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A Physician’s Guide to Choosing Target Audiences on Facebook
One of the most important assets in any physician’s marketing strategy is knowing your potential patients. In a field as diverse as medicine, this can mean the difference between success and failure. Therefore, we’ve put together a helpful guide to Facebook’s targeting tools to help build and improve your online audiences.

Define Your Patients

The first step in any successful strategy is defining who you want to get in front of. Imagine the type of patient you’d like to attract and jot down every characteristic about them that you can think of. For example, if you’re a plastic surgeon who would like to do more tummy tucks, then what are some general attributes of a typical tummy tuck patient? Here are some questions to help you get started:
- Are they women or men?
- How old are they?
- Are they married or single?
- What is their household income?
- How much disposable income do they have?
- Do they have children? If so, how many and how old are they?
- What kind of car do they drive?
- What do they do for a living?
- Which schools did they attend? What level of education did they reach?
- What are their hobbies?
- What types of clubs or organization are they typically involved in?
- How do they spend their free time?
- Have they ever had plastic surgery?
- Have their friends had plastic surgery?
Once your ideal patient has been defined, review Facebook’s guidelines to see which targeting options are available, or you can see all of Facebook’s Ad Targeting Options in one epic infographic.

Locate Your Patients

After your ideal patient has been profiled, the next step is to determine where they are. One of the biggest mistakes in marketing is casting your net too wide and spending advertising dollars on people who won’t turn into patients. Physicians must check their pride at the door and determine how far patients would realistically travel for their services. For example, a patient might travel 30 miles to see a specialist or surgeon but would likely never travel farther than 15 miles for primary care. Once you’ve determined how far a patient would be willing to travel to visit your practice, use Facebook’s tools to limit your targeting to these areas.

Refine Audience Size

Once your audience had been defined, take a step back to consider the size of the group. Review the “Audience Definition” meter along with the “Potential Reach” number within Facebook’s campaign manager. The ideal audience has fairly specific targeting, but not so specific that the number of potential viewers is under 1,000. This ideal audience size is broad enough to be inclusive to anyone who shares the targeted interests but specific enough that the impressions aren’t wasted. You can tell that you’ve reached the ideal audience size once all of the necessary layers have been added and the numbers aren’t fluctuating as much.

Medical Industry Audience Limitations

Due to ever-evolving privacy laws worldwide, specifically in the medical field, physicians must operate (pun intended) under more strict targeting regulations. This is especially true on Facebook. One of Facebook’s most useful features allows business to upload email addresses or phone numbers directly into the platform and create custom audiences from these lists. You can then create a wide variety of custom audiences based on those lists. However, businesses in the medical industry are not permitted to create such audiences through an upload or pixel users who have visited their site because it violates medical privacy laws. Therefore, medical practices must give their targeting even more thought to serve up ads to their ideal audience.

With the tips outlined in this helpful guide to thoughtful audience creation, you, too, can be on your way to increasing engagement and building your online presence! At Search Influence, we have extensive experience working with clients in the medical industry. For more information about how we can help promote your practice on Facebook and other social media platforms, start a conversation with us today.

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Doctor
April 16, 2019
Growing Your Practice on Facebook, Part 5: Patient Confidentiality Considerations

In our last blog, you learned how to capture your audience with engaging content and analyze the results. Now that you understand what it takes to connect with your patients, we’ll take a look at common obstacles medical practices face when posting on Facebook.

Social media and the healthcare industry can seem in opposition at times. One is about sharing and transparency, while the other hinges on patient confidentiality and privacy. But the irony is that the medical industry is not immune from the benefits and trends of platforms like Facebook.

Facebook is a wonderful resource for any industry looking to grow their business. Potential clients and patients desire access to the goings-on of a medical facility or hospital, and similar to peeking in on the page of a friend or associate, patients expect to see their doctor’s office online, too. Uploading staff happenings or posting about a new procedure is invaluable to the cause. But what happens when patient confidentiality is violated? In the era of “clicks,” the two opposing parties of health care and social media must become friends. Although there’s a fine line to walk when working within HIPAA rules, here are some helpful tips to consider when using Facebook for your medical office.

Get Written Permission Before Posting

Nothing can replace the power of pictures on your Facebook page. According to a Hubspot survey, Facebook posts with images receive 53% more Likes than those without. Images serve as testimony to what your practice can do and how you can help other patients achieve their desired results. They are also a way for your patients to discuss and identify symptoms that may need a doctor’s immediate attention. However, posting photos without explicit consent from all parties can lead down a very hairy path—even if the image isn’t of someone’s face.

According to Privacy Rule requirements, physicians must obtain a signature from the patient that specifically spells out the what, when, and where of the shared item. Some medical facilities have recently opted to send out a blanket consent statement, but this is not best practice. Be sure the statement includes details such as a full description of your purpose in using the image, an expiration date on the image consent, as well as a note describing the patient’s right to revoke consent. Send a copy of the signed document to the individual and keep one for your records as well. Working this into your protocol prior to posting photos will keep a clear line of communication between your practice and patients, and it will also create a streamlined process for your social media marketing needs.

Avoid Talking About Specific Patients

Posting about patients can be helpful to your practice. You can highlight testimonials, success stories, and interesting procedures that can be used to engage new and current patients alike. However, when posting on Facebook, even if given permission to use a patient’s medical situation, you’ll want to be explicit in not identifying the individual.

Confidentiality and privacy are two sides of the same coin. Confidentiality limits the details of a patient’s health exclusively to the medical team unless given informed consent. Privacy, on the other hand, relates to the patient’s right to be treated with respect and dignity. HIPAA goes even further, stating that information given about a patient in a public forum should not disclose individually identifiable information. This information includes anything that could be used to hone in on a specific person, such as past, present, or future physical or mental health details. Understanding the difference between the two, and how they relate to the language and images used in Facebook posts, will help you and your staff to find that happy medium.

Don’t Take Pictures Around Sensitive Materials

Where you take the picture can matter just as much as the picture you take. When capturing images to share with your patients, be aware of any medical records or other confidential materials laying around. With zoom features on devices, potentially threatening information can become more decipherable when viewed from apps on a cell, tablet, or another mobile device. Avoid this mistake by thoroughly surveying the area before snapping a shot around the office. Put away any files or paperwork containing information that is private or for medical office use only. It may also be a good idea to only take more candid photos in certain areas of the facility where sensitive items are least likely to be an issue. Also, be sure to avoid taking pictures that may have a patient in the background. Having a designated spot for photo ops can minimize the chances of mistakenly exposing information that would break patient confidentiality and put your office in a compromising position.

Facebook doesn’t have to be a no man’s land for physicians and medical practices. Healthcare and social media can play on the same team. Building your brand online and strengthening relationships with your patient base is invaluable, especially with Facebook’s almost 2 billion monthly users. Don’t be intimidated by HIPAA; instead, embrace the rules, implement best practices for your staff, and walk the line to marketing and confidentiality success. The exposure you’ll get will be well worth it.

Check back next week for the final installment of our medical industry blog series, which will walk you through one of our case studies and show you how to put everything together!

If you are ready to chat about your digital marketing opportunities today, contact one of our experts.

Images:

Tablet

Patient Records

June 27, 2017
Follow the Numbers: Trends to Guide Your 2017 Plastic Surgery Marketing Plan

With 17.1 million surgical and minimally invasive cosmetic procedures performed in the United States in 2016, a few key trends stand out as opportunities. According to a report released by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, patients are trending toward fat grafting, non-invasive fat reduction, and facial enhancements. These trends present areas of potential growth for plastic surgeons by focusing their annual marketing plans on the procedures that patients are most interested in learning about. After all, the first step to any great marketing campaign is to understand how to appeal to your target demographic.

What Do the Numbers Show?

The first and most notable pattern is that patients are using their fat to enhance other areas of their body. Using liposuction, plastic surgeons remove unwanted fat from the abdomen and inject it into other areas, including the face, buttock, and breasts, to enhance and sculpt the desired look. This process of fat grafting showed a 26 percent increase for the use of buttock augmentation and a 72 percent increase for use in breast augmentation in 2016.

Patients love the longevity of the results achieved using this method, and that’s certainly a potential benefit to highlight in a marketing campaign. Plus, patients often mention the added benefit of two surgeries in one, as they are especially happy to remove unwanted fat while also enhancing desired body parts. In addition to the cosmetic benefits, this surgery is also a popular option for breast reconstruction patients for many of the same reasons.

Do Patients Know All Their Options?

While these innovative procedures are gaining popularity, doctors might not realize that many potential clients don’t even realize that this is an option for them. In fact, recent studies show that only 23 percent of women understand the full range of breast reconstruction options available. This indicates that marketing campaigns targeting new customers should focus on disseminating the facts and shining a spotlight on industry advances. By presenting the full range of innovative options available, like fat grafting, patients are more inclined to take the first step to schedule a consultation.

Paid search and Facebook advertising campaigns may be especially effective in this instance, as both are often great avenues for reaching highly specific demographics. For example, Facebook’s targeting options include new people who have moved into your office’s geographic area or even specifications like salary, industry, and age. You probably already have an idea of the ideal customer for your medical practice, and using these targeting features, you are not only more able to reach them, but you can also present them with the information that they actually want to learn about.

The same applies to Google searches. After all, if someone is searching on Google to learn about new augmentation options available, don’t you want your practice to show up in the top results as a trusted source for their desired information? Your campaigns should focus on the keywords that match the data trends, and your content should focus on informative, highly-curated landing pages that prove you’re a reputable source. All of these elements combined can lead to big conversion results.

What About Non-Invasive Trends?

Another major trend shown in the data from 2016 indicates a move toward non-invasive techniques for skin tightening, rejuvenation, and fat reduction. Injection procedures, like Kybella, that target areas of fat in areas under the chin or along the bra line increased 18 percent in 2016. Additionally, procedures like cryolipolysis (to “freeze” away fat cells) also showed an upward trend with a 5 percent increase. Other non-invasive skin tightening procedures saw a similar 5 percent increase.

Broadband light and laser treatments are among these popular options for non-invasive skin tightening and offer versatile results with little to no downtime for the patient. While these procedures do not require surgery, patients still want to know that they are receiving services from a reputable, board-certified physician. This is a major area of opportunity for plastic surgeons to focus on in marketing campaigns. An emphasis on innovative technology to achieve long-lasting results shows patients that your office is ahead of the curve and committed to new advances in the field.

How Do Trends Look Year Over Year?

Looking at the changes and trends from 2015 to 2016, we can also note which types of procedures show an increase or decrease in popularity. With nearly 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures performed, liposuction showed a noticeable jump, up 6 percent from 2015, which may reflect our earlier trend toward fat grafting. Additionally, breast augmentation remained a popular choice for patients, filling the top slot and showing a 4 percent rise from 2015. Finally, as a fairly new procedure to gain in popularity over the last few years, the labiaplasty procedure increased by 36 percent in 2016.

Another notable movement is the focus on the face, with an increase in facelifts by 4 percent from 2015. In conjunction with the surgical focus on face enhancements, non-invasive procedures, among the 15.5 million performed in 2016, showed a similar trend. Filling the number one slot, Botox procedures increase by 4 percent, with a total of 7 million procedures performed annually. Soft tissue fillers and chemical peels also showed steady inclines in usage from 2015 to 2016.

How Do You Build Relationships with Patients?

One possible pattern indicated in these trends is the frequency in which patients are meeting with their plastic surgeons. Patients feel more comfortable discussing all areas of their body with their surgeon, and a long-term relationship can develop between patient and physician. This indicates that a person may be interested in learning about multiple procedures, including both non-invasive and surgical options. A dynamic marketing campaign should reach new target demographics while also building on the loyalty of current patients.

Email newsletters and Facebook campaigns are great ways to stay in contact with your audience and keep them engaged in your services. Share patient testimonials, highlight employee profiles, and add personal elements that showcase the people-centric side of your business. Encourage happy customers to share their results with Facebook reviews and always make time to answer questions and comments that arise from your posted content. By creating multiple platforms for engagement online, you’re opening a line of communication with clients that can build trust, keep them informed, and ultimately create long-term success for your medical practice.

If you’re ready to create a dynamic marketing campaign that draws on current trends and builds your plastic surgery practice as an industry leader, the first step might be less invasive than you think. Focus on your audience, deliver relevant information, and stay true to your brand.

April 24, 2017
Reconstruct the SEO Strategy of Your Medical Practice

A referral by a physician used to be the most common way people chose health care specialists. However, now patients are turning to Google and other search engines for health information and to select a physician. In fact, 62 percent of smartphone owners used their phone to search for information about a health condition, according to the latest statistics from the Pew Research Center. Among those who look for online reviews to shop for doctors, roughly one-third reported choosing a physician based on good ratings, according to a national survey on the use of online physician rating sites published just last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

To make the most of this trend, your practice must show up in Google search results prominently. If your practice is getting lost in a sea of search results, implement some of these medical search engine optimization tips to attract more patients.

Create Great Content

As demonstrated by the Pew Research Center’s facts on Internet use and health care, consumers today are hungry for health information. Your practice can benefit by providing the information consumers are looking for, but there’s a strategy to this. The days of simply putting the most common medical keyword strings all over your web pages are over. With Google’s new algorithm updates, websites that have consistent, quality content are the ones that will get the bump in the rankings.

For a medical SEO campaign, create distinct web pages for related topics that prove your practice is an authority on the subject. For example, an orthopedic practice that wishes to bolster its search engine rankings, should create separate web pages for a diverse range of topics such as pediatric orthopedics and sports medicine. To offer more detail about specific treatments or procedures, these pages can then be broken down further into subtopics. On the sports medicine page, for example, include a subtopic about ACL reconstruction surgery or muscle tear prevention tips. Unsure what topics and procedures potential patients are interested in? With a personalized SEO package, Search Influence can help determine what topics your target consumers are searching for the most.

Infographics are also great content to invest in for medical SEO because infographics can help grow website traffic. Research by AnsonAlex, a tech company focusing on tutorials, found that publishers who use infographics grow website traffic 12 percent faster than those with no infographics. In fact, the popularity of infographics has surged in recent years—increasing by 800 percent from 2010 to 2012, according to research from Web company Unbounce.

Image Optimization

Along with infographics, you will want to include other images on your website as well. As we’ve said before, Google rewards websites that have interesting and relevant images displayed. Images keep people looking at your site longer, which gives you website more authority in the eyes of the algorithm.

Help people find your pictures by optimizing them to include alternative text. For example, say your practice has a diagram of what happens when a person suffers from a pulmonary embolism. If you optimize your diagram, it will likely appear when people perform a Google Image Search for pulmonary embolisms—possibly appearing as one of the first images they see. When they click on this image, they are giving a hit to your site and increasing your overall medical SEO ranking.

Mobile Websites

As evidenced by the whopping 62 percent of smartphone owners who use their mobile devices to look up health information, a mobile SEO strategy is crucial. Google’s recent “Mobilegeddon,” or mobile-friendly update, was a move to further demonstrate just how important mobile websites are for SEO. It is imperative your medical practice has a mobile-friendly design users can easily access on the go.

But, be warned. Just because your Web developer tells you your site is mobile-friendly does not make it so. To see if your medical website passes the mobile-friendly test, use Google’s testing tool.

Where has your medical practice seen the most success with Healthcare SEO and content marketing? Let us know in the comments.

Image source:

Infographic from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons

June 12, 2015
Give Your Facebook a Facelift: Social Media for Dermatologists and Plastic Surgeons

Time Magazine recently posed the question, “Can Plastic Surgery Make You More Likeable?” Certainly, there are many benefits to cosmetic procedures for the patients, but it is also time for plastic surgeons and other physicians to think about how to make their practices more “likeable.” Facebook and social media can be used to attract new patients and shape the local perception of a business. For example, Search Influence helped one plastic surgery practice attract nearly 70,000 new fans on Facebook. Search Influence can help create and manage the online presence of your business through social media, but if you want to get started on your own, follow these five steps:

1. Make a Facebook Page

Most Internet users visit social media sites daily, and social media can be a cost-effective place to advertise. Facebook accounts are free to create and maintain, and AdWeek reported last year that advertising on Facebook is 70 percent cheaper than the industry average. While using it effectively will take a significant amount of work, creating a Facebook page for your practice takes only a few minutes. With pictures and information about the procedures you offer, a Facebook page allows potential clients to learn about your practice without following an external link. This can be a great place for a list of services and a few testimonials from past patients. It’s a streamlined version of the most relevant information, and you can direct people to call your office or visit your website to learn more.

2. Get More “Likes”

It’s easier said than done, but awareness about your practice will grow as users “like” your page. To draw their attention, it helps to have compelling pictures and interesting information. Showing a little personality can encourage people to identify with your practice, which helps set you apart from the competition. As more people interact with your page, Facebook will give you demographic information about their ages, where they live and other details that can help you better know the local market.

Struggling to get potential patients and customers to follow you on Facebook? One way to get more likes on Facebook is through Facebook fan-building campaigns, which have been effective for Search Influence plastic surgery clients.

3. Get People Involved

Ask questions, and post updates that encourage people to interact with your page. When fans “like” an image you’ve posted, it makes it more likely that their friends will also see your page. If you post about local events and holidays, it will help connect you with your community.

4. Update Your Page Regularly

While it’s inadvisable to offer medical advice over social media, your page or a separate blog can be a great place to explain procedures or post updates about your practice. If you explain medical terminology and correct common misunderstandings, then potential patients will see you as more qualified and trustworthy.

5. Pay to Play

Advertising your page on Facebook involves a lot of choices. Do you want help accumulating “likes,” or is it more important that people visit your website from your Facebook posts? While pay-per-click (PPC) advertising assures that people are viewing your page, your name will show up on more news feeds if you pay for exposure. For example, a promoted Facebook post for a Search Influence plastic surgery client reached more than 182,000 people.

Because of the variety of choices involved, streamline your social media strategy and achieve successful results with the team at Search Influence managing your advertising plan. Search Influence can advertise on several sites and measure results in the ways that matter most to your practice, including new patients and calls to your office.

If you want to give your whole business image a facelift, then injecting social media into your marketing plan is the most cost-effective option. Our team at Search Influence can help you create and manage your online image, and we can advertise on a variety of platforms including Facebook, Google+, Youtube, Pinterest and Twitter. Continuously providing updates can be a lot of extra work for your busy staff, and some employees may already spend too many work hours on their social media accounts. Let Search Influence manage your online image to make sure everything is handled professionally. Find out more about our services by browsing our website.

May 28, 2015
Web Augmentation: 9 Tips to Get Your Plastic Surgery Practice Trending

Every second, there are almost 50,000 unique searches on Google. With that much traffic, it’s crucial to establish your plastic surgery practice as an online authority. By using social media, search engine optimization, and paid search strategies, you’ll be able to climb to the top of Google’s rankings in short order.

Tips for Social Media

Utilize “Audience Insight” on Facebook

As of March 31, 2015, there are 1.44 billion monthly active users on Facebook, making it the platform with the largest audience for your advertisements. With Audience Insight, Facebook helps you sort through your targeted demographics in order to understand the kind of content that is popular among them.

Use targeted Facebook ads

If you use targeted Facebook ads, you can choose what kind of Facebook users will see your microdermabrasion advertisements. Not only can you sort your audience by age, location, and gender, but you can also target them according to their relationship status, whether they have children, and their personal interests. Facebook fan-building campaigns are also effective in making patients and customers into fans.

Tag and post about local events and businesses

If you want to maximize your visibility, you’ll have to post outside of your practice. By sharing posts about local events and businesses, you’ll increase your presence in the community. Your potential clients will start to follow and share your content if your page is a reliable source for interesting information.

Tips for Search Engine Optimization

Research Longer Keywords

A short keyword like “chemical peels” is a competitive keyword, which means a lot of practices will be using it. Try to find a longer keyword that your audience will search for, like “chemical peel for rough skin in NJ.”

Host Webinars

Live Internet events boost your SEO rankings because they keep your audience on your website for a long time. Set up some demonstrative or informational webinars that prove your expertise while optimizing your search results.

Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

More and more people use their phones and tablets, rather than a computer, to browse the Internet. A mobile-friendly website will ensure that the information on your website is accessible to everyone. In fact, mobile website traffic for our plastic surgery clients’ websites averaged 48.6 percent. And that doesn’t include tablet traffic; it is purely mobile.

Another way to pump up your plastic surgery website is to use natural content on your practice’s website. Find out about how medical marketing is making the switch to natural content.

Tips for Paid Search

Post Lots of Information on Your Landing Page

By having a wealth of information on your landing page about topics that are relevant to your practice—such as eyelid surgery—you ensure that your potential client gets the knowledge they desire. When this happens, they’ll stay on your page longer, and their trust in your expertise will grow.

Invest in High-Quality Video Production

Potential clients will seek out videos demonstrating a procedure before they schedule an appointment for one. If your practice has a high-quality video demonstration of laser hair removal, 79 percent of the potential clients who watch it will visit your website. In addition to videos, other types of content can help attract patients searching online for your practice. Find out the four ways to drive conversions in the medical industry.

Have Your Contact Information Readily Available

The content you make available on your website is meant to inspire more people to come to your practice. Having your contact information readily available increases the chance that potential clients will call your site, visit it, or save it for later.

Implementing these tips will get your plastic surgery practice trending in no time!

May 22, 2015
Healthy Content: 4 Tips to Drive Conversions in the Medical Industry

In the medical and plastic surgery industries, it can be hard to get past the medical jargon and engage with readers online. But despite these challenges, building up an online presence is vital in this day and age. Everyone online wants to gather information quickly, and they seek immediate gratification when it comes to scheduling appointments and learning about procedures. To keep their interest, you have to present your content in a user-friendly, engaging and attractive way. Let go of the olden days of long-winded explanations and paragraphs upon paragraphs of medical terminology that no one can understand. Step into the 21st Century with these four types of content:

1. Infographics

We all want something that is nice to look at and easy to understand. Infographics are not only engaging, but they can also be super informative! The medical terminology that your current and prospective patients need to know can be easily explained in shorter phrases and pictures or guidelines. Infographics help your patients connect with you and your practice.

Infographics are also more likely to be shared by your customers. People love sharing fun and interesting infographics on their own social media pages, so this will ensure more conversions and potential new clients! Find out more about how infographics can give your content marketing strategy a facelift.

2. Videos

Videos are another great visual way to engage your website visitors. You could explain your processes and surgical procedures easily without scaring visitors off with long, complicated paragraphs. This is also a great way to introduce yourself and your practice to potential patients.

You don’t have to do a stand-up; you could make a slideshow video with voiceover narration, or if your budget allows, an animated video. Make sure you include a call to action at the end so the viewer can take the next step in becoming a patient!

3. Lists

Lists are great. You’re reading one now! Putting the number of listed items in the title is especially helpful so people know exactly what they’re getting into. Readers are more likely to click through and take the time to read if there are 10 or fewer items. They’ll think it will only take a couple of minutes, then BAM! They’re hooked. They’re converting, and they’re your next patient!

Make sure to write lists that are interesting and preferably not common knowledge, such as “10 Things You Didn’t Know about ____” or “5 Ways to Look Younger Without Surgery.” You could even promote your products or services with a list of great products for this, that, or the other thing. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point.

4. Guides

Because you specialize in a certain medical field, you have knowledge that is credible, useful, and interesting. Write it down! Guides can be about absolutely anything, and they’re excellent sharing material for those who want to stay informed and keep their social media followers/friends informed. For an example, check out the Search Influence guide on how your online presence can win and lose patients.

An excellent way to drive up conversions is to make your guide a downloadable file and request information from the reader before they can download. This allows you to add them to your email newsletter list, which will make them more likely to become a patient in the future.

Deciding how you want to present yourself online can be time-consuming and frustrating, but these four winning types of content are fun, engaging, and can help your conversion rates. Play around with some ideas and be sure to use different content on different pages to keep people wanting more!

Interested in more content marketing tips for medical marketing? See how natural content can help your practice’s website attract patients.

May 20, 2015
How Infographics Can Give Your Online Strategy a Facelift

No industry knows the importance of image more than plastic surgery. Before and after pictures are worth a thousand words, and prospective patients heavily rely on visual information derived from those pictures when deciding which cosmetic procedures to explore. However, plastic surgery websites do not have to restrict themselves to just pre- and post-op imagery.

Introducing Infographics

Simply put, infographics are images that visualize information or data in a compelling, creative, and colorful way.

Businesses are increasingly turning to infographics to present their industry contributions. For example, Web company Unbounce, estimates that the use of infographics has seen a huge surge in recent years—an 800 percent increase from 2010 to 2012. Research conducted by AnsonAlex, a tech company specializing in producing tutorials, found that publishers with ample infographics grow website traffic 12 percent faster than those with no infographics.

Infographics are clearly more than a passing trend; they are a strategic marketing opportunities upon which the plastic surgery industry can capitalize.

Infographics Make Eye-Catching Websites

If you are looking for a new way to promote your plastic surgery clinic’s webpage, infographics are a surefire strategy for keeping eyeballs glued to your site. A single infographic has the potential to reach as many as 15 million Internet users through web searches, according to an infographic by Top Marketing Schools. In fact, searching ‘plastic surgery infographic’ yields 283,000 results on Google. Create and post infographics on your site to take advantage of this pool of interested users.

The average page visit lasts under a minute, but an infographic can keep a user reading for longer. In fact, a Search Influence-produced infographic detailing the legendary New Orleans Mardi Gras renewed interest among people that visited the official New Orleans tourism guide website. While visitors to the website typically spend an average of two minutes browsing, visitors to the Mardi Gras infographic page were spending upwards of eight minutes.

Ninety percent of the information processed by our brains is visual, so it’s only logical that we are more drawn to vibrant images than walls of text. Readers are likely to skim the infographic, absorb the information, and then explore the site further to learn what else you have to offer.

Be sure to add some written content outside the graphic. Site crawlers cannot scan images, so your optimized content must also appear elsewhere on the page in order to attract search engine hits.

To keep your users on your website, it is vital that your infographic loads quickly! The average user expects a page to load in under three seconds and will not hesitate to close a window that does not deliver fast enough. The quicker your site loads, the better your conversion rates will be.

Infographics Boost Social Media Reach

Your plastic surgery clinic can also use infographics to attract more social media followers and shares. That’s because images perform well on Twitter—even better than videos! For example, images get 128 percent more retweets than video tweets, according to Quicksprout. Similar to web pages, our eyes are instinctively drawn to tweets with alluring images.

To properly post your infographic on social media, however, you have to make sure it is shareable and easily traced back to your site. Use an embed code in the infographic so other industry professionals can easily add it to their sites. On the graphic, place your website address and the name of your clinic in bold letters. If your link or commentary is deleted through sharing, your clinic name will still remain. Using easy share links such as ow.ly or bit.ly can also make it easier to share on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

May 13, 2015
Making Patients & Customers into Fans: Are Facebook Fan-Building Campaigns Effective?

Looking to connect with your ideal patients and customers online? Facebook fan-building campaigns are just what the doctor ordered for creating the perfect online experience for your audience as well as building your community of followers.

But before we delve into the specifics of Facebook fan-building campaigns and how this online marketing strategy can win you customers and patients alike, let’s briefly go over what fan building is. Fan building is a way for businesses to acquire likes on Facebook and to connect with all the people that matter to them. While a business can acquire fans organically, paid ads are more effective and efficient at increasing a business’s fan base and amplifying the rate of fan growth.

Part 1: Are Page Like Ads Effective at Fan Building?

Short answer: Yes. Facebook page like ads are effective.

Case Study 1:

Let’s look at Client A. Client A is a well-established business specializing in reconstructive surgery. Search Influence started a fan-building campaign for Client A toward the end of 2011 and have been actively managing it ever since.

In order to maximize the client’s budget, we focused ad copy around the authoritative nature of our client in the field of reconstructive surgery and targeted these ads to users we identified as most likely to convert (in the form of a page like) based on their interests and online behaviors.

Prior to the Facebook fan-building campaign, Client A had around 550 page likes from various organic sources. Not a shabby number to begin with, but we were able to get that number up to 21,000 within a year. Within two years, Client A had more than 30,000 fans … within three years, more than 65,000 fans. And likes acquired from our fan-building advertising campaign made up of a majority of the fan growth:

Page Likes By Source (Daily):

The above segments the daily page likes gained by source. As you can see, likes as a result of fan-building ads made up more than 85 percent of the likes gained.

Case Study 2:

Client B is a multi-location addiction treatment and recovery facility. We started running a fan-building campaign for Client B toward the end of 2012. The campaign lasted two years and increased Client B’s fan base by more than 6,000. For Client B, we focused on grabbing the attention of users by including encouraging and supportive language within our ad copy, and we targeted users that we identified as most likely to be interested in the services offered by the client or to know someone that could benefit from the services offered.

One of the main roadblocks was getting users to like a page that focused on such a sensitive subject. After all, why would anyone want to publicly like a page about addiction treatment and recovery? Well, if you fill your page with interesting content that is relevant to your business and engaging to your audience, users are more likely to follow and interact with your page. So with Client B, we first got users’ attention with our page like ads, and we kept their attention with the content on the page!

Once we stopped running Client B’s fan-building campaign, we noticed that while the fans gained from the campaign were still there … the rate at which new fans were coming in has stalled. Take that as you will, but we came to the conclusion that fan-building campaigns are, in fact, effective. Moreover, fan-building campaigns are sustainable (more on that next).

Part 2: Is Fan Building Sustainable? YES!

Fan-building campaigns are a sustainable way to increase your fan base. If you create an effective campaign with the right message and proper targeting, page likes gained from fan-building campaigns don’t just disappear once the campaign ends. Users like pages because they’re interested in the product, the business, or the brand, and they want to know what’s going on and to get updates.

That being said, just having an active fan-building campaign isn’t the be-all and end-all to building and maintaining fans. As demonstrated in Case Study 2, an effective fan-building campaign only starts with knowing who your target audience is, how to reach them, and what message will speak best to your target audience. From there, the campaign flows into what is actually on your page.

You can get page likes by having the most interesting and enticing messaging in your ads and by targeting the exact audience that should be interested … but if your page is boring and dry, you’re not going to be able to sustain the page likes you gain and maximize your fan-building campaign’s potential.

Lagniappe: Likes For Lives

A relatively recent tactic used for fan-building campaigns is called “Likes For Lives.” The concept behind Likes For Lives is that for every like a business receives on its page, it will take some sort of action to save a life. The action is usually a donation of some sort.

Below is an ad from our most recent Likes For Lives campaign we ran for a client of ours during October 2014. October happens to be breast cancer awareness month, so we decided to incentivize Facebook users to click like by pledging to give a $1 donation for every like. This particular Likes For Lives campaign gained our client 748 likes from October 10 to October 30, 2014. The average cost per like was 48 cents.

The Likes For Lives campaign generated more clicks in the 20 days that it ran compared to this client’s monthly average of 150 likes from its regular fan-building campaign. Therefore, a Likes For Lives campaign for this specific client was very successful.

One of the best ways to stand out and speak to users, no matter what type of advertising campaign you’re running, is to have a unique and attention-grabbing ad copy. And Likes For Lives campaigns provide just that. If you know who you’re trying to reach and how to create the targeting needed on Facebook to reach them, why not utilize the Likes For Lives incentive to build your fans and help a cause? Likes For Lives campaigns are a great way for all businesses, especially those with a health care focus, to gain positive brand awareness and to strengthen the fan base.

April 28, 2015
Googleplasty: How to Reshape Your Search Results (Part 2)

As more businesses begin to take efforts to improve their online presence, standing out in search results of highly competitive markets and areas becomes even more difficult—and nowhere is this perhaps more true than in the cosmetic medicine industry.

In order to reshape your search results through the art of “Googleplasty,” you must know what factors make your business rank high in a Google search. Since we now know all about the different types of search results from part one of this two-part blog series, let’s talk about the most important factors that play a role in how high your practice ranks.

The following three “Top 5” lists of factors are from from Moz’s 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors survey. The information came as a result of surveying 40 industry experts to determine what had the most influence on ranking in Google search results.

As you can see, all of the factors that are integral in competitive markets also play a part in either localized organic or maps pack results. Due to their repeat importance, I think they’re the five factors most worthy of discussing in detail.

1. Domain Authority of Website

First up on our list as the most important factor in competitive markets is Domain Authority, which isn’t much of a shocker. Domain Authority is a proprietary measurement (created by Moz geniuses) of a domain’s power within a 100-point scale. This score can be used to predict if a site is likely to rank in Google’s search results and can also be used to track a site’s growth and increase in strength.

It is a metric that combines other metrics such as age, number of links, and quality of links, so it’s not easy to manipulate through singular or direct efforts. As it is directly put on Moz’s site, “The best way to influence this metric is to improve your overall SEO.”

Using Moz’s MozBar to see domain authority of pages in search results, you’ll see that the top five business sites in the localized organic results for “plastic surgeon albany ny” have Domain Authorities of 31, 32, 22, 21, and 26, respectively. As you can see here, having a score that is higher by a single point won’t guarantee that you rank above your competitor, but in this search example, business sites past the first page of results tended to have Domain Authorities lower than 20.

2. Consistency of Structured Citations

While this factor isn’t as high ranking for localized organic results, it is third for the top maps pack factors and second here in the top factors for competitive markets. One reason for this is that in many competitive markets, such as plastic surgery or cosmetic dermatology, you’ll find maps packs in search results.

To start, a citation is a place on the Web where a business’ name, address, phone number, and often website can be listed (sometimes referred to as the NAP of a business – name, address, phone). Any combination of the NAP, with or without all parts, listed on a site is considered a citation. A structured citation in particular is a listing of business information found on a directory website (e.g. YellowPages.com and Yelp.com). On the other hand, an unstructured citation can be business information on non-directory sites like newspaper sites, press release sites, and blogs, to name a few.

By increasing the number of matching information sources (and therefore matching signals) to Google, you also increase your chances in having Google match this information to search queries, according to a recent webinar with Google’s Heather Wilburn. So if you want to be matched with potential patients searching for businesses like yours in your area, consistent business information across the Web is one of your best bets, especially in competitive industries like cosmetic surgery.

3. Quality/Authority of Inbound Links to Domain

An inbound link to your domain (aka inlink or backlink) is exactly what it sounds like, a link leading to your website. The relevance to your industry or location and the authority of a website linking to yours in and of itself are the two best traits for quality links. Buying links or having links from random, spammy sites will hurt, not help you. Links from local sites and popular sites are a pretty safe bet. You can seek out local sponsorship opportunities as a good link-building effort or help other sites clean up their broken backlinks by using your working ones.

To differentiate between natural link building versus spammy link building, remember that it’s all about user experience and what makes sense to the user. If your efforts don’t uphold the ideal of providing the best user experience possible, then they’re probably not good.

4. Quality/Authority of Structured Citations

As mentioned above, a structured citation can be any directory site that lists any variation of your business’ NAP or website. While consistency is most important, you also want to make efforts to build high-quality, authoritative citations in directories.

Just like there are many factors to improve your own site’s authority, there are also many factors to determine the quality of a directory. You can delve into Whitespark’s blog on how to identify quality citation sources for a detailed breakdown, but basically a good rule of thumb is to look for high domain authority and human moderation in directory sites. Examples of human moderation include how DMOZ requires submission review by its team before a link goes live or how Google Plus, Yelp, and Bing listings all require verification via phone call or a postcard sent to the business.

Google also considers niche directories highly authoritative. A niche directory is an industry-specific or location-specific directory. Since the Pigeon algorithm update, this kind of citation building has become especially important, and searching for your industry’s keywords will often help you identify these niche directories. If you search for “plastic surgeon columbus oh,” you’ll see that the directories healthgrades.com, vitals.com, and smartplasticsurgery.com appear on the second page of search results. Often, these types of directories require either verification or payment for those seeking to be listed on their site. If you understand the concept of barnacle SEO, you know that being listed on these types of big, authoritative sites is a great way to improve your own visibility to potential customers. Use your discretion to decide if the opportunity cost of getting on a directory isn’t too high to be worth the effort.

Warning: If a site ever requests a “reciprocal link” to its site on your site in order to be listed, this is NOT A GOOD practice, and they are not worth your time.

5. Proper Category Associations

Having proper category associations is another important factor for ranking in the maps pack that can set you apart from the rest in a competitive market. It’s a pretty simple concept, and it basically boils down to the part of the guidelines for representing your business on Google that tells businesses to “Choose categories that are as specific as possible, but representative of your main business.” A cosmetic surgeon with the primary category on the Google Plus local listing set to “surgeon” is less likely to rank above one with a primary category set as “plastic surgeon” in the maps pack, for example.

Though this is a lot to grasp and take action on all at once, having the foundation and understanding of best practices to improve user experience and to better your business online will greatly improve your successes online in the long run.

April 23, 2015