monthly marketing updates
The secret weapon of monthly marketing updates
In this article, we will share one of the biggest medical marketing secrets used by leading surgeons and doctors. If you are looking to build, develop and grow your private practice, take a closer look at the ultimate content marketing solution for ambitious specialist doctors.
monthly marketing updates
Monthly marketing updates for doctors and why they matter
Kris Borgraeve
December 13, 2022
Your existing website content and when to update it
updating your website
What does updating your website even mean? For many doctors, it’s a grey area.
The technical updates we do – if you are a Digital Practice customer and we are hosting your website for you – are not necessarily creating marketing outcomes in themselves. Typically, we would:
- Update the backend software of your website: Google looks at the technical health of your website and we check it, updating the software at the right time. Sometimes an early update creates bugs, so we always stay alert and plan your updates wisely.
- Check the backups of your website: With the current levels of cybercrime, it’s important to have backups of your precious online profile in different locations on different systems. So that’s another aspect of the technical checks we do on a monthly basis to make sure there is always a plan B.
- Make sure your actual hosting, all licenses for plugins and themes are up-to-date and in good standing.
- Monitor your keyword visibility. Tracking your online visibility is important to see the progress compared to when you first came on board, so we can see the impact of optimised quality content on your overall visibility, your traffic and your conversions.
But there is another meaning of the word updates we want to explore. It deserves even more attention because updating your website and adding fresh content is linked to this secret weapon we call monthly marketing updates. Let’s unpack the technique in more detail.
If you have not read our article about the pitfalls of cheap hosting for medical websites, check out why these cheap packages often cut corners and put your private practice at risk.
Why Google likes monthly content updates
monthly content marketing
Now we’re talking about an entirely different type of update. Monthly marketing updates are not happening in the backend (the software) but in the actual content. You are adding new content to your website that has value for your patients or referring GPs.
Google loves it when quality content is added on a regular basis to a website that it scans. Hold on. Why is Google scanning your website if you are a specialist doctor or surgeon? Don’t take it personally – Google scans a lot of stuff. It scans (or crawls, or indexes, depending on how much IT jargon you can take ) trillions of websites to make up its mind.
"Google’s algorithm or artificial intelligence has given itself a mission: to present good search results when people are googling. In order to do this, Google has to crawl and assess almost anything that is out there, to define if website A deserves a higher ranking than website B. Without experiencing this, you are in the middle of all that with your medical website."
The bottom line for an ambitious doctor in private practice is this: If you want to grow your online presence, the starting point is always a website that is optimised for content marketing. It has the following qualities:
- The backend software is well configured
- The hosting is as close to your target audience as possible
- The loading time of your web pages is minimal
- The responsiveness of your website is optimal
- The technical health of your pages is optimal
- Your essential content is clear, well structured, easy to navigate, well written and fast-loading
That’s the foundation. You would also make sure that your updates are in line with the brand positioning of your profile so you build authority as a doctor. Next, let’s talk about what you can do on a monthly basis to get the most out of your amazing website.
Our plans: Host+, Nurture, Grow, Accelerate
marketing plans
Marketing plans for a doctor in private practice should be focused primarily on organic visibility. Why? Because patients are not keen to be guided by ads when they do their online research.
Since 2016, Digital Practice underpins every medical marketing strategy with patient search behaviour data. We investigate what patients search for. Through our comprehensive set of tools and data sheets, we monitor, map and analyse which search terms are being used for almost any medical specialty area, across Australia.
Here’s an overview of the plans we offer. If you are currently on one of our plans, it shows you where you are in your current marketing journey, and which other options we have available.
Accelerate: Our flagship monthly marketing plan.
- One business development meeting per month
- Monthly assessment of your visibility, traffic, conversions
- 24/7 competitive visibility monitoring of your website against your competition
- Business ideas, creative input and feedback from our senior team
- Keyword research (most common Google terms) for one additional page
- Input/feedback process, copywriting, publishing
- One additional Content Page or Blog per month added to your website
- 10 Social Media Posts to support your new and existing content and to build authority
Grow: Our most popular plan. Exactly the same, without social media.
Nurture: Our light plan. Exactly the same, but we do it every 3 months.
Host+: We keep your website technically healthy and backed-up, and we monitor your visibility so you are ready to make well-informed decisions when you decide to add additional pages or blogs to your website, hopping on one of the other monthly plans.
Not sure if you are on the right plan? Book a free 1:1 Strategy Session and let’s go over the best match for your practice.
The eternal question: Will I get more patients?
getting more patients
I get it. When you are passionate about your work, you might be focused on the detail. It’s wise to check if there is real ROI in monthly marketing updates, or in digital marketing for medical in general.
There is. But it’s not happening overnight.
Here’s why.
"Google is not stupid. It has been around long enough to also assess web pages that are trying to trick it into ranking high. It has learned - as the artificial intelligence that it is - that sometimes people try to hide the fact that they are not actually publishing great content. One of the things Google has learned to focus on is consistency."
That is why you may feel it’s never enough. One customer asked me why they were not ranking at the top of Google for every keyword that we had built into their content when we launched their website. When you look at visibility in a static way, you are not in the same mindset as Google. The search engine wants consistency and when it sees you publishing great content one year, and then go silent for 12 months, it may start to think that you didn’t mean it. In Google’s eyes, it is very well possible that you do not want to become that leading authority that your initial web content suggested you were.
When will you get more patients from an effective content strategy? With the right foundation – which you would have if you are a Digital Practice customer – and with monthly marketing updates, provided they are done well.
How not to update your website as a doctor
updates as a doctor
Just like in any industry, we see things happening that are…less than ideal.
If you just add content to your website by adding a section or a page and don’t do it based on data, the update might as well harm your visibility rather than improve your Google rankings.
"The obsession with DIY updates is understandable from a budget perspective. But what if that one page on a particular surgery or treatment type was your window to get 3,4,5 extra patients per week, and your team member forgot to optimise the page or didn’t even know what that meant? How much money would you leave on the table over the course of a year by having your updates done by your internal team?"
A quick checklist of how we do it?
- We check: Is the content you are proposing in line with your 12-24-72 month business priorities?
- We research: Is the content actually in line with a common question patients type into Google? We map the most common search terms that are linked to the topic you have in mind or we come up with the suggestion of a topic that will boost your visibility.
- We question: As medical journalists, we ask the right questions so it becomes easier for you to provide input in the most effective way. We know you are busy.
- We build: Building a content page means that we organise the optimised information with the keywords in the right place, so your referring GPs, patients and the Google algorithm are all happy when they look at it.
Doing this yourself is the equivalent of giving me a scalpel with a few suggestions in YouTube videos. Just like that will not – in no way whatsoever – make a surgeon out of me, DIY medical marketing tactics are often costing you way more over the course of a few years, because your monthly marketing updates are either not happening or totally invisible to Google.
Ready to nurture, grow or accelerate?
monthly marketing update plans
If you are a Digital Practice customer and you are currently only on a Host+ plan, book a free 1:1 Strategy Session today to discuss how a Nurture, Grow or Accelerate Plan can help you achieve your targets in the coming months and years.
- Tags: Marketing for doctors
