7 Secrets for Growing Your Medical or Dental Practice

Growing your practice is of the utmost importance. Why be complacent with where you are? Growing your practice is a continuous effort that takes time and dedication. Here are a few secrets to growing your dental or medical practice that, if employed, will help immensely:

1. Office Automation

Automating your office makes your patient’s experience more streamlined and hassle-free. Less waiting and less confusion through the implementation of automation is a win-win for both you and your patients.

2. Embrace New Medical or Dental Technology

This is one of the most important secrets to growing your dental or medical practice. New technology is arguably the most effective way of letting potential patients know that you are keeping up with the times. Having up-to-date equipment means that you are committed to providing the highest quality service.

3. Referral Program

Referral programs incentivize recommendations for your patients. By giving rewards for recommending new patients, you are both gaining new clientele and ensuring a high retention rate for your current patient.

4. Connect with Patients Through Blogging

As with most businesses, the likelihood of you having a website is very high. However, many sites lack having a blog on their site which is proving more and more fruitful for businesses to have. Keeping your patients in the loop through blogging makes them feel like a member of the family. Making them feel involved lets them know you value their business and their opinions.

5. Personalized and Genuine Customer Service

Customer service is the most important thing provided by any business. No one wants to patronize a business where the employees don’t go the extra mile. Going above and beyond will help you set yourself apart from everyone else. Help your employees master customer service through providing them with resources like online trainings.

6. Community Involvement

Getting involved in the community is an effective way of letting people know about your practice. Sponsoring events or sports teams gets your name circulating and lets potential patients know that you care about helping others.

7. Renovate or Relocate Office

Giving your office a “face lift” can create a soothing atmosphere that gives your patients the peace of mind they desire. Optimizing your space in order to make it more friendly and welcoming to your patients will make a difference in how people see your practice.

By employing these secrets to growing your dental or medical practice, you are setting yourself up for incredible success. Taking these steps shows your potential patients that you will do anything and everything to make them happy.

Impact of Net Neutrality on Your Dental or Medical Practice

Internet service providers (ISPs) can now charge extra to ensure that businesses have a speedy internet that runs smoothly— a sort of “tiered” system with a fast lane and a slow lane.

Net Neutrality: What it is, and How it Affects your Practice

Simply put, net neutrality is a network design paradigm that argues for broadband network providers to be completely detached from what information is sent over their networks.

Since the internet was first widely available, we have seen it grow and expand tremendously, often without very many rules or regulations. The ability to view and read articles, watch patient education videos, listen to podcasts, search, and send email have long been taken for granted based on “network neutrality,” a guiding principle that preserved an open and transparent internet for all content and all websites equally.

The Future of Your Website

With these changes coming, it’s important to take a look at your website and figure out how it might be affected. If you choose not to pay the fee for upgraded service, here are some tips to optimize your site: 
• Avoid graphics-heavy content, such as Flash, or large photos that will load slowly.
• Keep patient education videos short, and use lower resolution for faster loading times. 
• Build websites that have a mix of text and video content, with smaller video files and smaller photo files so the site continues to load quickly. Adding more text can help portions of the page load quickly so potential patients will not get frustrated and surf away from your site.

The internet is a constantly changing medium, and it’s important to continue to adapt to maximize the way consumers can find and use information from your site.

This Should Matter to Your Medical or Dental Practice: Senior Citizens Internet Use on the Rise

Most dental and medical practices know that social media and online marketing are effective for reaching young consumers, but today they are increasingly effective tools for reaching out to seniors (age 65 and older) as well.  

What the Research Shows

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project tracking surveys have mapped internet usage since 2005, and in 2013 they showed a surprising trend of senior citizens getting online. Some of the report’s key findings include: 

• Usage of social network sites by seniors has tripled in the last four years from 13 to 43 percent. In 2005 just 1 percent of seniors were online.
• More than 7 in 10 American adults use social networking, which is up from 8 percent in 2005.
• Facebook and YouTube remain more popular among seniors than Twitter— Twitter usage for 65+ consumers has only increased 1 percent since 2010.
• Women use social media at a higher rate than men across all age groups.

Adjusting Your Online Strategy for Seniors 

With more seniors online than ever before, it’s important to make some adjustments to your medical or dental practice website to cater to accommodate the growing number of senior citizens going online. This trend will likely continue, so developing a senior-friendly website now is critical for future your success.

• Organize your website so it is clear and easy to read. 
• Use a bright background (preferably white) with dark text. 
• Use larger text or offer the option to increase font size on your website.
• Display your contact information clearly on all your website and social media pages. 
• Use videos and pictures to keep your website visually interesting and informative for people of all ages.
• Write blog posts and post information on social media sites that is catered specifically to the health concerns of senior citizens.
• Build a mobile-friendly site for seniors using the web on tablets and smartphones.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to market to a huge group of people that have significant health needs—develop a senior-friendly web and social media presence today.


We Can Help You Build a Senior-Friendly Website

Let Solution21 help you build a website that ! We can plan an organized and effective social media strategy to get potential clients interested in your services! Contact a Representative to learn more.  .

Advanced SEO to Optimize Your Practice Website

To accommodate the rising number of patients searching for their physician or dentist online prior to booking an appointment, your practice needs two important things: a high-performing website and your searchability.

Using the best practices for search engine optimization (SEO) when creating content for your website is a sure-fire way to raise your organic ranking so your potential patients can find you on top of the search list— the key element in bringing in new revenue-generating patients. Optimizing your practice website is an exciting way to bring your practice into the modern world.

SEO Key Factors

Combining all the factors below will help determine how search engines rank your website among your competitors. Be sure to build on your online presence with SEO in mind.

Content- the actual words or text on your site
HTML- the programming language used to build the site
Architecture- refers to structure, while considering the way users interact with your site and the content search engines use to crawl your pages
Link Building- a comprehensive tactic that involves linking to and from reputable websites
Location- important if your practice is focused on the local market, best to incorporate your location into your content to help narrow it down

SEO Best Practices

Strategic placement of key terms throughout content- The key words/phrases you want to appear in response to searches should be used occasionally in the text on your website. Using a keyword once per 100 words is a safe rule to follow.
Keyword research and analysis- Find out exactly what terms are your potential patients looking for before creating your content. Through Google Adwords Keyword Tool, you can determine what people are search for online, including volume and geographic area.
Hyper-localize search terms- If you’re located in highly-competitive area like Boston, you need to engage in more Advanced SEO to compete for the top ranks in search results. It’s much easier to rank higher in a community-based searches, like “pediatric dentistry West Roxbury" or "cosmetic surgeon Irvine".
Keep an active blog- Discuss topics relevant to your practice through your blog, giving your more room to use varied search terms. By regularly creating content on your blog with inblund links, your practice will appear in relevant search terms.

SEO Practice to Avoid

Keyword stuffing- Avoid using excessive keywords within your text. You will actually get you penalized by Google and placed further down in search rankings.
Getting too visual- Having too many photos and graphic arts on your site may look nice, but it can slow your website down, specially if the visual elements are not optimized for web use. A slow loading time will turn off your visitors, eventually negatively affecting your site’s search rankings.Poorly-written content- Creating quality content with SEO requires skills and experience. If your potential patients visits your site and finds useless or hard to understand information, it’s highly likely for them to turn to your competitors for their medical or dental care.

Main SEO Benefits

Branding Opportunities- As anyone in marketing will tell you, branding is what sets you apart from everyone else. Advanced SEO allows you to couple this branding with increasing the visibility of your practice. By having targeted SEO content, you are making sure that your practice shows up in search results in Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines for related keywords. The higher the quality of your SEO content associated with your practice, the higher the probability your practice’s website will rank on the first page of search engines, resulting in higher visibility to potential clients.

Insight into Customers- Why optimize your dental or medical practice with SEO? To help you understand your patients. Using an SEO checklist shows you the best ways to track search results and website hits, allowing you to see what your patients are most interested in. This means that you will be able to see what people want so you can adjust your practice accordingly. SEO makes it easier to know what your patients are looking for and what they want from you.

Brings Traffic to Your Business- SEO brings traffic to your website. Having more traffic increases the likelihood of someone patronizing your practice. A good SEO allows your potential clients to see exactly what you are all about and what you most want them to understand about your practice. Having this customizable content at your fingertips can be an incredibly buoy to your practice.

Optimization, if done correctly and professionally, directs traffic to your website and to your practice or business. Having more web traffic increases the likelihood of someone visiting your practice. A good SEO allows your potential patients to see exactly what you are all about, the services you provide and what you most want them to understand about your practice. Having this customizable content at your fingertips can be an incredible plus to your practice.

Get  Professional SEO Help

We can put together a customized Advanced SEO strategies to get your prospective patients interested in your medical or dental services. Contact Solution21 SEO specialists at 949-336-7575 for more information.

Solution21 and OCMA Enter Strategic Partnership

We have high standards and are proud to partner with an exceptional physician member non-profit organization, the Orange County Medical Association (OCMA), and offer its members our results-oriented, creative and lead generation services.

The OCMA 2014 Preferred Business Partners meeting held May 8 at the OCMA headquarters in Irvine, CA was led by Dr. Thomas Kockinis, current OCMA President.

As part of the event, Solution21, OCMA's preferred partner for website design and internet marketing, delivered a presentation on the importance of having a website and internet marketing and their impact on medical practice.

The presentation, entitled "Your Website: The Game Changer!," was delivered by Solution21's Vice President for Sales and Business Operations, Sid Marashi.

Well-attended and received enthusiastically by OCMA physician members with practices all over Orange County, the presentation tackled the key elements of having a successful online presence for medical practice, such as website design, search engine optimization (SEO), AdWords and re marketing. Marashi also stressed the importance of selecting a web design and marketing company that has a proven track record and local presence to provide the unique support that local medical practices requires.

"When choosing a website design and lead generation company, you can select from individuals and companies, those who do custom design versus those who design from templates, and those who are overseas or out-of-state versus local," said Marashi, a former Microsoft (Middle East) sales and channel executive.

For upcoming OCMA events, please visit their website at https://www.ocma.org/Events.aspx.

Photos to Post on Your Social Media

With social media, it's all about the photos. Top image sharing sites like Pinterest, Instagram and Vine are proof of this.  Leading internet marketing agency, Hubspot, recently revealed a study that says photos on Facebook produce 53 percent more Likes than a text message post. Your dental practice needs exposure and you can do this by engaging in social media and posting great images.

Here are 5 photos your social media followers want to see:

Followers
This is a guaranteed to be liked and shared. Obtain permission and post pictures of your patients on social media, preferably of them smiling after the treatment. In this day and age of selfies, who wouldn't love to see pictures of ourselves and our children with perfect smiles on the website. This is proves to your patients that you are their number 1 fan and that you care about their smiles.

Yourself and your team
Patients will more likely stay loyal to their dentist or doctor who takes time to pose with the staff and post their photo on social media. Your patients are sure to keep coming to your office if show that you and your staff are sociable and likable.

Equipment and technology
While dentistry and dentists may be a common sight, the same cannot be said of dental equipment. There are some amazing dental technology that have been invented to make trips to dental office less painful and these are worth sharing on social media. It will help educate your patients, ease their fears and highlight your dental expertise by discussing some the tools you have and how they are used. You will be surprised at how many patients are interested in advancements in dental technology.

Special moments
Posting photos of special moments that patients don't normally have a chance to see make your social media followers feel as if they belong to a family and that they are part of your group in a special way. Special events such as birthdays, events and celebrations, or of your pets, are all worth capturing and shared on social media.

Outside the office
People, be they patients or not, are always fascinated to see professionals as real people with real interests and hobbies or activities. Share photos of your hobbies, vacations, charity work and anything you think that will help people trust you  with their health. Remember, if patients feel like they know you or connect with you, they are more likely to stay loyal to your practice. Some might think this is too personal, but social media is personal. Your followers are your patients and your patients are people.

Too busy to manage your practice social media needs? Let Solution21 help! We can plan an organized and effective social media strategy for your practice to keep your patients engaged and to get potential clients interested in your services. Contact a Solution21 social media specialist at 949-336-7575 or email info@solution21.com to learn more.

How Remarketing Can Boost Your Dental Practice

Remarketing is another key to boosting your business, regardless of your industry. The world of dentistry is not an exception to this rule. You likely already know this fact, and are searching for ways to make your dental practice stand out more obviously in a crowd. One of the best ways to do this is with a new marketing solution known as Remarketing.

Remarketing may just be the most powerful way to develop an ongoing dental marketing campaign that allows dental or medical practices to stay engaged with their target audience and potential patients. 

What is remarketing?

Remarketing is a Google powered internet marketing solution that allows dental practices like yours to follow up with consumers who abandon your website before filling out the form or calling your office for appointment. Since most dental practices close deals either via the phone or in person, you may be wondering what value Remarketing could have for your practice. That is why we are going to explain three key benefits that make remarketing a marketing necessity for any dental practice serious about growing their business.

You only market to potential patients

One of the biggest problems with most marketing resources is that they are a shot in the dark; you put your name out there and hope that people in need of your services encounter the marketing materials that you have put forth. Unfortunately, even the most well-placed marketing materials can send their message to the wrong people. With Remarketing, you do not have this problem, because only those with a proven interest in your offerings are targeted.

Remarketing reinforces positive impressions

A key element for any marketing campaign is repetition. Only by reinforcing your brand can you gain a great deal of success as a marketer. That is due to the fact that single fleeting impressions are often relegated to a person's short-term memory, where it is erased in seconds. Multiple impressions, however, keep the brand (your dental practice) in the minds of the people permanently. The purpose of Remarketing is reinforcement of your brand, so you are assured that your brand will stick in more people's heads.

You only pay for actual impressions

It can be extremely frustrating when you discover that not only are your marketing efforts costing you an exorbitant amount of money, but that they are not working, because nobody sees your marketing materials.

Most Remarketing resources allow you to place your brand front and center immediately after consumers have already seen it, so you are certain to make an impression.

For more information, please contact Solution21. Our website specialists and marketing team will be glad to help.

Google AdWords 101 for Dentists and Doctors

AdWords is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing program from Google that has helped dentists across the world create highly optimized, relevant, results-oriented PPC campaigns to increase their return on investment (ROI). The program is an excellent tool for any dental or medical practice to improve its website’s Internet marketing plan by allowing dentists or doctors to create targeted ads aimed at highly selective groups of prospective patients.

Who can benefit from Google AdWords?

A new dental practice may benefit from a short-term AdWords campaign.  New websites may take several months to begin performing in search results. Using AdWords can provide new practice the initial push it needs to be seen on searches.


Dental practices in highly competitive and urban areas can greatly benefit from using AdWords to help them move ahead of the competition. If every effort has been made to improve the optimization of an existing website, and other channels such as blogs and social media are being already being utilized, AdWords is a great option for better search visibility in competitive locations.


Why Google AdWords Works?
AdWords is the most popular choice when it comes to PPC programs for the following reasons:

• It is linked to Google, the most powerful search engine.
• Your ads will receive high visibility at the top of the page for relevant searches.
• You only pay when users click on your ad (hence pay per click).
• AdWords features customized geographic targeting.
• You can adjust your budget to meet your changing needs.
• AdWords integrates Google Analytics, a useful service for helping with keyword research and more.
• It is easy to measure your ROI with AdWords conversion tracking.
• You can copy your campaigns to Microsoft AdCenter to appear on Bing and Yahoo!

You should divide your keywords into specialty niche groups and create an ad for each area of expertise of your practice. This will increase the relevance to your prospects and increase your click-through rates, two factors that combine to increase your Quality Score and placing your ad at a higher position.

Using  AdWords, along with appropriate keywords for your dentistry practice, will help you reach prospective patients when they are already looking for you. Set up your AdWords account and start increasing your return on investment immediately.

• General dentist
• Cosmetic dentist
• Pediatric dentist
• Orthodontist
• Dental hygienist
• Endodontist
• Oral surgeon
• Prosthodontist

Keyword Research

With AdWords, it is essential that you choose appropriate keywords for your dental or medical practice. The keywords you choose should be those that prospects are typing into Google when seeking your products and services. These keywords are often combined with a phrase pertaining to the area to help dentists target local patients who will quickly become paying customers.