Are you considering reputation management software as part of your medical marketing strategy? At SocialClimb, we understand medical marketing online. We know how reviews and medical reputation management create the foundation for strategic medical marketing and significant revenue growth.
As part of our mission to bring smart, automated marketing to medical practices of all sizes, we want to share what to look for in choosing medical reputation management software. Reputation is really just the start. Read on to understand how to choose software that helps your practice turn reputation management into reputation marketing.
How does getting reviews become a marketing strategy?
In today’s online search world, getting reviews is essential. When people search for medical care online, Google’s search engines look for reviews in deciding what practices to list in Local Search results. A strong collection of regular reviews moves a physician to the top of the list, but not having reviews means a physician may not even show up for potential patient views.
This increased visibility–plus the quality reputation shown through the reviews–encourages potential patients to choose a physician right at the consumer’s decision-making moment.
Medical practices need simple marketing solutions and strategic results
Like other businesses, today’s medical practices understand that the internet drives customer choice, but they aren’t always sure how to harness the internet’s power for growth. They know they should “get reviews” and they hear about “reputation management,” but it gets overwhelming fast because most medical professionals are not marketing or technology professionals.
Medical practices also face unique and time-consuming challenges, and some of these challenges seem in conflict as employees try to focus on “what’s most important” each day.
For medical professionals, focusing on people also requires focusing on money, because they have to stay in business to provide patient care. It’s not enough to just bring in patients; for adequate revenue and growth, practices have to bring in a certain percentage of highly profitable patients.
With providers at multiple locations, constant customer interaction, data entry, and huge insurance and government requirements–all while keeping patient care their highest priority–physicians and medical staff need ways to simplify it all.
Today’s software uses artificial intelligence to simplify everything, including marketing
The good news is that by using medical marketing software, practices can achieve tremendous practice growth while maintaining their primary focus on patient care.
A quality medical marketing system always has patient care at its core. It integrates with practice management systems to maintain patient privacy while automating the process of getting regular, high-quality reviews and patient feedback from a statistically sound sample of patients.
Meanwhile, intelligent medical marketing software goes further. It works in the background, applying cutting-edge data analysis to find growth opportunities for the practice. Intelligent systems then offer these growth opportunities to real people through user-friendly prompts.
Intelligent systems also provide ongoing evaluations of these growth opportunities. They track consumer actions and change recommendations based on real-time practice data merged with demographic and medical case data. A good system generates reports to help practice managers see for themselves how their choices and spending affect real patient actions and meet practice revenue goals.
Basic, better, best
At the most basic level, reputation management software uses automated processes to gather reviews and star ratings, to help a practice or physician build an online reputation.
Better reputation software helps users to create and optimize internet listing pages like Google My Business pages. A quality software system doesn’t just get reviews; it streamlines what practices do with those reviews. For example, helpful software would simplify service recovery and report on statistics and trends.
Advanced medical marketing software remains low-cost and easy to use, while integrating data analysis and automated advertising to help practices target their more profitable patients through online search technology. This level of software yields dramatic results tailored to individual practice goals.
Checklists for evaluating medical reputation management and medical marketing software
For doctors and practice managers evaluating medical marketing software, it helps to think of two general levels of automated medical marketing.
Level 1: Reputation management software to reach consumers online
Effective reputation management software will help physicians and practices to find and convert potential clients as they search for medical care online. Look for software that really helps practices do these foundational tasks:
Gather a regular flow of reviews and ratings online. The most effective medical reputation management software integrates with practice management systems, inviting every patient to provide a review and rating from a text or email link. This process yields a statistically sound collection of real reviews that is almost always positive. And Google recognizes this kind of quality reputation by placing these physicians higher in online search results.
- Claim an Internet listing page, almost always a Google My Business page, for each physician at each location. No matter how good a physician’s reviews, they need an internet listing page with an accurate address for Google to place them in Local Search results. The best software systems include tools that help their clients create and manage these listing pages.
Broadcast the information busy potential clients need to make decisions. The best software systems prompt users to optimize these internet listing pages by including all the information search engines are looking for, to see if a provider is a “best fit.” This information is the same information busy people want to make good decisions quickly, then act right away from buttons and links in the listing page. As Google looks more and more for interaction between people and businesses, good software systems will offer simple tools to help practices manage this kind of customer-to-business engagement.
- Adopt a patient-focused standard for quality care. Robust reputation management software simplifies the entire review management process to help practices take action to really improve patient care. Reviews, survey results, and other kinds of feedback means practices can take charge of the patient satisfaction loop with real data about their customer experiences. These software systems should also make it simple to meet government requirements and handle service recovery. The best systems generate reports to help practices track trends and compare themselves to industry benchmarks.
Automates the entire process to make it easy for busy practices. Automation yields consistent, high-quality results and saves time and money. If practices try to take the above steps manually, their approach will be fractured, and employees will be exhausted. In contrast, these automated software systems can easily reach all practice patients and generate needed results with ease.
Level 2: Intelligent medical marketing software for strategic growth and automated patient acquisition
Intelligent marketing software should be easy to use. It should not require special technical or marketing skills. Doctors and practice managers should look for software that meets professional standards to protect patient privacy. They should choose a company they trust will stay up on current technology and integrate that into the software, simplifying the marketing process overall.
Look specifically for systems that do these important tasks:
Use data analytics to assess a practice’s current patient population. The best systems help identify a practice’s most profitable patient types and where they reside.
- Tap into demographic and medical case data from surrounding potential markets. Intelligent software can evaluate other potential locations using medical case data from these markets, then show you where to find more patients who match your preferred, profitable patient profiles.
Use reputation ads to broadcast doctors’ names and reputations right to target markets. Using real data instead of assumptions, automated software tools can place and monitor ads in your high-value markets, highlighting a doctor’s reputation. These ads appear at the top of target patient search results, right at the moment of choice.
- Adapt ad campaigns to actual practice needs, saving advertising money when it is not needed for promotions. Decision-making software can monitor real-time patient volume for both office visits and surgery. Systems like this can prompt a practice manager to turn on and off promotions—and some systems can automatically turn on and off promotions—to meet a practice’s desired growth and provider availability.
- Measure the effectiveness of advertising dollars. Automated systems can track how money spent on ads leads to actual new patient appointments and display this information in reports that practices can easily understand.
Trust yourself to choose, then trust the software to build your reputation and grow your practice
By simply adopting effective medical marketing software, practices turn reputation management into reputation marketing. Practice managers will soon see their online reputation increase and their surgeons rank high in Local Search results, all as they simplify their office workflow. Advanced software systems apply data analytics and place smart reputation ads for automated patient acquisition.
SocialClimb’s mission is to bring smart, automated marketing to medical practices of all sizes. We start with reputation management in an easy-to-use system that gets big results. Behind the scenes, our cutting-edge technology goes further, evaluating and offering automated growth opportunities that allow practices to attract highly profitable patients and grow at the rate they want.
