My name is Dr. Derek Baron and I am a Chiropractic Physician with my Diplomate in Sports Medicine as well as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist.  I  got into Digital Marketing to initially freshen up the marketing ideas for my practice and generate a consistent source of new patient leads.  Since that point, I've turned on the entrepreneurial spirit of helping other practices do the same.  I want to help you succeed so you can enjoy more time with friends and family.    

Over the last few years, I have made it my mission to become an expert in helping brick and mortar businesses grow their online presence.  Now my focus has been switched back to my passion which is now focusing on helping Healthcare Professionals grow using Digital Marketing.   I've spent countless hours learning and testing just about every digital marketing technique under the sun, and I'm sure there will be a new one on the market tomorrow I've got to dig my hands into to help you go to the next level.

All that research and testing led me to what works, what doesn't work, and what order you should do everything in to get the biggest bang for your buck.

This "Healthcare Professionals Playbook" will help you understand the techniques that you should be implementing in your business and how to be more informed when hiring someone to help you implement them.

This guide isn't meant to be consumed in one sitting (but you are surely welcome too 😎. Bookmark this guide, read it in chunks, and come back anytime to keep learning more.  If you have questions you will see my phone number and email address is listed at the bottom of the pages.

Let's get started with a 10,000 foot view of what you should be doing to market your practice online and in what order for the greatest success. 

After years of working with businesses and helping them with their online marketing, I've compiled a ton of data that has lead me to know exactly what works and what doesn't. Putting that data into practice has lead our clients to be extremely successful with their online marketing.

Businesses that are successful in marketing themselves online (and don't overspend) have mastered something that we call the "Digital Stack".

This "Digital Stack" is a term that we came up with to describe the order that you should implement certain online marketing tactics so that you squeeze every dollar of value out of everything that you're doing online.   This is NOT about being cheap... it's ALL about being a smart marketer and business owner.

When you hear a business owner say that they failed using a certain type of marketing online, it is usually because they used a technique that didn't have a good foundation.

For example, it doesn't make a lot of sense to run a Facebook Ad campaign to generate leads for a business if the business has a website and/or Facebook Page that doesn't look great. This campaign typically fails because prospective patients like to do additional research when they see an offer on Facebook. If they see an offer and then go look at a webpage or Facebook Page that looks like your nephew built it in 1995, that doesn't make them want to actually claim the offer they saw on Facebook.

I've seen a ton of practice owners who have run a special offer with Facebook Ads (on their own) that ultimately failed at first due to them not having their "digital house in order". In short, their brand looked terrible when people did just a little extra checking on them (because their website and Facebook page weren't optimized).  Please don't expect your patients to just trust you blindly - that is a costly mistake.  They will do their due diligence and try to find out a bit more about you and your practice prior to actually making the move to sign up for an offer or for care.

We ended up running a nearly identical Facebook campaign when they signed up with us, but with one big difference.

The big difference was that we laid the groundwork for their campaign before we ran it. We made sure that their website, reputation and Facebook page looked great before we ran the campaign. When potential patients saw their ad, they got a good impression of the practice on their other properties and followed through with claiming the offer because of it.

With that said, in what order should you setup your Digital Marketing Activities?

Let's walk through what techniques you should be implementing, the order you should be doing it in, and why.

The 3 Ways Prospective Patients Research You: 

1) They search for your Website on Google.

First, they're going to head over to Google and they are going to check out your Reputation as well as your website. You need to make sure that your website is doing some key things correctly and that it looks and functions a certain way. We cover all of that here.

2) They Read Your Google My Business Reviews and make sure you have a 5 Star Reputation

Second, they will read at least 6-10 online reviews. Sometimes this happens before they even see your website. Research shows that a customer reads 6-10 reviews before a consumer can trust your business. More importantly, 93% of consumers read local reviews to decide if a business is good or not. I cover more on the importance of online reviews and how the optimization of your Google My Business listing is related here.

3) They search for you on Facebook

Third, (and sometimes first) people are going to type in the name of your practice on Facebook and see what they can find out about you there from your reputation to your activity levels.  People go to your website to get basic information, they search for you on Facebook because they want to get a peek at "what is actually happening on the inside and how real you are". I cover more on why your Facebook page has to look great and must be active right HERE.

Once you have a great website and have your Facebook page posting content daily (hint hint... yes, you should be posting at least 1X/day), you officially have a foundation laid for your practice to start reaching out for more business through your digital assets. If you didn't have the foundation laid, your lead generating activities (Facebook Ads and Email Newsletters, Google PPC) could fall flat when people did a little research on you, after seeing your ad or emails.

With your foundation laid, you want to focus your attention on two "business driving" activities. One of the activities is designed to get more of your existing patients through the door (Email newsletters). The other is designed to get new prospects through the door (Facebook Ads).

The 4 Ways To Drive More Business Through The Door:

1) Google Ads (PPC) To Attract Those Already Searching For Your Services

Google ads are a great way to attract and convert more new prospects to patients into your practice because these are HOT prospects. They are actively online searching for you and your services. This is why your website should be mobile friendly and have a "click to call" component set up so when they land on your website - they click the phone number and schedule a consult or appointment. Learn more here.

2) Facebook Ads to New Potential Patients

One of the easiest ways to reach the kinds of people that would be a perfect new patient is through the power of Facebook ads. Unfortunately, most practices fail with Facebook Ads because they have no idea how to set up the kind of "sales funnel" that works well with this medium. I cover exactly how we successfully use Facebook ads with our clients right here.

3) Facebook Messenger Bots

What if you could have a salesperson out on Facebook 24 hours a day looking for people who need your services and reaching out to them with an offer that would get them to come into your practice? Facebook Messenger Bots are the next best thing (and... they don't ever sleep). We have had amazing success with Facebook Messenger Bots. You can see an example of how we use them right here.

4) Retargeting Ads To Always Remain Top Of Mind To Your Prospects

Did you know that 96% of your website traffic never buy? Retargeting all your past visitors to your website is a good way to bring them back to your website but also places your business to be top of mind when they are ready to buy. Following your website visitors around the web through Facebook ads and banner ads displaying your offers and marketing your reputation is a good way to not only brand your business but it’s also a way to be everywhere or what they call “digitally omnipresent”. I cover that here. 

Once you have all the Foundation components (Website and Active Facebook Page) and are effectively driving more income-generating business with things like Email Newsletters and Facebook Ads, it's time to focus on the things that allow you to dominate your local marketing.

These techniques are a little more technical and take a little more time to implement properly, but allow you to be years ahead of your competition. We focus on four main "advanced strategies" to help our clients dominate their local markets.

The 5 Advanced Digital Marketing Strategies that Allow you to Dominate your Competition and Stay In Front of Them:

1) Marketing Funnels

Most business owners don’t understand the difference between their website and a landing page or marketing funnel. Most mistake their service page as a landing page just because it gives information and maybe a call to action. Marketing funnels are distinctively different from a service page on a website. Its sole purpose is to convert your visitor to a patient. I’ll go into more detail about the difference right here.

2) Email Marketing

Do not be fooled... email marketing is not dead and if you are not sending out emails to your prospects and patients at a minimum of one time per month - you are leaving money o the table. One of the easiest ways to get more money coming into your practice is to get existing patients to come back in and spend more money on services or products that they need. So many practice owners forget this, but it's as easy as sending a reminder via email. Sure the open rates have gone down but if you want to "canvas" your prospects and patients you need to have them on an email list, Facebook Messenger list, and SMS list and keep sending them information. Click here to learn more.

3) Blogs and Newsletters To Continue To Educate Your Prospects and Patients

 Once you have turned prospects into patients you want to share your knowledge with them and the best way to do that is with a blog or vlog format. The secret is to make sure that your email newsletter is something that contains a tremendous value itself and is consistent so they continue to look for the next one coming week after week or month after month. I cover more on how to create an email that drives more income into your practice right here.

4) Video Marketing Which Separates You From Your Competition

If you're not making marketing videos or Live videos on Facebook or LinkedIn or YouTube to share with your audience, it's time to stop pretending that video is too expensive (or too technical) to be worth your while. Research shows that businesses that use video marketing grow 49% faster than businesses that don't. How can you ignore that? The good news is that video doesn't' need to be expensive and you don't' need to be Spike Lee or Steven Speilberg to make a terrific marketing video that will attract new patients. I'll go over some good video marketing strategies here.

5) Search Engine Optimization (AKA: Being Loved by Google)

One of the most important digital marketing techniques (but one of the most misunderstood) is getting Google to fall in love with your practice. Search Engine Optimization is a long term investment in your practice, but it's one that is important to make. I'll show you exactly how we help our clients rank for those all-important "business generating keywords" right here.

Just like you update the decorations and front-facing aspects of your physical location as the years' pass, you should also make sure that your website is updated and gives a true reflection of what your practice is all about.

One of the big mistakes that business owners make is thinking that Social Media sites like Facebook have replaced the need for a practice website. While it's true that your Facebook Page is extremely important, your website is still the first place people look for when they want to get more info on your practice from the internet.

You have to make sure that your website, at the bare minimum, has the core components that it needs to give people what they came for. At the same time, you have to make sure your website makes a great impression every time someone visits it.

Let's talk about the 9 things every practice website must-have.

It's important that you have a professional design your site to be easy to navigate and to look current. It's also extremely important that you have someone who makes sure that your site loads quickly and does weekly check-ins on your website's health (hackers are always coming up with new ways to do damage so it's key that you have a pro monitoring things for you.)

Today's consumers typically don't just look at your website when they are deciding whether or not to do business with you. Statistics show that consumers are overwhelmingly also using Facebook to look for healthcare provides. 

Linking people to your Facebook page from your website instantly gives them a way to learn more about your practice without them having to look for it themselves. (we talk about why Facebook Pages are such an important piece of your marketing puzzle here.)

A great example of this would be a Sports and Rehab clinic having their "new patient health history" forms on their website so that new patients could fill them out before their visit.

Claiming and verify a Google My Business listing for each location of your business is the first and most basic step to local search engine optimization (SEO).

This is an easy way to ensure your business shows up in local search engine results. Optimizing your Google My Business listing helps you rank higher in results, above competitors who don’t have a local SEO strategy.

Google likes to keep things in-house as much as possible, so it favors its own accurate and current business listings when giving local search results to search users.

Complete and accurate Google My Business listings that keep their information up to date and get business reviews on their listings are rewarded with higher rankings.

In the past year, Google has added a handful of features to help you further promote your business while giving more information to your potential customers.

Learning how to utilize these features gives your business increased visibility online and exposure to more local patients.

Back in August 2017, Google introduced this new feature Questions & Answers feature to Google Maps. December 2017 this feature moved from mobile-only to include a desktop display, so all search users will see these questions and answers.

How is that? Simple. Even though people may see an ad you ran on tv, or on the highway or online, most of them are going to go online and check your reviews before they contact you. If they find out that you’re not very credible in the eyes of other reviewers, then it’s a good chance they will simply find the next practice or provider with a better reputation.

Long gone are the days when a #1 position in Google is the only thing you needed to get all the customers you want. The graphic below proves it.

There was a study done by Bright Local on the effects of reviews on local ad clicks. See the results below.

The results speak for themselves. Over 50% of the people clicked on a local ad because of a review rating while only 17% click on a local ad because of its position on the page.

It’s no longer possible for businesses to stick their heads in the sand and ignore the importance of online reviews. Every business needs to create and maintain a system of monitoring, managing & marketing their online reputation.

Many practice owners started to believe that because their pages started vanishing from the newsfeed that there was no longer any reason to put any effort into creating new content for their page.

While the reasons for having a Facebook page for your practice and posting to it often have changed, it is actually more important than ever due to one key reason.

And more specifically, people go to your website to see your "professional image". They come to your Practices' Facebook page to get a sense of your "business personality".

Statistics show that people are overwhelmingly using Facebook as a "first-hand source" of information about a practice when they hear about them from a friend or from a more traditional marketing source (radio, tv, print, even a Google Search etc).

With the above in mind, I'd like to show you what we do to help our clients stay ahead of their competition and to use their Facebook page to convert new leads into new patients every single week.

This is something that most of our clients don't have time to do, so we take over all of the content creation and posting duties for them. This is critical because it shows people who search for our page that the business is on top of things and paying attention to details.

Google AdWords allows practices to leverage keyword searches to create links and ads on Google’s search engine and display network. Practices can write or design advertisements that pop up on relevant websites, such as a medical blog site, as well as search engine queries. 

Healthcare Professionals and practices do not traditionally have large digital advertising budgets, and the good news is that they don’t need to have one in order to have an effective advertising campaign because Google AdWords is a cost-effective and user-friendly platform that gets results right away.

Positive online reviews and experiences can help attract new patients and ultimately increase your revenue. Use the ads and headlines as ways to communicate positive messages about your practice.

Even though Facebook Ads are a highly effective business growth tool, many practice owners out there don't understand how to use them properly. It's a lot more complicated than just putting an offer together and then spending a little money to get it in front of the surrounding community.

Facebook Ads work best when you put the correct offer in front of a specific audience in your community and give them a reason to take action on that offer immediately.

We run Facebook Ad Campaigns for a variety of clients and we've found that there is a pattern to building campaigns that work. 

Let's break down the 4 major components of a great Facebook Ad Campaign.

You'll see a drastic difference in your conversions when you create offers that are highly tailored to an audience. Facebook allows you to target these people directly in your community, so it only makes sense to customize the offer to speak directly to those audiences.

A Great Facebook ad is "eye-catching" and is also pointed at a very specific audience in your community.

A Messenger Bot is a way to leverage the fact that almost everyone out there answers their Facebook Messages right away. We can build very specific campaigns that act like a "Facebook Ad Campaign" (as discussed in the last chapter), but adds in a very personalized follow-up that happens right inside of Facebook Messenger.

What makes these so effective is that the potential patient feels like they are getting instant attention from your practice when they start "talking" to your messenger bot.  They feel like they are having a chat with someone from the office.

Let's walk through an example of a messenger bot campaign.

Note: We also use a highly targeted Facebook ad to get our post more attention from the surrounding market.

It's important to note as well that we are building a "list" within Facebook as well as getting them to provide us their email address along the way and we will then build that list as well.  We do all of this to be able to market back to them month after month regarding new happenings, staff, services or products in your office.  If you haven't heard it yet.... the money is in the list.  In other words, once you have an email list and begin to communicate with people you can make more money faster.

The idea of retargeting is to entice past patients to come back or to attract people who may have visited the site but left before scheduling a consult or making a purchase or taking the preferred action the practice owner wants them to take. It’s a way to get patients back to the site, and into the business.

When using retargeting effectively, practice owners aren’t just sending their message out to the masses and hoping something lands with a patient that’s likely to take action, the way a lot of online advertising works. Instead, it’s a way to really target your advertising to the audience you’re trying to reach. Using this type of advertising, you’re targeting anyone that has visited your website before or has seen one of your Facebook/Instagram Ads.

This is how retargeting ads differ from display banner ads that are typically broadcast to a practice's entire target audience rather than just a small portion of it. With retargeting, you are only taking the portion that has been on the website or otherwise expressed interest and marketing to them and them alone.

Websites are more like online brochures that are designed to give information to be read. While a website can have call to actions such as “Contact Us” or “Schedule Appointment”, there is a lot of information within a website that can confuse the prospect. One of the main things is that there are too many places to click to other pages and lose focus on the main reason they are there.

A marketing funnel only has one page and one focus. There are no links that take the visitor to another page about something else. The sole focus is converting the visitor to a buyer with an offer related to a service or product that you offer. That’s it.

You don’t want visitors to just read. You want them to take action and convert them into a patient. This is what a marketing funnel is designed to do.

How does a $38 return sound on every dollar of investment? Too good to be true?

Well, welcome to the world of email marketing.

If you’re in a business that involves any sort of online presence (THAT MEANS YOU!), you can’t underscore the importance of email marketing. If I had to paint the advantages in broad strokes, I’d say email marketing is important because of:

1) massively increases your reach and communication.

2) is flexible, measurable and scalable.

3) improves your revenue.

4) keeps data ownership with you.

Whether you want to admit it or believe it, over half of the entire planet uses email right now. The mass adoption of email makes it the perfect channel for your marketing. In today’s hyper-digital environment, it’s a safe bet that everyone you come across, and everyone who’s in your target audience, use email.

You click ‘send’ on an email and within an instant, hundreds and potentially thousands of people get notified through an electronic slab they’re holding in their pockets or hand. How amazing is that?

The combination of mobile devices and email marketing gives you the unprecedented advantage of the speed and reach in executing your marketing.

Building brand awareness is an essential activity for any practice whether you are just starting out or you've been in the game for some time.  Brand awareness is that intangible quality, which drives prospects to choose you and your services over your competitors. The better they know you, the more likely they’ll buy from you.

So how does email build brand awareness?

Awareness comes from attracting attention. People learn about you when you make yourself visible.

You can use emails in a few ways to hold your recipients’ attention. Using email after seeking permission, you can send subscribers:

>> Industry updates

>> Expert advice

>> Staff Changes
>> Public Events or talks

>> Blog updates

Email simply keeps you on their Top of Mind!

A healthcare professional’s dream is to have a unique personalized value proposition for every single potential patient. While marketing is not quite there yet, email marketing does a pretty great job of approximating this dream.

First, you can segment your email lists by whatever patient characteristics you think are relevant to your practice. For example, if you’re a sports niche provider, you can segment your customers by sports they like.

This way you can inform your golf fans on your new golf treatment program, while not disturbing the baseball aficionado.

Second, marketing has a reputation for being impersonal, email alleviates that concern.  It is very simple to TAG each prospect and patient with their first name - builds trust and authority and shows you care for him/her individually.  It's a small yet very powerful move.

We’ve already discussed how email brings a touch of personalization that other channels of marketing lack.

Personalization, or in other words, understanding your patients and their needs, goes a long way in building relationships with them. Email gives you a chance to proactively reach out to both prospects and current patients to show your enthusiasm and interest. People are bound to notice your enthusiasm.

Combine personalization and proactiveness, you have the ingredients for building solid relationships. But to really capitalize on strong relationships, you can use email to drive your marketing home if you use it to build credibility.

Credibility is the badge of authority and trust that people give you. It’s that badge that helps you stand out from the noise of competitors and cluttered email boxes. Building credibility for your brand through email isn’t difficult. You just have to keep your communication honest and authentic and show your expertise in your domain.

The more you write blogs about what happens in your practice or add a video of a new service and a PRO TIP - add a Video Testimonial to your blog - the better engaged and educated your prospects and patients will be.

The reason these are one of our favorite techniques is that it's one of the easiest to implement for a client. Most practices already have a list of existing patients and their email addresses. Most of these existing patients already love YOU and the practice as well as your service and probably the products you sell..  They just need a subtle reminder to come back in and visit - this is a re-activation campaign.

This can be done with a simple email newsletter that is sent out once a month. This newsletter functions to cut through all the noise of your existing patient's daily lives and remind them why they fell in love with you in the first place.   ***We can do one-off email campaigns as well which work fantastic if we can offer them an exclusive reason to come back in for treatment, new services or products.

We write newsletters for our clients each and every month and the key is making sure that the email that you send out isn't something that is just the latest promotion. It has to be something they look forward to reading because it feels personal and because it helps them.

With that said, there are 4 key components to every email newsletter that we write for our clients. These 4 things are the key to why the newsletters that we write end up driving so much extra business for our clients (without their patients feeling like they are being "sold to").

Video is not only critical to your success online, but it’s also easy to create. There are literally dozens of video tools and mobile apps available online that make video creation easy and fun. All you have to do is do a quick Google search, pick one and start creating.

The thing about video marketing is that it’s so incredibly versatile. You can make almost any type of video you want, but here are a few ideas to get you started:

>> Demo a product or shoot a how-to video of your most frequently commented on service. The key to any kind of online marketing is to offer value to your patients. How-tos and demos are easy and inexpensive to make – and the truth is, nobody is more qualified than you are to tell people about your product.

>> Give a behind the scenes tour. Do you have a unique technique or process, an enthusiastic staff, or an interesting origin story? Make a video to let your patients know about it.

>> Record interviews with staff, or shoot some “man on the street” style videos with patients. This can be a terrific way to grab some off-the-cuff patient testimonials and product reviews.

>> Speaking of testimonials, ask some of your patients if they’d be willing to sit down to record a video testimonial. Or, take it a step further and make a video case study of one of your patients. Most consumers today say that they look up reviews and testimonials online before making a purchase, and videos add a personal touch that makes them hard to resist.

Can you come up with 52 Topics in Healthcare that your prospects and patients (and community) would be interested in learning more about?  If you said YES - fantastic... you now have the content for a Wellness Wednesday Facebook Live Show.

You will become a leader in your community and it becomes a referral machine.

While the way Google works may seem random at times, your ranking for certain keywords is actually based on a formula that you can use to your advantage. This is called "Search Engine Optimization" or "SEO" for short.

Ranking higher in Google for certain search terms is something that most people think is very complicated. With a little patience and some basic knowledge of how it all works however, it's a lot easier to rank in your local market than you might think.  When you search for "chiropractor + city name" or "physical therapist + city name" you most likely see the "Google Maps" appear >>> our goal is to get your practice in Spot A, B or C!  This is more of a Local SEO component which we will also cover at a later date.  Moving forward we will talk more about how your practice appears in the 'organic' search -- what pops up below the maps listings.

There are literally hundreds of things you could do when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. When we're working with our Local Clients and we launch an "SEO Campaign", we tend to focus on a few key elements that we've found make the greatest impact.

It all starts with making sure we rank for the right keywords and expands out from there.

Let's cover the core things that we do when we work to Rank Our Clients Higher on Google.

Not only is your Maps listing important but also your Reputation on Google (and Facebook).  Remember when I spoke earlier about when people are searching for you after they see your offer.  Well, if your online reputation is poor or non-existent, you will have a more difficult time getting people to trust you and a much harder time getting your ads to convert.

This is something that most of our clients have no interest in doing themselves due to the tedious and unpredictable nature of the work involved.

Your site being "mobile-friendly" or not can drastically affect where your site ranks in the search results.  Google has openly stated that it will penalize websites ranking if it is not mobile responsive.

This is something that is often overlooked by traditional SEO firms, but it vitally important as Google's algorithms have evolved.

Often this involves getting other important local websites to link to you using the keywords you wish to rank for. This sends a signal to Google that your site is a local authority on a topic and results in higher rankings for that term.

We focus a great deal of effort on making sure our clients have great content and that it is something that is "share-worthy" on Social Media. This ultimately helps in our effort to rank our client's websites high in the search results for our desired key terms.

I realize the number of folks that you have contacting you every week who want to provide digital marketing services for you can be overwhelming. Ask me how I know.... I even still get calls! I have literally been in your shoes answering the calls from marketers promising you the world. I also realize that it is hard to know if they can actually help you and even if they know what they are doing.

I hope that this guide has given you a good foundation so that you understand what is available and what should be done in what order. I've built this Digital Marketing Agency so that I could help Healthcare Professionals keep up with the quickly changing Digital Marketing Landscape and to always get them positive Return On their Investment.

If you have any questions at all about how to implement any of the above in your practice, feel free to contact me and just ask.

No matter who you decide to use to help you build your practice with the Internet, I hope this guide has been a powerful jumpstart and got you going on the right path and helps you make an informed decision when you finally do choose a provider.

Thanks so much for reading!

Call or Email me Anytime.

I'm always delighted to answer any questions you might have.

Dr. Derek Baron

Web: www.PracticeInsidersEdge.com

Phone: (630) 491-1444

Email: derek@practiceinsidersedge.com