Every small business owner I speak to at the moment is looking to grow their business and get more clients. In this day and age, digital marketing is an essential element of growth for your allied health business.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the marketing of your products and services using digital technologies. Digital marketing is the best way to reach out to potential clients and encourage them to buy your product or services.
As a health professional, you need to stand out online and be seen as a go-to person in your field. This is where your digital marketing strategy comes in.
Step 1) Research, research, research
Researching your market and your ideal client is the first step in your successful marketing campaign. It's important to know exactly what you're going after before you start building out a strategy. Who is your ideal client? What do they want? How do you help them with their problem?
Step 2) Get your website to rank well on search engines
The second step is to review your website. Does it look professional, does it rank well with the search engines? This is what’s known as SEO. Search engine optimisation can be a complicated process, but there are still aspects you can work on yourself.
For example, one of the ways to get your website rankings up is through blog writing with keywords. You should also ensure that the content you're publishing is original and engaging so that it will stand out from other websites in your niche.
The search engine crawlers will also tend to rank your website higher if there are more links from other websites leading back to your site.
It's useful to invest some time in understanding SEO and how it affects the traffic to your website. Often it is useful to engage professional assistance in this area,
Step 3 ) Utilise social media platforms
Social media networks are a very effective way for businesses to conduct marketing campaigns. They can help your small business increase its exposure and generate more leads.
As a general rule, focus on one or two social platforms that are popular with your ideal client. Once you’ve mastered those, start exploring the others. Many businesses start with Facebook and/or Instagram. LinkedIn, Twitter and Tiktok can also be very effective depending on your target audience.
The key to growing on social media, is to provide content your audience wants to engage with and to be consistent with your posting.
Step 4) Focus on building a list of email subscribers
Email marketing is often overlooked by small businesses when first starting out.
However, email marketing is actually really useful for building relationships with your potential clients, and then encouraging your readers to take an action.
Email marketing is one of many tools in the toolbox for marketers - but what sets it apart from social media or content marketing is its ability to drive sales and conversions. The best part about email marketing is that it's your list and isn't affected by changes in social media platform.
Step 5) Review and adjust regularly
These strategies are long-term investments. Any digital marketing strategy should be regularly reviewed against your KPIs and adjusted as necessary to ensure it continues to deliver the desired results.
Set yourself a reminder to review your digital marketing strategy at least quarterly and make any adjustments as necessary.
Conclusion
Digital marketing, no matter how small your business, is an integral part of any business growth plan, allied health industry included.
If you're after more help in this area, please feel free to book a call and we'll see how I may be of assistance.