social marketing Archives - Diagnostics Marketing

When you’re starting up a new diagnostics imaging facility, you have to be prepared to hit the ground running. Construction and staffing are just the beginning of the beginning. You then have to book appointments and start bringing in patients and revenue. That MRI won’t pay for itself.

Well, maybe it will, but not without your help.

If you’re in this situation, you should already be thinking about your marketing strategies. There’s a reason why the above article, which you might have read already, overlaps with this one and mentions starting on your marketing long before construction is complete. There’s no way that you’ll begin bringing in income, much less enough to break even in the first week if you don’t start your marketing push before the Grand Opening.

So, for your benefit, we’ve compiled a list of fifteen things to keep in mind for radiology marketing, specifically. Several of these will overlap or relate to one-another, so bear in mind that ignoring one tip may impact your efforts to follow another.

If you have any questions or would like some help with any aspect of your marketing approach, contact the diagnostic marketing experts.

Lay The Foundation for Your Diagnostic Imaging Marketing

We’ll start with four basic tips. These are our starting points, and everything else you do to market your diagnostic imaging services will build off of these.

1 – Website

You are pretty much required to have a website these days. If you don’t, you aren’t taken very seriously. And websites should be the first consideration you make for marketing, including the cost for developing your site in your initial investment runs.

The benefits of having a well-designed site are substantial. It anchors all of your marketing efforts, grants you additional traffic, and serves as a platform with which you can communicate or assist your patients at their convenience. These are all effects which can be major contributors to your continued success.

When designing your site, you need to ensure it meets three key criteria:

It works on all browsers and devices (especially mobile phones!)
It is designed for users to easily find what they are looking for
It clearly represents your company and services

Not all website building services are equal. Sure, a quick one pager you put together on Wix over the weekend could count as a website, but for a healthcare business like a radiology imaging center, you’ll need something much more robust and professional.

WordPress sites are the best option for most businesses, healthcare or otherwise due to their versatility, security, and ability to be updated.

If you are looking for a team to build your website, be sure to use one that specializes in diagnostic imaging websites, or at the very least healthcare businesses. Otherwise you’re going to either end up with a confusing and overly-complex site, which is difficult to navigate. Worse, you could end up doing a lot of the work yourself (which is a bad idea since we’re guessing you’re not a UX designer).

On your website, you should consider including as many of the following as possible:

Your contact information
What health insurance you accept
Information about your staff and expertise
Patient Portal
Physician Portal
Online patient forms
Online payment option
“Call Now” Button for smartphone users
Pricing information
Exam information
Equipment information
Calendar of events and facility closing dates
Customized landing pages
An image rotator
Links to your social media pages

Again, this website will be a core element to your marketing efforts. Most marketing today is done digitally because most consumers are online. So no matter what your overall strategy is, your website is going to be the backbone of all of your digital marketing efforts. If you’re going to go all-out on any individual element of your marketing plan, this should be the one to dote on.

2 – Social Marketing

In a word: Facebook. Facebook isn’t the only platform that can be useful here. There are also potential uses for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram if you hire a savvy social media specialist. However, Facebook remains the top dog for most diagnostic imaging centers. As popular as the anti-social media train has gotten, Facebook’s broad utilization numbers continue to swell, reaching 79% usage rates in America in 2018.

With these numbers, Facebook provides direct reach into your community and potential patient-base.

If you don’t have a Facebook page set up, or don’t know how to set one up, there are multiple guides on how to set up a proper business page. There are just five key points you need to incorporate to ensure maximum effectiveness:

A clearly branded profile picture and cover photo (i.e. matches the logo on your website)
A call-to-action (CTA) button (typically to call you)
Post regularly (once a week at the minimum)
A member of staff needs to be tasked with reputation management, which means that responses to comments and feedback is their primary task.
Keep your “About” info up-to-date

There are other elements you can work in, such as targeted Facebook ads and analytics tools to measure the success of those ads, but those are all secondary. Make sure the page is up and running and reliable first.

3 – Lead Magnets

Technically, consideration for lead magnets should be included with the website build. You want to have this functionality incorporated at the base level, if possible. If, for some reason, it’s too late or this sort of incorporation isn’t an option, services like Sumo can help you cover that need with a variety of popups and CTA bars

If you aren’t familiar with the term, “leads” are contacts, and magnets attract; thus, a ‘lead magnet’ is something which naturally attracts people and convinces them to provide their contact info – namely, an email address. This will be a vital step towards automating your diagnostics imaging marketing plan.

In a nutshell, your lead magnets, for radiology marketing, will generally look something like:

You write a blog article about “What to expect during an MRI”
You create a PDF checklist that tells “Everything you need to know to prepare for an MRI exam”
You put a lead magnet on your article that pops up or is shown in a sidebar asking readers to enter their email to receive the free checklist.
When someone enters their email, they are sent the checklist as a file (usually a PDF) and they are added to your email marketing list.

4 – Google Places

This one is crucial to not overlook! Many business owners, in numerous industries, neglect to think about setting up a proper business profile for Google Maps. This can make all the difference for your patients when they’re trying to figure out where they want to get their testing done or when they’re trying to figure out how to get to your facility for their appointment.

The best thing about Google Places is that searches done on the Maps app have a focus on local. This means that you’re only competing against other radiologists and diagnostics imaging providers when somebody searches for “MRI” or “CT Scan”.

And, even then, only when those providers include those keywords for their business.

Setting up a business profile is not difficult, either. It’s a three-step procedure:

Set up a Google My Business account
Verify your business
Fill out information about your business

Just make certain to use crisp, high-quality images for your listing and keep your information up-to-date.

Building Up Your Medical Imaging Marketing Scheme

Now that you have the basics down, it’s time to start building onto them.

5 – Corral Your Providers

This is the most important thing to do in this section of the list. It’s the one thing that isn’t, strictly speaking, building off of something you’ve already done. However, this is also something that is strictly its own beast, and a crucial element of any diagnostics practice’s radiology marketing strategy.

If you have any experience with healthcare, you likely understand that, as important as all of the other things are for your long-term success, referrals from various physicians will provide the most reliable source of patients in the first few months. And they will continue to provide a solid, foundational baseline for your practice in the long run – if you keep them happy. Remember that the referring physicians and their staff are working hard every day, too. Make their jobs easy, and they will continue to refer to you.

Also, keep in mind that the majority of your referrals will come from only about 20% of providers. If you have not planned to track referrals, change those plans; if you’re already operational and not doing this, then change that procedure. You will want to put in a little extra effort to keep your top 20% especially happy. Just keep anti-trust laws in mind as you’re dropping them little tokens of appreciation.

6 – Use a Blog to Draw Additional Organic Traffic

The internet is just where people flock to for information nowadays. That’s the entire point of it. Ergo, if you can position yourself as a local authority on your specialty, people in your area who look for information related to your specialty will not only want to check in with you about other inquiries they may have relating to CAT Scans or Fluoroscopies, but when they or a loved one need one of these diagnostic imaging services performed, guess who is going to be the first one they think of…

No, not Bob Dole, silly! You!

Side note, WordPress sites are the king of blogs and SEO, which we’ll talk about next.

A blog should be an essential element of your website, and can be used to place lead magnets, as well. It can also be used to attract more visitors to your website when you make use of…

7 – Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is the practice of fine-tuning your website so that it ranks well on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Of course, Google is the big one, and if you can get your home page or your blog article to rank in the top three results for the right keywords, then you’ll find that your website is, essentially, a super-powered patient finder. Properly done SEO can make a supermassive difference in Digital Marketing efforts for Imaging Centers.

SEO is not easy, though, and Google is fine-tuning its algorithm all the time. Still, there is a process that consistently works if you know how to work through it:

Brainstorm keywords that you think people would search for when they should be finding you.
Use Google Adwords Keyword Planner to see which of those keywords are being searched the most and how difficult it is to rank for each one
Pick out your best keywords. These are the ones that are relevant to you, have the highest search volume, and have the lowest competition
Use those keywords in the text on your website and blog
Repeat these steps for each page and article on your site

Note that you’ll want to use different keywords with each blog post. You don’t want to try to get an article about Thyroid Scans ranking for MRIs (it wouldn’t work, anyhow, as Google’s algorithm has gotten good enough that it would notice something weird).

PRO-TIP: When you’re deciding on your keywords, reference Item #9 on this list! Include words in at least some of your keywords that focus on your local area.

If you don’t want to spend much effort on this, there is another option (see #8), though the most effective method is to use a combination of these tools.

8 – Pay-Per-Click Ads

Also known as PPC, services like Google Adwords can provide a ‘shortcut’ if you’re willing to just pay for the ads. However, the shortcut isn’t necessarily simple. There is a learning curve to it, and you still need to decide on specific keywords which your ads will appear on.

Regardless of whether you choose to run PPC by itself or use it to bolster your SEO efforts, it can be a very handy tool. And if you plan to make use of it, we recommend starting with this handy guide to ensure that you get off on the right foot.

Time For A Full-Scale Rollout of Your Diagnostic Imaging Marketing Strategy

The building is done. The following three tips are all things to put into place as policy during launch and after – as things are really getting started.

9 – Keep Your Marketing Focus Local

Your marketing dollars are precious. If you’re doing it right, your cost per acquisition of each patient should be a small fraction of the profit that the patient brings your business. If you try to throw money at an urban center a hundred miles away – how many potential patients are you going to convince to drive one hundred miles to come to your facility when there are likely three or more to choose from within twenty miles of their home? Even if you get one or two, the hundreds or thousands of dollars you spent to get those one or two actually create a deficit which you then need to fill with more efficiently-found patients.

As your patients come in, track what zip codes they’re from so that you can know exactly where your patient-base is. Then, focus your marketing in that area and begin treating them like your neighbors. Afterall, they likely are your neighbors. Talk to them, get to know them. Often, you can get some insights from them about things that will help your marketing efforts.

You can also utilize these six common opportunities to maximize your efforts:

Connect your RIS system to a HIPAA Compliant Visual Analytics Tool where you can create customized reports.
Create a map report that shows the zip code or address of each of your patients.
Find the specific neighborhoods, schools, and businesses in these areas.
For your target neighborhoods, answer questions on local Private Facebook Neighborhood Groups
Sponsor after-school events for the top school or schools in the area.
Run Facebook ads to the businesses in the specified locations.

10 – Use Your Generated Leads For Automated Marketing

Automated emails can be a blessing when utilized properly. This doesn’t mean that you’re trying to spam your patients or annoy them. Quite the opposite: one of the first automated emails that you can set up is a follow-up for each appointment, giving patients a chance to provide feedback (the importance of which we’ll discuss in a moment).

You can also use value-based emails, sending out promotions that recipients can use for themselves or give to loved ones who may need your services. Think ‘specials’ like women’s month means a discount, or free box of chocolates or roses for the ladies coming in for their mammograms.

These can be especially valuable for you – not only do you get business, but you might also endear yourself to a large portion of your patient base if you use this tool in the right way.

Then, there are the content-focused emails for leads who opted in based on previous content. When you publish a brilliant new blog article (not every article, but perhaps the best one every week), you can notify your audience of that article, drawing a fresh round of clicks, keeping your audience attentive and educating them on important elements of radiology. Speaking of which…

11 – The Benefits of Educating Your Patients

Most of your patients won’t be returning as patients – because they won’t need to. Very few people need an MRI more than once per lifetime, much less multiple times in a decade.

But they’ll probably know somebody else who needs one eventually.

Because of this, educating them on various aspects of radiology, how different tests work, etc, can help them to help somebody else down the line. And when they think of that knowledge, they’ll think of who they learned it from.

Lastly, you can also send an automatic educational email when appointments are booked. These emails can include links to articles or videos which explain the procedure which the appointment was just booked for. This can provide value and comfort to the patient, who is now not only better prepared for their visit, but also, reassured about their choice to book with you.

Your Radiology Marketing Strategies Should Be Cyclical

Even if you don’t expect to see most patients more than once, there are still things you can do to ensure that each patient leaves happy and thus makes it easier and cheaper to attract the next one. These are all great long-term policy tools to use.

12 – Show Your Personality

People don’t trust robots. Robots are decidedly lacking in charisma (generally speaking). Some can be absolutely adorable and lovable – such as the ones that are programmed to show a little personality.

Your patients will feel more at home with a professional staff who is willing to, well, be human with them. Most patients will be nervous. Your staff can ease that.

You can also show that human factor online. On your Facebook page, your blog, or your website, you can include any of the following elements:

Patient testimonials with or without pictures
Employee of The Month notifications
Pictures of office parties
Testimonials from referring providers
A diagnostics center walkthrough, showing all the rooms with all the modalities. You can just do this on your iPhone or Android, it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time.

These items make you more approachable, more real. It’s not unprofessional to be human.

13 – Stay Visible

Another thing you can do is to keep yourself involved in your community and in the minds of your patients. There are a few simple, easy-to-use tools for this:

Surveys allow you to get feedback about your practice (more on this in a moment).
The educational emails that we have already discussed, but which really shouldn’t be forgotten, can help to provide long-term value for your patients.
Patient referrals can also give your previous patients additional value, as well as the new patients you’re gaining. Allow them to refer their friends who could also benefit from your services, and give them both something of value in return – a gift card or a chance to win a Big Green Egg, for example. The savings in advertising dollars means you’re not losing anything here.

14 – Seek out feedback!

Not every patient is going to leave happy. There’s nothing you can do about that. However, you can have most patients leave happy. The steps for this are actually pretty straightforward:

1 – Allow every patient a chance to provide anonymous feedback

2 – Do not assume that a patient who leaves seemingly ‘neutral’ is a positive; they could be seething, yet too uncomfortable to say anything

3 – Once you have consistent feedback coming in, find the common denominators and make corrections.

4 – Gather more feedback, find more consistent issues, repeat

As long as you’re actively addressing issues, then you should be reaping the reputational benefits online. All you need to do is ensure that enough people are posting reviews, as a higher review count leads readers to trust those providers more – they’ve been more thoroughly tried and tested, after all.

15 – Know Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Finally, figure out what makes your team, your entire business, work. What are patients loving? What advantages do you have over your competition?

Figure those things out and leverage them.

Then, as #14 emphasized, ensure that you know where you are underperforming and fix those areas. If you can do these things, you will quickly become a powerhouse.

Good Radiology Marketing Strategies Can Make All The Difference

The modern healthcare market is anything but certain. Patients are uneasy and have understandable concerns about where and how they spend their precious healthcare dollars. But if you work hard to come up with a cohesive, smart strategy for marketing your medical imaging practice, you shouldn’t have any trouble becoming a successful provider of diagnostics expertise in your area, especially if you make good use of these fifteen radiology marketing tips.

We wish you the best of luck!
If you have any questions or would like some help with any aspect of your marketing approach, contact the diagnostic marketing experts.