medical marketing myths

Let's bust those myths now!

When you are not in theatre or in consultations, what goes through your mind? Building and growing a private practice comes with a ‘business’ mindset and in this article we will give you the essential key to a successful private practice.

medical marketing myths

Busting medical marketing myths

ignoring digital marketing

The overarching myth: It's ok to just ignore the internet

If you look at websites, LinkedIn pages, Instagram feeds, with a slight level of reluctance, rest assured. You are not the first surgeon or specialist doctor who simply didn’t pay too much attention to the digital explosion of the last decade.

But ignoring digital marketing and ignoring one of the main shifts in human behaviour is just reckless. People spend time on phones. The number one myth about digital – in the field of running a private health practice – is that it is sort of okay to just ignore the whole digital space.

The most popular digital myths among doctors

digital myths

In our workshops across Australia, we have open and more confidential conversations with surgeons, specialists, allied health professionals, practice managers and hospital executives. It has given us a good overview of the most prominent digital marketing myths that are out there, in the realm of specialist doctors and surgeons. Here we go with an overview of the typical digital myths.

Myth1: Digital Marketing is Too Expensive
Many doctors may perceive digital marketing services as overly expensive, especially when compared to stories of cheap overseas outsourcing. They might not be fully aware of the value and return on investment that comprehensive digital marketing strategies, including content marketing and on-page SEO, can bring to their practice. Comprehensive marketing means mapping what your patients are searching for at each stage of their patient journey, what content they value, crafting the unique positioning for your practice and putting in place compliant and future-proof content that attracts and converts patient leads.

Myth2: Social Media Isn’t Relevant for Medical Professionals
It’s not a one-size-fits-all situation. One of the digital myths is that you can’t do social media or that it’s completely useless. Even if your specialty area is not suitable to discuss on Instagram or Facebook, chances are that educating GPs via LinkedIn is still a powerful social media strategy to get more referrals. And in many cases, it may be very relevant to also reach out to your community on Facebook and Instagram, simply because you stimulate word-of-mouth referrals and you tell Google that you are also active on other platforms, boosting your overall online visibility. Before dismissing the entire digital space, have a 360-degree brainstorm about the platforms and tools that are relevant for your practice.

Myth3: SEO is Unnecessary for Medical Websites
Doctors might undervalue the importance of SEO or medical Search Engine Optimisation, believing that their reputation alone is enough to attract patients. It basically means you miss out on the low-hanging fruit: patients who are actively searching for medical information, specialist services and specialist doctor profiles. Another popular mistake made by surgeons and specialists is to overspend on Google Ads. It’s often the easy way out of making a proper long-term organic SEO plan.

Myth4: Digital Marketing Results are Not Measurable

Doctors might believe that the impact of digital marketing strategies is not quantifiable. In reality, digital marketing offers various tools and metrics for measuring the effectiveness of different strategies in real-time. What are your patients googling for? What pages do they value and where do they stay? How visible are your competitors for your most important business avenues? What area of your practice needs more content to attract specific referrals? That’s the field of Patient Search Behaviour data and…here at Digital Practice, we love using that data to help you as a customer.

Myth5: Digital Marketing should generate Immediate Results
Ah, the myth linked to impatience. There may be an expectation of immediate results from digital marketing efforts. However, building a strong online presence is a gradual process that requires consistent effort and strategy. Hold on, isn’t that what you heard from that other agency that never delivered? There is a nuance between monitoring and expecting a slow but certain increase in visibility…and not doing the right stuff. Here at Digital Practice, we put in place data-driven content, and monitor the progress in visibility 24/7 so that – when we meet – we can look at the results together and make sure you are comfortable with the level of progress we are booking together.

Enough about the myths. Let’s empower you with some extra background knowledge, that will change your conversations with marketing people forever.

3 Crucial facts about marketing for the private practice

the private practice

Do not assume that just putting any content on a web page will work as a content marketing plan.
Let’s unpack this even further. By now you will know that the currency in medical content marketing is content.
And we all know how easy it is to read over that sentence and to assume that you obviously do have content on your website. Let’s put it out there: just any quick blurb on your website is not going to work for you. What Google is looking for is the exact content that will give your future patients a reliable, well-presented, balanced and credible answer to their most important questions.

Google is using its own artificial intelligence to learn all the time. Distinguishing whether your page about endometriosis, hip replacement, cataract surgery or rheumatoid arthritis is the best answer to the patient’s search intent on Google…that’s the process we are talking about.

Do not use the first DIY website package – it will bite you in the back later.

What you have also missed out on is the holistic view on your keyword research, the design of a patient-friendly interface that is not a template, and the full content strategy you would have needed first, before you even started designing your website. On a mission as spectacular as yours – intending to attract patients who choose you over another specialist – you would probably want your digital presence to be as reliable as the private practice you run, wouldn’t you?
Why do I call it a paradox? Because the digital space is now also impacting the GP-referral pathway.

AHPRA is real but at the same time, it shouldn’t keep you from having a website.

Some doctors will tell me that the reason they have never even set up a website for their private practice is fear of AHPRA. Fear of being reprimanded because of the Advertising Guidelines for Healthcare Professionals. That is a bit of a misunderstanding. What AHPRA does is regulate the things you can and can’t say. But it never wanted doctors to give up on the ambition to educate patients, or to publish informative content on their websites. With a professional medical website, built within the regulatory framework, there is no risk whatsoever for your license, your peace-of-mind or your hospital accreditation. I’d even say that the private practice model without a proper website is probably a very risky business model.

Patient X experiences a symptom. They do an online search. The GP orders tests, the patient now learns about the likelihood of condition Y and surgery type Z potentially becoming relevant. More online searching happens and in between the GP consultations, the tests and the referral to a specialist, the patient has googled for new keywors, terms and for specialists.

As the day approaches to make decisions, the patient is almost in a digital relationship with certain specialists because of all the time spent on those profiles. The name on the GP referral is no longer set in stone and Patient X books an appointment with the specialist they liked most after all the googling.

So if you have mainly been working with GP referrals as the primary business development avenue for your practice, consider adding a second layer to amplify the impact of those referrals: influencing the patient’s choice with a personal profile that stands out.

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busting medical marketing myths

Busting medical marketing myths, we have also given you a more in-depth overview of what is involved. This is about how effective your online profile can be, and in many cases it would have the potential to double or triple your private practice work volume. For some doctors, this is a business development conversation, while for others it’s about doing the exact procedures that you trained for. It can be about only doing what you prefer doing. So, whatever the current state of your private practice, let’s have a conversation about ways to overcome those medical marketing myths.