Monday, February 01, 2010

To open up the discussion regarding website engagement directed at E-Patients and their research methods, I have started a basic article series dedicated to better website and customer engagement. This is the first installment.

As Internet marketing continues to grow in importance for medical practices and elective surgery companies, it is easy to get distracted from the real sources of value. Website engagement nto customer engagement is one area that will be worth every penny that is spent. It's not uncommon to see even the smallest practice websites generating over 1000 unique visits per month. So what happens to all these visits? In most cases, nothing meaningful happens. In my research, the average bounce rate on medical websites is around 46%. Instead of worrying about creating more traffic, would it not be better to get the engagement aspect of your website fixed? Getting traffic to your website is a great idea, but if your website is not going to engage and convert, what is the point of spending money to drive traffic?

Understanding how to successfully engage visitors on your website could be the most important Internet marketing step of 2010. It will certainly be more important than running a print ad in the local newspaper. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of medical website engagement, we hope we can welcome you to this conversation. To start, I want to share a really forward-thinking and intuitive comment on the Internet by the author of "Age of Engage", Denise Schiffman: 

"In this reinvention of marketing, it is the fast, the unique, the innovative and the creative, the socially connected and most importantly, those who engage their audience that will win." --Denise Schiffman, Age of Engage

Although this comment is not specifically made with medical marketing in mind, nor does it take into consideration many elements faced by medical practices in the marketing process, it is universally undeniable. This is about marketing in general, but we can learn a lot from this. We are facing yet more changes in marketing and if your business does not adapt, you will not win. Adapting to the changing landscape will be critical for best marketing practices and the best return on investment opportunities. To start making this point, I have highlighted a series of points below that back up this comment and support the need for customer engagement. 

The WEB is where it's at for medical lead generation and marketing.

If you follow modern marketing at all, it should be no secret by now that Internet marketing and website lead generation can be the dominant generator of marketing leads. Please take a moment to review some incredible facts that I have collected over the years: 

• Over 55 million people researched a health topic in each month of the first quarter of 2007 - Pew Internet & American Life Project 

• According to eMarketer by 2011 about 83.2& of the baby boomer population will be using web. The baby boomer population is estimated at about 70 million people.  

• E-Patient is NOW  a vocabulary word for medical marketing experts and constitutes research to understand reach and engagement. Are we all E-Patients Now? Have you ever done research on webmd? 

• 46% of Internet users say they will use the Net next time they have a medical inquiry, a figure statistically indistinguishable from the 47% of Internet users who say they will contact a medical professional.  - Pew Internet & American Life Project 

The writing is on the wall that adopting an aggressive website engagement strategy will yield more interest in your practice. It's up to you and your team to now initiate a program to take advantage of the millions of people seeking health information online. 

What does "medical website engagement" mean?

When someone finds your website, what do they do? Your website is often the first opportunity to introduce yourself to prospective patients. You cannot possibly meet all your prospective patients, but your website can. Is your medical website a presentation that you are proud of? Did you put as much effort into the website as you did the waiting room? Search engine optimization is NOT engagement and is quite frankly useless until the engagement part of your website puzzle is solved. If a visitor comes to your website and bounces immediately, that means the site was simply not engaging enough to hold attention or excite a visitor. This might sound enigmatic to those of you who know me because I am a major advocate of SEO, but this simple. If your website is not set up to engage or participate in engaging potential customers, what's the point of SEO? Sometimes we need to take a step backwards and make sure we have the basics covered. In my opinion, too many medical websites ignore this issue and forge forward with various types of Internet marketing. The end result is skyrocketing bounce rates and unintentional web traffic. Listed at the end of this article you will find some initial thoughts on how to engage your website visitors. 

The new marketing Paradigm Shift

I used to talk a lot about the marketing paradigm shift in the way media impressions were made. The paradigm shift I was discussing was always about the transition from old media (TV, radio, print) to the new media (Web based Internet media). Around the turn of the century, the new media had picked up speed and had taken a chunk of media impressions. Internet marketing, although in its early phases with search engines such as Google emerging, possessed massive potential. Over the decade the spread of broadband Internet moved this shift forward to completely realized marketing models. Google exploded and connected consumers with businesses. Now we are faced with a new shift, this time in the mind space of consumers as it pertains to their actions on the web.  

As the decade proceeded, the Internet and its applications started to speed everything up. Email was constantly being sent and people were now expected to reply fast. The use of mobile device communication exacerbated the issue by putting all the communication in the palm of your hands. Now with social media applications, communications are transmitted to multiple platforms instantly. The bottom line here is that consumers in the new media age simply have too much control in these new environments. Attention for the the old interruption model of branding advertising is limited and makes less impact.  

This concept raises the bar for medical marketers and their ad agencies to develop new forms of messages that are not even perceived as ads, but rather as content. What can we do to start transitioning into a business that embraces these new ideas? 

1. Manage Relationships - To better identify likely prospects and manage relationship with these prospects. Social media will have a major impact in this realm and has already started with platforms such as Twitter. Many large companies such as DELL computer actually manage PR and consumer opinion with these tools. (i.e Twitterville)
2. Viral Marketing - How do we create communications that are so compelling, entertaining, informative or useful that the consumer is not only happy to receive them, but also motivated to share them with others? This one will be challenging for medical marketing advertising agencies and I have seen few successes thus far. Mark Prussian of the Eye Care Institute in Louisville Kentucky is a cutting edge CEO that has been raising the bar in his thinking. Behind the direction of Mark Prussian, our company set up a landing page that was connected to the ad platform of Facebook and demographically and geographically targeted potential buyers. The landing page promotion turned out to be brilliant, as it gave away for FREE many tickets to the Louisville Cardinals basketball game. The word that the Eye Care Institute was giving away FREE tickets spread fast throughout Louisville's Facebook users. I wonder what eye care practice will be in the minds of these people the next time they think about an eye exam or wish to visit a LASIK website?
3. Creative Advertising - Advertising creative, as well as the targeting technologies will need to be elevated in the future. How will we do this? Medical websites will need to reconsider old messaging and bad design elements if they are trying to engage visitors. Start thinking of legitimate offers that do not cheapen or deface the image of your practice.
   

With the recession lingering and the economy in a wavering state of reality, 2010 will bring about massive change in these media impressions and the interaction with prospects. Is your business poised to take advantage of these emerging trends? Is your business ready to be creative, fast, socially interactive and engaging? Now that we have identified the new marketing trends and challenges, what do we do about it? Although there are no absolute methods of clear success that can be easily adopted in various industries, listed below are a few things that can initiate the process.  

What can we do to make the patient experience more engaging?  

Creating a new conversation with your customers and developing brand advocates is going to be important in 2010. Using your website to foster this process will be pivotal in your success.  

• Develop more engaging content - If you want to start the process of making your website more engaging you must start with the website content. Making your website a medical encyclopedia is not the way to create engagement, but instead delivering the content and messaging that patients will respond to and need is important. Integrating social media and web 2.0 communication websites might play a role in your content distribution strategy.

• Use rich media such as website videos and eyemaginations - Every medical website should use video and animations to create more engagement. We must come to terms with the fact that many people prefer to watch videos versus read long pages of text. As we all know by now text and content are necessary for many reasons such as SEO, but we should all take advantage of the opportunity to create compelling media.

• Create a MINIMAL design - Creating a minimal design certainly makes website engagement easier because it enables you to put the most important messaging at the forefront of the design focus. Medical websites often suffer from an identity crisis because they are trying to be an encyclopedia. The most important part of engaging the e-patient is to answer questions and be forward thinking enough to have answers ready. Patients are really not interested in what laser or medical device you have. Most patients are really interested in solving a medical problem, and this is why they have arrived at your website.

• Use intuitive symptom based search indicators - Instead of making patients choose from a long list of procedures, why not focus on their medical problems? If itchy eyes are a symptom of conjunctivitis make sure the site is searchable for itchy eyes. We cannot assume consumers will know all of the possible diseases. In order to have a searchable website done properly, you will need to talk with a professional medical website company that can program a database from this mindset. Search features are often driven by website pages and procedures, so it is easy to leave out symptoms.

• Use patient testimonials - Hire a photographer or videographer and make some awesome testimonials. Social media adoption and review websites have clearly indicated that people care about what other people think. It's far easier to make a testimonial sound real if you have imagery and videos. Present your patient stories but do this professionally. Crappy videos of your patients are no way to make an impressive presentation. These types of videos will only detract from a professional presentation-- instead of tons of bad videos, make 5 really good ones. If video is not an option take professional photos of your testimonial and create brochure style web pop-up presentations.

• Develop a Social Media Strategy - 2009 marked the year where medical websites became very interested in social media, and some practices have done quite well with their strategies. At the 2009 San Francisco ASCRS meeting, various industry consultants hurried to stake their position on this new developing media. This meeting's ASOA lectures contained both positive and negative attitudes towards social media and its impact on a practice. Despite the lack of vision and enthusiasm for social media by many consultants and course lecturers, it's apparent that customer engagement through Internet marketing can be enhanced through social media. If we are experiencing the death of antiquated shouting and interrupt advertising and abandoning this for a better customer conversation, it seems very logical that social media would be one of the tools to engage.  

The ideas listed above are simply a start in answering the question of how to engage visitors and assist them in becoming brand advocates. Over the course of 2010, I feel we will see real progress with engagement models both from a website perspective and elective medical standpoint. I look forward to idea submissions regarding this topic.  

Look for more discussion on website engagement throughout 2010, as this is a very important and under-diagnosed problem for most medical websites.

Comments By Michael Dobkowski (Michael Dobkowski is an Internet marketing consultant specializing in the medical marketing field and holds the position of Internet marketing consultant for Glacial Multimedia Inc. with Offices in Portland, Maine and Istanbul Turkey)  

Posted By Michael Dobkowski at 04:06 PM