Orthopedic surgeons often face intense competition in the healthcare sector. With several doctors offering similar healthcare services, it becomes important to get the target audience’s attention. As almost every member of this target audience browses the internet every day, building an online presence helps orthopedic surgeons get an edge over their peers.
However, online healthcare marketing for orthopedic surgeons is not an easy task. Compared to conventional marketing, agencies often need to use a more subtle and impactful approach. Naturally, doctors cannot ask their audiences to come and visit their facilities as no one willingly gets injured or develops diseases. Healthcare marketing agencies often find innovative ways to educate the audience and make them aware of their clients.
If you are new to healthcare marketing and are working with orthopedic surgeons, here are a few important ways to build an online presence for high patient acquisition.
Few healthcare marketing activities help orthopedic surgeons build an online presence like a good SEO campaign. Search engine optimization makes it easier for your client’s target audience to find them on the internet. People all over the world make a plethora of Google searches every day. By targeting the right keywords and creating the right content, you can help your client climb the search engine ladder and secure a high rank on the SERPs (search engine results pages).
While creating an SEO campaign, it is advisable to focus on local SEO to help orthopedic surgeons reach the local audience. Especially if a surgeon is starting their own practice, local SEO helps them build a robust online presence for people living in the vicinity of their clinic. It also helps people visiting the concerned locality find your client’s clinic by making relevant searches.
As a large population of your client’s audience is likely to spend a lot of their time scrolling through social media feeds, orthopedic surgeons can tap into these opportunities with a targeted campaign. Most healthcare marketing companies help surgeons create accounts on the most suitable social media platforms, helping them spread their word.
When it comes to social media marketing for doctors like orthopedic surgeons, content plays the most important role. Irrespective of the platforms you are targeting, it is important to create and post unique and engaging content. Orthopedic surgeons can always create short yet informative carousels for their Instagram accounts. They can upload videos about them explaining certain musculoskeletal conditions and tips to stay safe from them.
Moreover, social media experts help their clients link these posts to their official websites. A direct and clear call to action allows social media users to visit your client’s website and engage with them in different ways.
If you do not want to take the organic marketing route and your client has a good budget, you can use online advertising to build their robust online presence. This involves several paid marketing practices like running Google ads, creating sponsored videos, and running a search engine marketing campaign.
The biggest benefit of online advertising is that it gives you immediate results. It helps orthopedic surgeons reach their target audience as soon as they enter the right keywords or scroll through their social media feeds. If your client’s budget allows for it, you can also create and run YouTube ads to make more and more people aware of the orthopedic surgeon’s healthcare services. While online ad campaigns cost more than organic campaigns, they increase the likelihood of your client’s messages being read and give them quick results.
Public relations help orthopedic surgeons inform their target audiences about their services, make public announcements, and share anecdotes that matter. In the digital age, most healthcare PR agencies include PR in their campaigns for surgeons. Digital PR involves taking conventional PR practices and performing them online. From writing online PR articles and press releases to using social media to promote your client’s brand, digital PR goes beyond the limits of traditional PR.
However, it is always advisable to provide orthopedic surgeons with an ideal blend of digital and traditional PR. While digital PR helps you circulate your client’s messages and stories through the websites of popular media houses, traditional PR gives you an entry into the Indian heartland with print and television.
Over time, the popularity of influencers has gone beyond social media. Starting out as social media content creators, several influencers across the globe have created an extremely loyal fan base. You can always tap into this popularity to strengthen your client’s online presence.
The credibility of a message is often directly proportional to the credibility of the influencer endorsing it. If you can manage to bring a popular influencer on board to promote the services of an orthopedic surgeon, they are likely to witness a quick and sustainable increase in consultations. Ultimately, it is all about banking on these celebrities’ popularity to drive your marketing messages home.
In 2023, it does not take much for a doctor’s reputation to be tarnished because of something they said being taken out of context. While social media has made marketing and communication easier, it has also made the digital environment fairly toxic. Being an important part of public relations, reputation management is the key to maintaining your client’s positive image in public.
Reputation management involves assisting your client in saying the right things at the right time. It also involves letting the world know about their achievements as an orthopedic surgeons with the intention of garnering trust.
These were some important ways in which you can increase patient acquisition for orthopedic surgeons by building an online presence. Make sure you understand your client’s marketing objectives and the audience they wish to target. A well-rounded marketing campaign can help surgeons ensure more healthy and happy lives in the country!
Blog Admin:
Ravinder Bharti
CEO & Founder - Public Media Solution
About: Ravinder Bharti is the Founder and CEO of Public Media Solution,
a leading
marketing, PR, and branding company based in India.