Your Practice, Your Brand: Top 3 marketing strategies

Your website should have interesting information, reflecting your specialized services and credentials, Dr. Taylor said. For example, he specializes in balloon sinuplasty, which he says is not common in his region. His website contains detailed information about the procedure, including an animated demonstration.

Dr. Taylor’s website also includes testimonials about his services, which are based on feedback he collects from internal surveys of his patients.

Glazer said it’s worthwhile to engineer a secure messaging web portal for your practice, which allows patients to log on, book appointments, upload their demographic and medical histories prior to an office visit, refill prescriptions and view test results. “Pricing for services like this have gotten cheaper. In a down economy, people are willing to sell services for less,” he said.

Another important technological investment is search engine optimization, in which consultants will work with your practice to make sure your website pops up higher on the list when a consumer searches Google or Yahoo for “Otolaryngologist,” “ENT,” or a similar search word (See “Stand Out on the Web”).

“You can have a website that looks like the Sistine Chapel, with Flash animation and dazzling visual displays, but the question is: Where are your potential patients looking online?” said Peter Kent, author of Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, and CEO of LeadNation. “Nationally, there are 50,000 people per month searching for ‘ENT’ online. That’s where your first line of attack needs to be. Your website needs to come up when they search,” he said.

Stand Out on the Web

LeadNation CEO Peter Kent offered these tips:

• Avoid the mistake of having too many graphics; Google can’t read the keywords embedded within the images. Put important keywords in the URL addresses and the title tags of your web pages;
• Cultivate links from other websites to point to your site. One way to do this is to register your website with local search directories such as “Google Maps,” “Yahoo Local” and “Bing Local.” Consider buying sponsored links to your website that get displayed when a consumer types in keywords like “sinus problems”;
• Make sure your practice is listed in local online medical directories;
• Put your practice’s phone number on every page on your website, not just the home page or the “Contact Us” page;
• Give your patients comment cards on which they can write brief reviews about their experience. Post the comments on Yahoo, Google and Bing’s physician rating sites, as well as on rating sites such as vital.com and yelp.com;
• If you find yourself on a “Top Docs” list, post that credibility builder on every single page on your website. You don’t know which web page the consumer will see first; and
• You can double or triple new business from online consumers by answering your phone promptly or calling them back immediately. In the real-time environment of online browsing, there is a good chance that your potential patient will go to somebody else if your office doesn’t answer the call right away.