need assistance with your practice’s marketing, contact WhiteCoat Designs today for cost-effective medical marketing solutions including medical website design, search engine optimization (SEO), online marketing, social media consulting, print design and branding.

amanda@whitecoat-designs.com
919-714-9885

By: Amanda Kanaan - Owner/Medical Marketing Specialist, WhiteCoat Designs

Now more than ever patients are empowered to research their doctors online. Many choose a provider based solely on their first impressions from a practice’s website – a process that is actually a lot like online dating. That means in order to attract a new patient, your website must be 1) available, and 2) appealing enough to spark interest into a first date (i.e., new patient appointment). In this first part of a two part series I’ll share tips and techniques for how to ensure your website is “available” by increasing the number of visitors your site attracts through search engine optimization (SEO). Part two of the series reveals how to use effective medical website design to convert your website visitors into actual patients.

Google It

When you can’t remember the name of a movie, what do you do? You Google it. When your teenager texts you with seemingly encrypted abbreviations, what do you do? You Google it. And when you’re looking for a new family medicine practice in your area, what do you do? You Google it.

Maybe not everyone uses Google. Perhaps you consider yourself a rebel for turning to Bing or Yahoo instead, but regardless, you probably use some type of online search engine on a near daily basis. This habitual behavior to rely on the internet for information consumption has propelled medicine into a new age – the age of the “e-patient.”

E-patients are internet savvy health consumers eager to research their medical conditions online and use electronic communication tools to manage such conditions. In other words, they want to be active participants in their health care. According to a 2010 study by the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of all internet users – 61 percent of all adults – search online for their health information. Of those searching, 44 percent are specifically looking for a health care provider.

Location, Location, Location

With that many patients now searching online for your services, how do you ensure they find you? Just like in real estate it all comes down to location, and I don’t mean the physical location of your practice. In this instance, location refers to your placement in the search engine results. Let’s say you are a family doctor in Raleigh, North Carolina. If I conducted an online search for the phrase “family doctor Raleigh,” what position in the search engine results would your practice appear? Would it appear at all? From an e-patient’s perspective, if your practice does not appear in the search engine results then you might as well not exist. In fact, to them you don’t.

The best way to ensure your practice ranks high in the search engine results is through search engine optimization (SEO). SEO refers to the process of improving the volume of quality traffic to your website from search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, via organic (unpaid) search results. Since organic click-through rates are three times higher than paid search listings, practices will reap the greatest benefit by predominantly focusing on SEO versus paid online ads. That does not mean that utilizing pay-per-click advertising tools such as Google Adwords is not beneficial as it certainly can be. However, for those on a limited budget, your best long-term investment rests in SEO.

Creating a Strategy

While SEO offers the greatest benefit, it is also increasingly difficult to achieve desired rankings and is certainly not an overnight process. Google is constantly changing the algorithm (think of it like a secret recipe) used to determine the order in which results are displayed. Even if you do everything right, it will still take time for your efforts to be fully realized.

Below are three elements every SEO strategy should include in order to be effective. These are not the only tools but they are certainly among the most powerful.

Organic Search Engine Optimization

There are two types of organic SEO efforts that should be given equal attention. The first is “on-page” SEO; this refers to optimizing the content on your website itself so search engines can accurately recognize you as a match for the keyword. For example, if you are a dentist in Dallas, Texas, you will want to include keywords on your website that relate to both what you do and where you do it (e.g., “dentist Dallas,” “teeth cleaning Dallas,” etc.). The search engines will also take into account factors such as how long your site has been operating, how often you update it and the title tags used at the top of each page.

“Off-page” SEO is the process of securing links on other websites, blogs, and directories that point back to your website. It’s a way for Google to validate your website, and each outside link is considered a vote of confidence. An important source of off-page SEO is Google Places. This section of the search results lists the businesses you searched for in your area and provides a corresponding map of their locations. Google merged this section with the organic listings so they blend together in the results. Therefore, it’s vital that you claim your Google Places listing in order to include your practice in these results. Go to www.google.com/places to establish a free account if you don’t already have one.

Social Media

Some of you might cringe when I mention the words “social media” and “health care” in the same sentence, but this is not a fleeting trend. Social media is here to stay and the physicians who learn to use it to their advantage stand to gain exponentially. A survey released in 2011 by the National Research Corporation polled nearly 23,000 patients and found that 41 percent of them use social media sites to look for health information. The three most popular sources of social media are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. As of 2011, there were more than 845 million Facebook users, 200 million registered Twitter accounts and YouTube is the second most powerful search engine in the world (just behind Google). While Facebook is the most popular social media source, more than 1,300 doctors have already registered with TwitterDoctors.net, a database of physicians who tweet. Online patient-to-patient referrals are a beneficial by-product of social networking, but from an SEO standpoint, the primary goal of your social media pages is to lure patients to your practice website. Whatever you do online to boost your off-page SEO – social media, writing articles or blogging – the whole point is to attract patients back to your practice website.

Health care social media comes with its own unique set of concerns, one the biggest being Health Insurance and Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance. You must not discuss patients’ private health information online even if they initiate the conversation. If a patient does this, politely ask them to schedule an appointment if it is an issue that needs to be addressed in the office. You can also write a social media policy for your practice to help guide these conversations.

Online Reputation Management

When you search online for a physician’s name, you’ll notice that many of the search engine results are not just for a practice website but also for review sites such as Healthgrades, RateMDs, Vitals and Avvo. Patients are even using what used to be retail driven review sites to rate health care providers. Examples include Google Places, Angie’s List, InsiderPages, Superpages and even Yelp.

Managing your review site listings will help boost your rankings in Google. Start by searching your doctors’ names online to see which review sites appear in the search engine results. You’ll first need to claim your listing if you haven’t already. For most sites, that just means signing up for a free account and verifying that you are the owner. By doing so, you have the opportunity to update your contact information, expand the listing with a description of your practice and, most importantly, add a link to your website (that’s where the SEO comes in). You’ll need to do this for all the major review sites, especially the ones that your practice didn’t show up for in the search engine results as you may not be listed.

The other reason to manage your review listings is to monitor the reviews themselves. With e-patients more active than ever in critiquing their health care providers on the Internet, it’s important to monitor your online reputation and manage the reviews. Even if you have a fantastic website that effectively sells your practice, one bad review can deter a patient from picking up the phone.

You can monitor review sites yourself using Google Alerts or many medical marketing agencies will now do this for you. While the review websites don’t allow you to delete negative reviews, you can respond to them in a professional manner to show patients that you are listening. You should also encourage your loyal patients to write positive reviews to dilute the potency of a negative review. Monitoring your online reputation will alert you of a negative review so you can promptly tend to the situation.

Having a website is not enough

Just like online dating, having a website and not investing in search engine optimization is like trying to start a relationship without ever going on a single date. Inversely, a practice that ranks number one in the search engine results but has an outdated website can be just as detrimental. It’s not enough to just have a website; your website must also be visually appealing, have strong messaging, be easily navigated, engage patients with meaningful content and ultimately call them to action.

To discover the elements of effective medical website design, read next month’s issue of Med Monthly where we’ll reveal part two of the series “How to Turn Your Website into a Medical Marketing Machine.” In “Part II: Elements of Effective Medical Website Design,” you’ll learn five website design tips that help convert website visitors into actual patients.

For a free website evaluation to find out how your practice website is performing, contact WhiteCoat Designs today.

Look no further than online patient reviews to discover what is good, bad, and downright ugly about your practice. Some will say it’s important to monitor these reviews in order to improve patient care or manage your online reputation, but there’s another hidden advantage that is perhaps the most valuable of all – to boost your website rankings.

By participating in free review websites such as Healthgrades, Vitals, and even Yelp, you can help maximize your website rankings and ultimately the number of patients visiting your site. Though it’s important to optimize your listings on every review site with a description of your business and a link to your website, perhaps the most beneficial review source of all is Google Places.

Google Places (the section of Google search results that lists local business and a corresponding map) not only combines all your reviews in one place, but it also allows you to directly respond to those reviews from Google users and plays a major part in your organic search results.

Recently Google decided to merge the organic results with Google Places. That means you have an even greater chance of ranking on page one of the search engine results just by optimizing your Google Places listing. Just like they use to rank website results, Google Places also has an algorithm (think of it like a secret sauce recipe) that is used to determine in what order listings appear. This is where the online patient reviews come in, which is one of the top factors Google uses to calculate your ranking in the Google Places results.

Here’s how you can use online patient reviews to boost your ranking in Google Places and thus the local organic search engine results.

1. Claim your listing. Google Places pulls information from online directories to create listings. Therefore, your practice may already exist in Google Places. Start by searching Google Places by your telephone number and then claim your listing(s) if you haven’t already. All you need for this is a Google account (simply sign up for a free Gmail account if you don’t already have one). Delete any duplicate listings as this may harm your rankings and do not use the same phone number for multiple locations.

2. Complete your listing. After you claim your Google Places account, you’ll want to fill out your profile as completely as possible. That includes adding a link to your website and a description of your practice. Be sure to use keywords that relate to your practice or specialty. Your Google Places page will show your profile completion rate. Make sure it reaches 100 percent to be most effective.

3. Manage reviews. Unlike some review sites, Google actually allows you to respond to reviews by Google users. Use this opportunity to demonstrate your customer service skills by promptly responding to negative reviews to show patients you are listening. You can’t delete negative reviews but what you can do is encourage your happy patients to dilute negative comments with positive ones. One or two bad reviews will not hurt your reputation as long as there are three or four positive ones right next to it. Facebook and Twitter are great resources for asking satisfied patients to post reviews. Google recognizes when you keep your profile up to date and are an active participant in your listing and uses this as a major part of their algorithm when calculating rank.

There are many reasons to monitor and manage your online patients reviews, but perhaps most beneficial of all is the opportunity to improve your website rankings in Google. For good or for bad, online patient reviews are an effective (and free) way to promote and grow your practice. You might as well use them to your advantage.

Amanda Kanaan is a medical marketing author, marketing speaker, and consultant. She blogs at WhiteCoat Designs and can be reached on Twitter @whitecoatdesign. WhiteCoat Designs provides cost-effective medical website design, medical marketing and social media services to doctors and the healthcare industry.

Seven Seconds. That's all the time your website has to make a good impression on a potential patient. And if it doesn’t, “click” and the patient is on to your competitor’s website. Regardless of the number of visitors coming to your website, your efforts are futile without effective medical website design that ultimately converts those visitors in to actual patients.

Five Elements of Highly Effective Medical Website Design

1. Polish Your Image
Patients will make assumptions about your practice, and even the decision to seek your care, based on the quality of your website. If your website is outdated, patients will assume your care is as well. Regardless of how accurate their sentiments are, perception is reality in this case.

While it’s important to present patients with a professional image, be careful not to go overboard with the use of unnecessary flash, graphics and music. Causing sensory overload is just as harmful as a poorly designed website to your practice’s image. In fact, most mobile devices such as iphones and ipads cannot even register flash on a website and instead displays a blank box on the screen. According to a 2011 study by comScore, almost 17 million Americans a month access health information on their mobile devices. Therefore, it is best to keep the design clean, simple and mobile friendly.

Online videos and virtual tours are a great way to make patients feel welcome at your practice before they ever step foot in your office. Thirty second videos of your providers delivering a welcome message or talking about education related topics will help patients make an instant connection with your practice. Virtual tours are also helpful in relieving the anxiety of what to expect when patients visit your office.

Another small piece of advice that will make a big difference is to use professional photography for the providers’ headshots. One of the main reasons patients visit your website is to get an impression of your doctors. An unflattering headshot taken with a staff member’s digital camera in the office may not put your doctors in the best light. A professional headshot with proper lighting can make all the difference in properly branding your provider’s image.

2. Send the Right Message
The message you send is just as important as the image you portray. Whether you want to be known as the solo doc with friendly, personal care or a large practice that offers the convenience of multiple specialties under one roof, you can send strategic messaging through the writing style of the website’s content. Consider hiring a medical marketing professional to help you craft a message that differentiates your practice in the community. Your messaging should ultimately answer the question, “Why should I choose you?”

Evaluate what truly makes your practice unique before answering this question. Touting that you offer experienced care is not a differentiator. That is a generic statement that I bet most of your competitors boast. Examples of true differentiators would be “delivered the most babies in Atlanta” or “first robotic surgery performed in the state” or “Seattle’s only ‘green’ dental practice”. These are tangible statements that will set your practice a part and establish a brand that is unique to you.

3. Focus on Functionality
Sometimes practices build beautiful websites with flashing images and elaborate intros that are pretty to look at but aren’t very functional for the user. Patients often visit your website for a very specific reason – to get directions or read about your doctors for instance. If you don’t make it easy for patients to instantly locate what they need, then it’s either one more phone call your staff has to answer or one more potential patient you just lost.

Ask your staff about reoccurring questions they receive from patients to better understand how to organize your website’s layout. One of the most popular pages on any medical website is the “meet the doctors” page. More than ever patients are researching and comparing their providers to determine who is the best fit to manage their treatment. Instead of burying this page in the submenu of the “about us” section, feature a button right on the homepage so patients are just one click away from reading about your providers.

When it comes to the navigation menu itself, website visitors are now used to a particular format with the menu either on the left side of the page or across the top. Do not attempt to be “cutting edge” by featuring your menu on the right side of the page. This will only confuse visitors. Just like the design itself, keep the functionality simple and clean.

4. Provide Meaningful Content
According to a 2010 study by the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of all internet users, or 61 percent of all adults, search online for health information. When it comes to the source of this information, ideally patients should look to their health care provider, not websites like WebMD. By providing meaningful content on your website beyond a list of services and directions to your office, you’ll not only drive more traffic to your site but you will also fulfill a growing demand of patients seeking information online.

Blogs are the best way to provide ongoing medical education to your patients. Although physicians are sometimes overwhelmed by the idea of keeping up with a blog, a preset plan of blog topics will help relieve some of this anxiety. Plan your blogs 30 days, 60 days or even 90 days in advance with a schedule of topics to cover once a week. Blogs that are 350-400 words in length are ideal and take very little time to write.

These days you can hire marketing agencies to write your blogs for you or can use a Content Management System (CMS) to do it yourself. A CMS is a software program that allows you to easily manage the content on your website and blog without knowing html (computer language).

Using a free CMS, such as Wordpress, can result in a savings of both time and costs for your practice. As easy as editing a word document, staff can make simple updates to the website without incurring additional costs from a web designer or waiting several days for the change to be completed. This includes adding a bio and picture for a new doctor to your website or writing a weekly blog. The CMS will also allow you to tag your blog entries with corresponding keywords so the article can be found by the search engines.

5. Call Patients to Action
Websites should be more than just an online brochure. Yes, they provide valuable information about your practice but their first priority should be to convert visitors into new patients. Just like making a sale in the business world, sometimes it’s as simple as asking the visitor to take action.

Whether you prompt the patient to request an appointment, fill out a contact form, sign up for your newsletter, or simply follow you on Facebook, asking them to take some form of action will yield a much higher new patient conversion rate. Your website should feature a call to action on every page. For instance, include your phone number at the top of the website header that says “call us to schedule an appointment” or a link at the bottom of each page that directs them to the “contact us” page.

For those practices that already have a website, using these tips to tweak your design will help take your website to the next level. For those practices in need of a brand new website, be cautious of do-it-yourself web design companies that claim to give you complete control of your website. Often these templated websites end up being poorly designed, may contrast with your practice’s current branding and don’t deliver the new patient volume you were hoping for. Shop around to find a professional medical website design agency that can provide a custom website that is both within your budget and delivers the results you seek.

Amanda Kanaan is the owner/founder of WhiteCoat Designs – an online medical marketing agency committed to growing doctors’ practices and healthcare organizations through cost-effective and powerful online marketing solutions. Some of WhiteCoat Designs’ services include medical website design, websites for doctors, medical marketing, search engine optimization, social media management, and online reputation monitoring.

Headquarted in Raleigh, North Carolina, Kanaan and her team serve physician practices across the country. Amanda regularly speaks at medical association meetings and conventions and is a published expert in the field of medical marketing. To learn more or for a free website evaluation, contact her at Amanda@whitecoat-designs.com or www.whitecoat-designs.com.

Four new videos have already been posted to the new channel, which include:

Please check out the videos and either like or share them to help us build our channel. We will keep you posted when new videos are available and welcome any suggestions for future educational videos you would like to hear from us on.

We hope these new videos will help clients to better understand WhiteCoat's philosophy and goals in helping practices grow their patient base through cost-effective online marketing and communication efforts such as medical website design, medical marketing, search engine optimization, social media management, and online reputation monitoring.

Contact Us today for a free website evaluation or to schedule an initial consult at your practice. We look forward to working with you and helping you grow your private practice or medical organization.