Marketing for Surgeons
Surgeons regularly save and improve the lives of people every single day, which doesn’t leave much time for marketing. Nevertheless marketing is something that needs to be thought about in any business or organisation.
The purpose of this article is to give you some direction with your marketing activities. If you have no idea how to get started with marketing, this article is a good place to start.
Let’s jump into it, here’s how to do marketing for surgeons.
Marketing Strategy for Surgeons
Defining your overall marketing strategy is the most important first step in marketing. This means, defining your overarching goals and then working out how to achieve them.
An example of a realistic goal might be treating 10% more patients than the previous year, and you might achieve this by investing $5000 into Google Ads and $5000 in content marketing. This is a rough example of how you might want to define your marketing strategy.
Surgeons need a holistic marketing approach to gaining more patients and building their brand. This means they need to focus on a diverse range of marketing channels, because their patients are diverse.
Surgery is also a high involvement purchase, this means patients spend energy and time deciding which surgeon to go with. This means you need to provide enough information and content to convince a patient to go with you, over your competitor.
So what marketing channels should surgeons be using?
Marketing Channels for Surgeons
As we mentioned previously, surgeons need to be using a diverse range of marketing channels. This is in order to reach their diverse range of patients, who can range from newborn infants to elderly patients. Each individual marketing channel is better suited for a specific demographic. Therefore by using a broad variety of marketing channels, we can reach every demographic we need.
By using a diverse range of channels you lower the risk exposed to your organisation. Imagine you relied on only Google Ads to bring in patients, and suddenly your Google Ad account gets suspended. Overnight you would lose your only source of customers.
On that note, let’s dive into marketing channels for surgeons.
Google Ads for Surgeons
There are 3.5 billion searches each day on Google (Oberlo, 2020), so there’s no doubt people are using Google to find surgeons for their operations. Google Ads let you advertise on Google Search Engine, which puts your website in the prime spot to be found.
Google is extremely influential for the younger generations, as opposed to the elderly who are more likely to trust traditional forms of advertising. So using Google Ads is an excellent opportunity to reach the age demographic of 16 - 60 years old. This age group is regularly using Google and trusts the platform.
However Google Ads can be expensive for surgeons, as the price per link click can be upwards of $5. This makes getting traffic to your website quite expensive. An alternative strategy for increasing your traffic from Google is SEO.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Surgeons
SEO is another method for getting your website to rank highly on Google. SEO is the process of getting your website to rank higher in Google’s search algorithm.
Being on the first page of Google as a surgeon, is a gold mine. You should be targeting keywords like *insert procedure* *insert geographical location*.
For example, if you’re a hip surgeon in Melbourne, you would target the keyword “Total Hip Replacement Melbourne”.
There are a few drawbacks with SEO however.
It’s not easy to do SEO. There is no simple checklist to increase your SEO, Google keeps it’s algorithm very secret. So there is no guarantee your website is going to rank highly.
SEO can be expensive as Google Ads, depending on who you pay to do it. Some companies charge exorbitant prices to do SEO, so make sure you shop around and find a reputable organisation with good pricing.
However there are also many benefits of using SEO vs Google Ads.
Sometimes people don’t trust Google Ads because they’re aware that they’re ads. This means that people are more likely to click on your website if it organically ranks high.
SEO lasts forever (or a long time) vs Google Ads which stop, as soon as you stop paying their invoices.
Keep in mind not many surgeons or medical practises are doing SEO yet, so there isn’t much competition. This makes it easier to achieve a high ranking on Google.
Social Media Marketing for Surgeons
Surgery is a high involvement purchase as mentioned previously, so it’s unlikely that anyone is going to book a surgery from your Facebook page.
However… Social media is an excellent opportunity to introduce yourself (and your brand) to a large audience. In marketing this is called a “touchpoint” or an opportunity for people to engage with your brand.
The word on the internet is that you need 7-10 touch points with a person before they become a customer. So consider social media your first touch point.
Running paid advertising campaigns on social media channels is possibly the most cost-effective way to reach a large audience. A recent Facebook Ad campaign we ran, cost us $4.67 AUD to reach every 1000 people, which is excellent value for money.
Social media is not only for young people anymore, old people are jumping on social media to keep in contact with their family members. So don’t rule out reaching the older demographic on social media, Facebook is an extremely popular platform with the older generation.
Content Marketing for Surgeons
I keep saying this, but choosing a surgeon is a high involvement purchase. So when marketing a surgeon, you need to consider the barriers that a person has from becoming a patient.
The biggest barrier for a patient is trust.
So it’s our job with marketing to in-still trust to our audience. The best way to achieve trust is through content marketing.
For those who aren’t aware of content marketing, it’s a form of marketing focused on creating content for consumption. This includes blogs, videos, social media posts, infographics, podcasts, GIFs, graphics, artwork and more.
For a surgeon, you need to be focusing on educating your customers about the surgery that you specialise in. A good place to start is writing down frequently asked questions you receive. This will give you a list of content to start producing.
You can present this material on whatever medium suits you, but consider that blog writing is already saturated. So exploring other mediums like video, podcasts and social media can be very rewarding and make your brand stand out.
Dr Matthew Hutchinson is an Adelaide orthopaedic surgeon who specialises in ACL Reconstructions, Ankle Reconstructions & Anterior Hip Replacements. I recommend you go and look at his examples of content marketing, as they are very high quality. He has invested in written content and video content, this is great because it increases his exposure on Google & Youtube.
Print Advertising for Surgeons
Although print advertising is dying, it’s not dead.
People are still reading brochures and newspapers. However this marketing channel is predominantly used by the older generations, so don’t expect to reach a young audience. This can be handy for surgeons who need to reach the elderly who need surgery because of their old age.
If you’re going to invest in print advertising, make sure you define where your ads are going to to be found. There are plenty of avenues for placing your print material, a few popular channels for print advertising include:
Newspapers
Magazines
Letter box drops
Direct mail
Brochures
Although print advertising has a place in the marketing world, I’m very wary of it, because the results cannot be tracked.
If you’re spending thousands of dollars advertising in a newspaper, it’s nice to know the return of investment.
In comparison digital marketing allows you to track the actions and results from your marketing campaign. This lets you work out if your marketing activity is worthwhile.
Website for Surgeons
I’ve included your website last because it’s a no brainer, but it’s also completely underestimated in marketing value.
You should be driving traffic from every marketing channel back to your website. If your website is poorly, then what do people think about your brand?
The solution is to invest in a high quality website!
It’s maybe an expensive upfront purchase, but it’ll pay off very quickly because it’ll increase how many patients trust your brand. Imagine if you did 5% more surgeries in one year, just because you rebuilt your website.
When building or rebuilding your website there are a few elements you need to consider.
Design & visuals:
A well-designed website will stand out from the crowd. The layout needs to be logical, have a well thought out flow and draw the consumer in. Every aspect of the design needs to be carefully considered from a consumer point of view to engage them and get them from the home page to taking the desired action. It must be easy to use, functional and simple to navigate. And everything must work exactly as the consumer expects.
Content:
The text on your website should be easy to read and presented in a clear and concise manner. It needs to have the right tone and voice for your business and your audience, be error free and written for the consumer. Storytelling is an art and your content should tell your story, engage your visitors and use just the right language to encourage potential customers to act.
How to get started with Marketing a Surgeon
The first step is always the hardest in every journey, so I recommend you start by writing down the goals you want to achieve from marketing.
From there I recommend this priority of investing in marketing:
Highest Priority:
Website Development.
Medium Priority:
Search Engine Optimisation.
Content Marketing.
Social Media Marketing.
Lowest Priority:
Google Advertising.
Print Advertising.
The logic behind this order of priority is that each marketing channel builds upon each other. For example, what’s the point of doing social media if people can’t go to your website. Or what’s the point of investing thousands of dollars into Google Ads if it drives people to your website and there’s no content on your website.