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Are You Reaching Out To Get Reviews From Happy Clients?

Posted on July 7, 2017 by aimultimedia

Whether you’re an established practitioner or part of a growing office, client testimonials may be one of your best available resources. By tapping into your current customer base, garnering reviews and nurturing healthy discussion, you can both gain new fans while prioritizing the old ones. Harness the power of happy patients, and spread the love to new visitors. If you can solicit customer reviews and testimonials effectively, you’ll grow as a preferred provider. According to MarketingProfs, 67 percent of consumers read less than six reviews before trusting a business. As a practitioner, these reviews count even more. Let’s discuss how to garner them.

Solicit To Real Patients

Sadly, a lot of practitioners “review stuff.” They ask friends, family and even other staff members to bolster their reviews. You’ll need to ask real patients for real accounts, including a rundown of events, appointments, and the overall experience. A Maritz Research study suggests that 75 percent of online survey respondents consider reviews to be fair. This study was adapted to veterinary practices, prioritizing real reviews over fake reviews. Don’t worry about quantity. Shoot for quality. Your respondents will follow your lead.

Be Visible

You’ll have more success if you’re accessible. Before asking patients to leave any reviews, make sure you’re accessible across multiple review sites. Online reviews are crucially important, as 72 percent of consumers trust them as much as personal recommendations. If you want high-quality, timely reviews, you’ll need to make the process as simple as possible for customers. Meet them where they are. Specifically, meet them online. Use Yelp, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Reviews.

Prioritize Their Happiness

Happy patients rarely share positive feedback if they’re not prompted. That said, negative experiences tend to result in immediate—and negative—reviews. The average customer won’t search for ways to leave a review, experts say. To get good feedback, get ahead of them. Make on-the-spot reviews, and gather testimonials as soon as services are completed. A good way to do this is to have an accessible iPad available at your front desk. Make sure it has direct links to your review profiles, and share links to your regular newsletters, too.

Make It Fun

Testimonial writing can be lengthy, boring and monotonous—but it doesn’t have to be. Give your patients incentives, and make gift-giving a clinic setting standard. Don’t violate the Anti-Kickback Statute, however. Establish a clinic gift-giving policy which follows Office of Inspector General rules. So, spend under $10 per gift and no more than $50 over the course of a calendar year. Check out this post for in-depth coverage on gift-giving as it relates to healthcare practices.

The Most Important Information You’re Not Advertising

Posted on June 26, 2017 by aimultimedia

When it comes to website information, potential patients won’t stick around if information is lacking. A lot of modern optometrists, dentists, veterinarians and other healthcare providers accept a variety of insurance options. Unfortunately, too few provide such information on their website. Prospective patients browse the web quickly, and they’re likely to turn down providers who aren’t economically feasible. Even if you do offer Medicare or Medicaid—or even programs like CareCredit—your patients might not know you do. Your website needs a strong insurance information presence in order to effectively attract and convert new clients.

Increasing Website Traffic

When it comes down to it, clients use Google to find new care providers. Often, they conduct Google searches like: “Dentists near me who accept Humana”, or “Cigna dental providers.”

It’s all too easy to incorporate much-needed keywords into your site’s payment options page. It’s also easy to skip the nuts and bolts of a solid SEO strategy. To maximize prospective patient views, capitalize on low-competition searches. It isn’t enough to have an insurance information page. You’ll need to include the most competitive keywords around. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner to strategize your keyword plan, and incorporate the most popular terms in your area into your search marketing campaign.

Influencing Conversions

Potential clients will turn to a provider offering up-front information. They’ll also schedule an appointment with you if you’re offering superior services—or pricing options—to your competitors. To reach the right people at the right time, you’ll need to provide the most relevant information first. Locate your competitors’ websites, and check out their payment options page. What information is hard to find? What information is unclear? By making your coverage options well-known, you’ll immediately bring in an audience which would otherwise turn away from ambiguous information.

Linking to Other Content

Your payment options page might be useful, but it isn’t your sole source of information. A lot of healthcare practices offer information about CareCredit and similar programs—via website blogs. These blogs, of course, link back to the provider’s payment options page. While conversions will be increased by a website’s clarity, they’ll also be increased by a solid information network. Review your practice information as it is listed on the insurance directories to make sure that the phone number, address, affiliated doctors, and website address is correct.

Being Relevant

A medical provider which offers relevant information will seem industry-savvy, reliable and effective. Remember: your potential clients are already searching. They know what to look for, and they’ll bypass any providers which don’t display a knack for industry knowhow. By presenting the most-used insurance options, you’ll present a deep understanding for how patients purchase medical services.

Having a solid insurance coverage page can deepen your client connection before services are ever purchased. Prospective patients want reliable providers, and they want providers which can connect with them on a financial level. Often, dental, veterinary and other services are expensive. It pays off to present pricing options up front. A clean, easily navigable website will enthuse your customers. It’ll also turn one-time customers into return visitors.

To engage your audience, cast a wider service net and cater to those in need, you’ll need to make sure your payment options are instantly accessible.

Use Facebook to Communicate with Clients

Posted on June 22, 2017 by aimultimedia

When it comes to promotion, social media is king. Facebook is a great communication channel, and today’s practitioners are utilizing it for its high-end visibility, reliability and uniformity. Whether you’re trying to engage new clients, retain old ones or simply stay in touch, Facebook is your best available resource. People spend a lot of time on Facebook. Is your business showing up?

The Facebook Presence

A solid Facebook presence involves regularly posted schedules. 72 percent of adults online visit Facebook at least once per month. Facebook is today’s strongest social media platform, and it’s being used by practitioners to boost their business persona. Facebook’s algorithms prioritize repeat posts, so businesses that post regularly will have higher visibility.

Why Do Updates Matter?

From a marketing standpoint, constant updates can boost your exposure. Of Facebook’s active 1.23 billion active users, about 62 percent log in on a daily basis. Your business page is similar to a profile, but its existence as a professional page gives it Newsfeed priority. Facebook even has a targeted advertisement platform. Target your customers by age, geographic areas, educational levels or even previous visits. Over time, your updates will reach your business’s most valuable customers.

Engagement and the Digital World

It isn’t all about marketing, either. Ideally, your Facebook presence will be used to respond to comments, feedback and reviews. Patient engagement is important, and you—as a provider—have a responsibility to keep up with it. Facebook groups are similar to discussion forums, but they can be altered to meet various levels of engagement. A good provider cares about their patients, and Facebook makes engaging discussion easy to maintain.

The more engaged a practitioner is, the more personable they’ll be. A lot of patients make medical choices based on familiarity. Your online presence, in many ways, is a brand. To boost your brand’s “recognition,” you need to become familiar.

Giving the Right Information

By using Facebook’s About section, you can display the most important information up front. Patients won’t navigate to a business’s website immediately. Rather, they’ll locate them on social media. In fact, experts believe Facebook has become an indispensable information resource for businesses. Hefty timelines of Facebook’s platform updates cover its history with business-oriented benefits. Now, dentists, physical therapists and other practitioners are using the platform to attract long-term office visitors.

The Power of Links

Finally, Facebook is an indispensable linking resource. Include web addresses, Twitter links and blog posts in your updates. Or, ask your audience a question. Studies report that posts ending in a question have a 15 percent higher engagement rate.
Page Likes matter too, of course. Fortunately, a few developments have made it easier for medical providers to reach out. On average, Facebook users can experience 1,500 updates per day based upon their registered connections and Likes. It’s a big digital world out there, but it’s a well-connected one.

Is Your Reception Desk Properly Receiving New Clients?

Posted on June 14, 2017 by aimultimedia

Every time someone visits their eye doctor, dentist, or veterinarian, the very first encounter they will have with your office is with the reception area and staff. Often, patients will spend just as much or even more time in the waiting area as with their healthcare professional. However, these areas can often go overlooked by busy practice owners or practitioners who focus on the service being provided.

In this article, we are going to provide you with a few key points that can help you ensure your reception area and staff are set up for success, and that your patients have an enjoyable experience in every area of your healthcare office.

Create an Amazing First Impression

First impressions are lasting ones, so one of the primary goals of your reception staff should include delivering a great experience to your new clientele.

Make sure that clients walking in the door are acknowledged and assisted in a timely fashion. Reception staff should smile, make eye contact, and either help your visitors immediately or ask them to wait a few minutes until they have the time to greet them properly.

New clients will usually have questions relating to care, billing, insurance, and scheduling. Train your staff to notate and accurately relay any information that a new client may request. The last thing you want is for your reception staff to appear clueless or disorganized, which can make a new client uneasy with choosing your service.

When your business earns a new client’s trust, you can expect them to become a repeat client, or to recommend your service to their friends and family who may be in need of your services. A great first impression can turn into “word of mouth marketing” one of many excellent methods to grow your client base.

Create an Inviting Space

There are a variety of ways in which a waiting area can be designed based upon the amount of available space. There are a few good rules to stick to – whether you have a smaller or more spacious area.

Seating
While you want to design your practice processes so that you can service patients with a quick turnaround time, sometimes people just have to wait. When clients may have to spend longer than a few minutes waiting, we recommend providing a comfortable seating area. Include a few low tables with magazines so that individuals can put their belongings down in their immediate line of eyesight.

Entertainment & Media
It is becoming more common for small healthcare practices to include a television with a video streaming service or a music streaming service in the waiting area. If you decide to incorporate a TV into your reception area, make sure that the content is suitable for all ages. G rated motion pictures, nature documentaries, sports channels, and news stations are all safe choices for your clients’ entertainment. Other businesses opt to provide business specific education videos – for example a dental office may choose to display videos that discuss optimal oral health care.

Listen to Feedback

When you consider the elements that make your practice successful, listen to your clients. The success of your business always depends upon how your clients (and prospective new clients) perceive your business.

While you may think the way that your staff engages with your clients or the way that your organization is structured is working, there may room for growth.

There are a variety of ways to collect your clients’ opinions. E-mail surveys to patients after their visit, include physical surveys in the reception area – either paper forms on clipboards or virtual forms on tablets, or simply ask your patients at some point before or after your service how their experience was. The feedback from your patients may help you improve anything you may be overlooking.

Maintain Regular Staff Trainings

One of the most effective recommendations that we can provide is to schedule routine trainings. Some of the largest and most successful corporations do this, and it’s for a good reason. People forget things and systems have a tendency to denigrate over time. By creating a training routine, your entire staff will also have fresh and relevant information to draw upon when assisting patients and their family members.

A well-trained reception staff will make a patient confident in your services. Whether it is an emergency or a simple check-up, you always want to make sure that your clients feel they can implicitly trust your staff.

According to this Monster.com article, three important qualities that a great healthcare team should exercise include attentiveness, great attitudes, and the know-how to resolve issues that unhappy clients may have. If you train your team to always have those three qualities in mind, not only will it benefit the new clients, but also the overall work environment and culture that your team exudes on a daily basis.

Top 10 Social Media Marketing Strategies for Orthodontists

Posted on May 29, 2017 by aimultimedia

Social media marketing for orthodontic practices? Where to begin? Well, it’s actually easier than you think. Here are 10 top strategies to try today.

1. Facebook Groups

Facebook groups might not seem like an intuitive form of orthodontic marketing, but they are. Sharing your knowledge with industry professionals and customers is a great way to bring in business.

2. Instagram

Nothing brings people into an orthodontics practice like beautiful smiles, and a well-curated Instagram feed can do just that.

3. Snap, Snap, Snap

No, not Snapchat (though maybe that too?). This means, keep a camera on hand! That way, when those social-worthy candid moments occur, you’ll be ready.

4. Social Media Handouts

There’s no reason you can’t combine analogue with digital. Go ahead and hand out social media cards at your office, with every feed listed right on them.

5. Ask for Engagement

People like to do what they’re told … so tell them. In each social media post, ask for a comment, a like, a share or a follow. More often than you think, this works.

6. Don’t Forget Pinterest

Not just for party planning, Pinterest is a great way to round up interesting facts, blog posts and infographics. Show your expertise by curating your content and others’.

7. Branded Images

Nothing ties a social media marketing plan together like good branding. Where possible, use the same approach for Facebook and Twitter posts, blog title images, and your Instagram presence. If you don’t have a great designer on staff, sign up for Canva for Work for $12.95 per month.

8. Website-Wide Share Buttons

If your orthodontic website lacks share buttons, how can you expect people to … well … share? Make sure you’ve got them located in your top navigation bar and footer, at the bottom of each post and in sidebars.

9. Tweet Your Face Off

Twitter is all about constant connection, so share away: the good, the bad and (sparingly) the ugly.

10. Have Fun!

Sounds cheesy, but it’s true. Oftentimes, people are just on social media to get a smile or a laugh, so give it to them and you’ll be surprised by the awesome results!

4 Ways to Use Twitter & Stay in Touch with Your Dental Patients

Posted on May 25, 2017 by aimultimedia

Twitter has been around for a long time, and it’s not going anywhere. Unfortunately, it has long ignored by local businesses that assume its universality means it’s no good for dental marketing. Wrong-o. Twitter is an excellent medium for cultivating a client base and drawing traffic to your dental website. Here’s how to do it.

Become a Go-To Guru

Becoming a thought leader or industry expert is easier with Twitter, and in turn makes using Twitter easier. Establish yourself as someone to follow with on-trend news reporting, anecdotes from your practice and handy tips. Your current clients will love you for it, and prospective clients will be drawn in.

Crowdsource Your Expert Knowledge

No one ever said you had to earn your expertise solely through university training, trade shows or continuing education. You can also cull it from conversations and interactions with others in your field, then repurpose it to share with your audience. Voilà: You still look like the expert, and your associates look to you to earn them recognition.

Offer Dental Discounts

Twitter is a great place to get the word out about promotions. Two-for-one family days, 10%-off coupons and prize drawings are all great ways to up your Twitter following and bring people to your front door.

Leverage Twitter Chats

“Twitter chats” might sound like yet another esoteric platform you have to figure out how to use, but it’s not. It’s just a public conversation that focuses on a single hashtag. Yours could be #dentistry or #dentalhygiene, both very simple tags that can lead to very powerful connections. This is where many of your potential clients hang out when looking for information, and it’s also where you can meet and partner with other industry leaders.

Starting to use Twitter comes with a learning curve, but it’s not as steep as you think. Put these tips into play one at a time, and you’ll quickly see a return on investment. Go!

The Top 5 Must-Attend Veterinary Tradeshows in The US

Posted on May 22, 2017 by aimultimedia

Veterinary tradeshows serve a variety of purposes. From educating industry professionals to fulfilling continuing education hours to sharing the latest and greatest technological developments and best practices, tradeshows are the lifeblood of innovation. Take note of the following list, all happening in the next year, and try to make it to at least one of these showstoppers.

Central Veterinary Conference

The Central Veterinary Conference is actually comprised of three separate events – hosted in San Diego, Kansas City and Virginia Beach – offering hundreds of hours of continuing education. Note that dates vary: The Virginia Beach expo takes place May 18-23, while the Kansas City event is held August 25-28 and San Diego goes down December 7-10 2017.

ACVIM Forum 2017

The American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine hosts one of the most highly respected veterinary events in the country every year, the AVCIM Forum, held June 8-10 of this year. Comprising an audience of practicing veterinarians, students, technicians and field specialists, the conference is the premier opportunity to learn about internal medicine.

AZA Annual Conference

Not every vet works with companion animals, of course. Many of America’s most highly specialized veterinarians instead focus their efforts on the health and preservation of wildlife from land, ocean and freshwater. Zoo and aquarium professionals have come together at AZA Annual Conference for 80 years, and you can join them September 9-13.

ACVS Surgery Summit

Surgery is not limited to humans, of course. Anyone in the field of animal surgery will benefit from this highly acclaimed conference hosted by the American College of Veterinary Surgeons and held October 12-14. Learn about the latest techniques and improve management of every case, from beginning to post-healing.

North American Veterinary Conference

Hosted by the North American Veterinary Community on February 3-7, 2018, this conference combines the best of all worlds with small breakout sessions, larger scientific events, exhibits and more. This conference is excellent for anyone interested in veterinary marketing, as it brings vendors to the forefront and enables connections through a larger variety of social and dining events than most expos offer.

No matter what you’re looking to accomplish this year, one of these events will no doubt help. Check them out and let us know what you’ve decided, or which was your favorite, so we can share your experience!

Are you looking for more marketing tips to grow your veterinary practice or drive more traffic to your veterinary website? Call our experts today to set up a free information session.

The Top 5 Tips for Increasing Conversions on Your Plastic Surgery Website

Posted on May 18, 2017 by aimultimedia

Nobody would skimp on plastic surgery, given the stakes … which means, if you want to convince people to work with you in this competitive industry, you can’t skimp either. Instead, you have to make the most of your plastic surgery website to ensure maximum conversions and a booming business. Here are 5 leading ways to do it.

1. Make It Beautiful

Plastic surgery has two main angles: augmenting the body for purely beauty-related purposes, and reconstructing it after accident or surgery. Either way, people want to look better. How do you convince them you can help? By showing you have taste, an endeavor in which your website plays an integral role. It must be gorgeous, so hire a designer stat.

2. Use the Highest-Quality Photos You Can Find

Again, beauty is your highest good on a plastic surgery site, and a lovely website theme isn’t enough. That beauty must extend to people as well. How? With utterly gorgeous imagery of people and specific body parts, all tastefully done.

3. Use Video Liberally

Plastic surgery is a very people-oriented field. You can instill trust in your staff and confidence in your results by showcasing the real people who make your business thrive … but like photos, make sure that video is always of the highest quality.

4. Tell People What to DO

One of the most common reasons conversions fail? People are simply unsure what to DO. So tell them. “Download our guide,” “Sign up for a free consultation” or “Call us today” are all good options. Whatever the case, don’t leave it up to them to “figure it out,” because chances are good they won’t.

5. Keep Your Instructions Above the Fold

The “fold” is the line at the bottom of the screen, where you have to start scrolling to see more. If you want your instructions to lead to conversions, you have to keep them above the fold, or else most of your visitors will leave before they see them. That’s no good!

Increasing your conversions isn’t a matter of luck or brilliance, but simply hard work over time. Use these tips consistently and track your conversions over time to see what’s getting you the best results, then reinforce those strategies.

Looking to increase traffic to your plastic surgery practice website? Call our experts today to set up a

3 Things You’re Not Doing to Grow Your Orthodontic Practice

Posted on May 15, 2017 by aimultimedia

Gone are the days when paper flyers and newspaper ads were the only techniques available for orthodontic marketing. Today’s modern practice has a wealth of opportunities at its figurative fingertips, and if you’re not doing them, you’re missing out. Take a look at the following three techniques, all of which leverage the most popular advertising platforms today without much sweat or hassle.

1. Post to Instagram Regularly, With Hashtags

Many people know Instagram to be an invaluable marketing tool. However, even if they are using it (and many orthodontic practices have yet to jump on board), they’re not making the most of their feed. Start posting regularly by setting a schedule and sticking to it. Accompany each post by 10-30 relevant hashtags (not just any ol’ popular one), and put them in a comment below your caption to keep your main post from looking spammy.

2. Use Google AdWords

Google AdWords is the most popular advertising platform in the world, and for good reason: It gets results. Setting up a campaign with even a modest amount of money can grow your revenue stream and have clients streaming through the door. The best part is you don’t pay for an ad unless someone clicks, meaning that each time you spend, you spend with a purpose. Use this handy guide to get started today.

3. Give Your Treatment Coordinators Smartphones

This isn’t the most intuitive strategy, but it works. Giving your TCs smartphones keeps them happy, but more importantly, gives them all the tools they need to engage with customers on social media platforms, over email and via text. Giving clients and prospects a simple, 21^st-century way to get in touch with your practice does more to build your business than a zillion flyers ever could.

These, of course, are but a few of the marketing techniques available to you, but they are some of the smartest and highest-ROI around. Leverage them today, then go get a long massage … because you’re about to be really busy.

The Top Online Tools to Stay Engaged with Your Optometry Patients

Posted on May 1, 2017 by aimultimedia

Keeping your patients loyal to your practice is crucial to the long-term success of your practice. This is especially true for eye care patients who may not need to visit the office as regularly as other traditional healthcare checkups. The use of a consumer oriented approach to your healthcare services is the key to retaining your patients from year to year, but it is a more difficult task than it sounds. To keep customers coming back to your practice, it’s important to hone your patient engagement strategies. Here are some of the top tools used today by optometry practices:

Make Use of Social Media

The power of social media platforms cannot be understated. Over the past decade, social media engagement has risen to the top as one of the primary ways to engage with your patients outside of the spectrum of an office visit, and keep in touch with them throughout the year.

To get started, create accounts or claim your business’ existing profiles on the top 5 primary social media platforms: Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. Develop a social posting calendar to schedule informative and interesting content on your profiles. Engage with your audience by posing questions that your patients can provide feedback for – which can offer opportunities for open discussion and further engagement.

Be sure to include backlinks to your website, and post any news, content or blogs that your followers may find relevant and informative. Offering a new service? Be sure to let your followers know, they might find a relevant service they never knew you offered in the first place.

Be sure to let patients know about your social channels, and ask patients to follow you when they are in your office and on your website.

Use Your Website Blog

Your optometry website should come with a built-in blogging feature that makes it simple to add time-relevant articles for your practice. Regularly update your blog with informative articles that discuss daily eye health issues, practice news, community events that you’re involved with, and other relevant information that your patients may find valuable. Share your blog posts on social media websites like Facebook and Google+. Over time your current patients and even prospective new patients will see the articles that you post and will choose to come back to your practice because of the relevant and personal information.

Along the same lines as a blog, a video blog (or vlog) is an entertaining and fresh way to visually engage your patients with your practice brand. Create 2-4 minute videos about frequently asked questions that patients ask. You can also post photos and videos of events you have held in the recent past. This can make your clientele feel part of your community, and gives them opportunities to advocate your brand as they share these videos with their own family or followers.

Stay Relevant with Email Campaigns

Email marketing is used by healthcare professionals to send out promotional emails and newsletters, remind clients of upcoming visits and promotions, and to announce news and updates about the practice.

You can use emails not only as an educational tool for your current patient base, but as an informational one for prospective clients whose email address you’ve collected through your website lead generation or newsletter phone, or from community outreach. Don’t forget to collect the email addresses of your patients once they visit your office so that when you conduct your email campaign they receive your news, updates, and newsletters.

Implement a Patient Portal

A patient portal is a secure website that allows your patients to conveniently access and update their personal information, confirm appointments, complete brief interviews about their exam, check the status of their glasses and/or contact lenses order, and review their billing information. Some portals feature secure messaging and various health articles for your clients to peruse as well. Many people appreciate this type of resource as it allows them to quickly manage their vision care from their smartphone or computer. While not all clients may choose to use this, you may find that implementing a portal can relieve a busy front desk. Many portals come with an option to download an app as well, which will live on your client’s smartphone screens and remind them of your business when the time comes for their annual or semi-annual eye care appointment.

Do you use any or all of these tools? Which are your favorites? Join the conversation by commenting what works best for your practice.