storytelling in medical

How to make your story cut through the noise?

Here’s why storytelling in medical marketing matters: Your story is one of thousands of micro-stories that people give attention to. Let’s unpack how a media mindset will change the way you look at medical marketing.

marketing agencies for doctors

How to use storytelling in medical marketing strategies?

The thing about cutting through the noise

cut through the noise

When we talk about the increasing need for your medical marketing to cut through the noise – I can guarantee you – it’s not marketing spin.

Wouldn’t you agree that we get more impulses compared to a decade ago? Compared to 15 years ago. The smartphone revolution has only touched one or two generations and the word media already means something completely different compared to the previous generations.

There is more content. A lot of it is noise. And even if it’s quality content, your combination of emails, text messages, social media comments, social media private messages, group chats, household notifications, automatic reminders, and stuff you are subscribed to… Wow, if my grandmother could see all the noise that this tiny device causes in my brain on a daily basis!

Let’s be positive. Cutting through the noise is possible. It just means that we can’t sit back and be complacent about this underperforming, broken, old website that we use for our private practice. It means we get more serious about applying storytelling in our medical marketing content.

From brochure to 24/7 channel

media for doctors

I used to work in traditional media before I jumped into digital content, back in 2005. From mainstream TV news to YouTube. Some said it was reckless. In retrospect, it was the right time.

Media has become the container word for all things we feed to our eyes and ears, and consequently our brains.

The question is, how does your website behave when that happens? [ sidenote, across Australia and for any type of medical keyword we are talking thousands of searches every month per niche, subspecialty, condition and treatment pathway ].

The answer is: convert your mindset about your website. Look at it as a 24/7 channel, that is (hopefully) working hard, each time someone asks Google a questions. If to you, it still feels like a static brochure, you may be losing patients at this very moment. This connection to traditional media and the reality of people spending time on their phones, is the reason why we started implementing a vision that integrates storytelling in medical communication.

Wake up! It’s a 2-way channel!

googling for medical content

Googling for medical content isn’t going anywhere. It’s a habit. Artificial Intelligence, ChatGTP and the like? It is being integrated as we speak and the power of great, credible, well organised and reliable, compliant information is growing by the hour.

Your online presence is a two-way channel. Whether you like it or not. Even that old, poorly designed and half-broken website still sends out a signal to the community. Translated into business lingo, the signal might be that “I am a great surgeon but I am sloppy with details because I have not checked how my profile comes across and how to make it better”. I know, that hurts.

Why you need an updated strategy

updating your marketing

Let’s take a deep breath. Maybe all you need is a short standard treatment and some lifestyle changes.

The reasons why you may need an updated medical marketing strategy would be personal and will depend on where your practice is at:

Not started yet: Great. Speak to us first, you need a good digital foundation
Struggling: Not so great. Luckily, it’s often because of poor online visibility. Speak to us first, you need a better online presence.
Growing: Brilliant. We have powerful all-in-one solutions for ambitious surgeons and specialists and because we only work with Australian specialists in private practice, we speak your language. Admittedly, I came here 13 years ago and am working on the Aussie accent.

A unique project in Western Australia

market analysis

Oh yes and did I tell you we are doing something truly unique here in Australia? From Perth, we have been running national Patient Search Behaviour studies since 2016.

What we do
What we do can be compared to putting a tracer on a vast range of medical online searches. We monitor the daily and monthly search volumes for the most common topics related to a wide range of medical specialties and subspecialties.

Why that is a game-changer
Instead of making funny comments about Dr Google, we now have a live set of data on search behaviour in the key areas that involve surgeons or specialists in private practice. The data gives us a direction to build and execute content marketing strategies for doctors who want to become more visible in Google Search

SEO on steroids
You often hear about the term Search Engine Optimisation and it’s often a service that is offered ‘after the fact’: long after a web strategy was defined, content was written or a medical website was built. In our universe, every paragraph, title and item we put on your website is supported by research and data. It sounds almost scientific, doesn’t it?

How you benefit from that
If you sign up for a Digital Practice website and a monthly marketing package, we use patient search behaviour data across everything we do for you, creating highly optimised content that is seen by the search engines as worth ranking.

We have seen spectacular results with this method, doubling or tripling patient numbers for some of our customers, increasing wait lists, boosting the reputation of a clinic and much more. You can read more about local search engine optimisation for doctors right here in our Grow magazine.

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storytelling in medical

Storytelling in medical marketing is not a fancy gadget. Not just a ‘nice to have’. It’s rapidly becoming the sophisticated backbone of your business development in private practice. If you are passionate about building a strong practice, chances are high that you will love what we do. Book your free Strategy Session via Zoom here, so we can talk about your practice growth in the near future.