Consumers have become accustomed to better experiences in most other settings. Healthcare must acquire a new way of thinking beyond its traditional approaches.
4 Steps to Meeting Patients Where They Are on Their Digital Journey
Note: This sponsored article was written by Lindsay Neese Burton, Healthcare Marketing Director at Reputation.com. Lindsay spent more than a decade as a healthcare marketer at large Academic Medical Centers in the Southeast, focused on developing marketing strategies for consumers and referring physicians. Now as part of the Reputation.com team, Lindsay helps healthcare organizations create digital marketing strategies and leverage online feedback to meet their goals.
Healthcare consumers are doing their research — online.
Yes, personal referrals still count, but in their absence, Google is your patient’s next trusted resource. Nearly 80% of consumers report using online reviews as a first step to seeking a provider. And even if they sign on to the search engine with a recommendation or referral in-hand, they’re still reading reviews — 16% use them to validate their choice of a doctor.
If your patients aren’t advocating for you online — that is, writing positive reviews and saying good things about you on social media channels — you are likely losing business to your competitors.
Online ratings and reviews stand between your marketing spend and your ability to acquire new patients. Monitoring and requesting authentic reviews and enlisting patients to share their experiences with the community pays huge dividends for leading healthcare organizations.
Guide their Journey, Win their Business
What consumers read about you online heavily influences their decision-making. In fact, the reputation of your doctors, locations and organization as a whole is defined at every touchpoint a potential patient has with you online — from the doctor or location listing on Google, to patient ratings and reviews, to reading doctor profiles on your website and scheduling appointments. At any point on the journey to find or book an appointment, a consumer’s perception of you can change — for better or worse.
That’s why it’s so important to manage all the details of your online presence continuously and at a granular level. For large healthcare organizations with hundreds or thousands of doctors and locations, technology makes this scalable. Online reputation management (ORM) platforms do the heavy lifting, enabling organizations to manage the four essential steps to meeting patients along their digital journey:
- Ensure you have accurate location listings on all major search engines.
- Maintain high ratings and rankings, and a large volume of recent, high-quality reviews.
- Make finding a doctor or location easy with an intuitive find-a-doctor tool.
- Merchandise your doctors effectively with rich physician profiles and directly-integrated scheduling.
Let’s take a look at each of these steps in greater detail.
- Keep location listings accurate and complete.
When a potential patient looks for your doctors or locations online, they usually begin with Google. The information they find had better be correct. Imagine someone with an urgent care need discovering the hours of operation on your listing were wrong once they arrive and find it closed. Worse yet, what if they can’t find your address or phone number because you haven’t claimed your listing? This is the beginning of a bad experience and could result in a negative rating or review. Plus, you will have lost their business. To attract and acquire patients, the first step is to ensure they can find and contact you, and that the first impression patients have of you is professional and accurate. Here’s an article that describes what goes into a complete location listing.
- Ensure a high volume of recent reviews.
When healthcare consumers start their search for a local provider, Google presents them with a few top choices. Google’s ranking algorithm relies heavily not only on the completeness and accuracy of your location’s listing, but on star ratings and patient reviews. The more recent reviews you have, the higher your ratings will be, and the higher Google will rank you among the top results.
Plus, recent research has shown that 79% of healthcare consumers want to read six or more online reviews as they evaluate doctors, but 77% of providers have zero Google reviews, and those who do have an average of just one review. Systematically requesting reviews from every patient will help increase review volume and recency.
- Make finding a doctor or location easy.
Many healthcare consumers look for doctors on providers’ websites using find-a-doctor tools. Make sure you have a search interface that enables them to search for and compare physicians based on various parameters, such as location, specialty, insurance, CAHPS survey data and third-party reviews.
- “Sell” your doctors online and help them get appointments.
Your doctors’ profiles are an important marketing and patient acquisition tool. Make sure they are complete and filled with information consumers use to choose a provider. Star ratings and reviews must be part of the mix, along with complete information about the doctor’s experience, expertise, staff, office environment and any other details that might convince a patient to choose them over a competitor. Finally, integrated scheduling encourages the prospective patient to convert — make it seamless for them to transition from evaluating your doctor to making an appointment.
Take Control of Your Online Presence
Leading healthcare marketers are finding that integrating online reputation management (ORM) into their overall digital strategy is essential to continued business growth and success. Online reputation is defining prospective patients’ first impressions when they have a healthcare need. Healthcare organizations must develop a comprehensive strategy to guide consumers — from discovery to selection to scheduling.
To learn more, check out our CMO whitepaper, “How to Compete for Patients in the Digital Age.”
Reputation.com delivers the category-leading Online Reputation Management platform for large, multi-location enterprises. We help healthcare organizations monitor and improve online ratings and reviews, improve customer experience and drive traffic, visits and revenue. For more information or personalized walk-through of the data, visit us at Reputation.com.
DYK? What Brands Post on Social Media Is Not What Consumers Want to See
A recent report from Sprout Social shows a divergence of opinion in what marketers choose to post on social media and what consumers want to see.
Consumers want to see (in descending order of preference):
- Discounts or sales
- Information on new products or services
- Posts that teach something
- Entertaining posts
- Inspiring posts
- Updates on company/organization happenings
- Posts that tell a story
- Posts that reveal a company’s personality
- Highlights about company/organization employees
- Posts that are partnerships with influencers
Marketers post these types of posts (in descending order of volume):
- Educational posts
- Story-telling posts
- Inspiring posts
- News about company happenings
- Entertaining posts
- Information on new products or services
- Posts that reveal a company’s personality
- Highlights about company/organization employees
- Discounts or sales
- Posts that are partnerships with influencers.
Does your organization take consumer preferences into account when posting on social media?