6 Facebook Ad Hacks to Make Them Effective For Your Healthcare Practice

Facebook is a platform designed around the user experience, and the ads shouldn’t be any different. According to an article on Search Engine Journal, here are 6 interesting hacks that will improve your Facebook ads:

Does HTTPS Matter to Your Healthcare Practice Website?

Since 2016, Google has been leading the industry to get more websites covered by SSL and continually make changes to their Chrome browser that is one of the most popular browser being used. So, it makes sense to make sure all of our Digital Marketing clients are covered with encrypted websites using SSL Certificates.

Why should online reviews matter to healthcare providers?

Online reviews have redefined the way patients choose healthcare providers. Here’s a brief overview of this trend and how you can leverage it to get more patients for your healthcare practice.

Why do reviews matter to healthcare providers?

Because reviews matter to patients: 84% of patients regularly consult review sites to view or post comments and ratings of healthcare staff (BrightLocal). Sites like Google and Facebook, along with medical review sites like Healthgrades and ZocDoc, have made it easier than ever for patients to post and share experiences. Patients don’t want to take any chances when it comes to their health. With such an overwhelming amount of information available at the tap of a button, they want sources they know they can trust. That’s why reviews have quickly become one of the most valued online resources for patients seeking the best care.

Patient reviews and SEO

Today, the search for a doctor begins online, and reviews are often the first thing patients encounter.

Why?

Online reviews show up on page 1 of search results because they are full of fresh, unique content that search engines love. Practices with more reviews and higher ratings on a variety of sites have an incredible advantage when it comes to Google search.

To sum up: both customers and search engines value reviews for their authentic, unbiased information. In fact, patients place so much trust in reviews that to accelerate their search, they increasingly filter results to see only 4 and 5-star rated practices. If your practice doesn’t have enough positive reviews, it won’t even be considered as an option.

What does a good review management strategy look like?

  • Monitor and respond to reviews from all sites in real-time. This lets you address any issues before they escalate, minimizing the damage of negative reviews. Remember, your response is seen not only by the reviewer, but also by all prospective patients researching your practice. This is a great chance to demonstrate transparency and dedication to patient satisfaction.
  • Consistently generate new reviews. Collect reviews on sites that matter most to your practice and your patients. Use an automated software like MCD Reviews to make this process easy and effective.
  • Promote your best reviews. Share them everywhere you can, like your company website, social channels, and Google ads. MCD Reviews also creates a custom SEO-optimized review microsite for each physician displaying all their best reviews along with the option to book an appointment.

Bottom line: online reviews are the first impression patients get of your practice. It’s not only important to pay attention to what people are saying about your services online. In order to build the trust and credibility required to get new patients, you also need to regularly generate new reviews, interact with patient feedback, and leverage great testimonials for marketing purposes.

Want to know more? Check out our MCD Reviews.

Negative Google Reviews: Can I Remove Them?

The short answer is no, but wait! All hope is not lost.

Sites like Google, Facebook, Healthgrades and Yelp aim to deliver honest, unbiased reviews. Some sites have strict penalties for businesses that try to game the system either by writing fake reviews, offering incentives, or some other shady maneuver. Only reviews that explicitly violate the review site’s Terms & Conditions have a chance at being removed, but only by a site administrator.

The point is: an authentic Google business profile displays ALL opinions from ALL patients, not just the ones the business prefers. Therefore, your negative reviews are here to stay.

Review management

You can’t control what patients say, but you can control what you say. The right response could win back the patient’s loyalty or even get them to edit or delete their review. Even if the patient takes no further action, others reading the review will take note of your thoughtful response, minimizing the damage of the negative review.

Don’t react; respond

Reviews piling up with no response tell patients your business couldn’t care less about them — you want to prove the opposite is true.

Tip 1: Have an internal process in place to deal with a negative review

  • First question, is the reviewer, in fact, a patient?
  • Discuss details with your staff or provider who treated the patient
  • Try to resolve issues OFFLINE. Do not discuss details with the patient online due to possible HIPAA violations.
  • Have a standard response ready. For example:

“Thank you for your feedback. We promise to fix the problem internally and will contact you directly for resolution.”


Tip 2:
 Offer options to ease their concerns and show you care. For example:

  • Refund their money. Use your best judgment to determine if the issue was exceptionally awful enough to merit a full refund.
  • Offer a discount for the next time they return. This increases the likelihood of the patient giving you a second chance.
  • Promise to fix the problem internally. If you do this, list any specifics you can, such as who you will contact and when you expect the issue to be resolved. Again, be aware of any HIPAA issues.

Only after responding thoughtfully and providing a satisfactory solution should you consider asking the patient if they would remove their review (or update it to a positive one) — if they haven’t already done so on their own. Don’t push this, as it implies you only care about your brand image rather than your patients.

What’s the antidote for a bad review? Lots of great reviews!

Patient voices are the most powerful form of advertising. Collect new reviews from your patients on a consistent basis and eventually the positives will outweigh the negatives. Automated software like MCD Reviews makes it incredibly easy to get hundreds of new reviews on third-party sites, then promote the best ones across the web.

Negative reviews are an inevitable part of running a business, but with a solid review management strategy in place, your patients will do your marketing for you.

 

 

Article credit to Birdeye Growth Hackers

 

Top 10 Review Sites Where Your Patients Are Leaving A Review

Why do healthcare providers need to pay attention to patient reviews? 77% of prospective patients use online reviews as the first step in choosing a physician. Reviews are the first impression patients get of your practice. Why patient reviews on review sites are important They contribute to a good online reputation Patients want a provider […]

Why Your Patient Surveys May Not Be Working

Traditional patient surveys vs. modern patient satisfaction

Scientific market research really made a name for itself in the mid- 20th century, establishing many practices still in use today: questionnaires with non-leading questions, multiple-choice answers, anonymous respondents, all generating data used for extensive statistical analysis. With all the success large corporations and politicians have seen with market research over the years, most businesses implement these same practices without a second thought when trying to gauge customer satisfaction.

The trouble is, the advent of email and online survey platforms transformed the economics of patient questionnaires–it’s now cheap and practically instantaneous to ask your patients what they’re thinking. This means more surveys sent to each customer more often, which has led to ironic circumstances: the process of conducting customer satisfaction research often decreases customer satisfaction levels. But even this is difficult to determine since the percentage of survey respondents has dwindled to almost nothing: the average response rate for customer satisfaction surveys is about 10%. For patient surveys, this falls to lower than 10% on average.

pic3 (3)Such a low average response rate means whatever results you are receiving are shaded by non-response bias: this refers to when the respondents’ opinions differ substantially from the non-respondents’. The lower the response rate, the higher the non-response bias. Of course, as a business, you want to know as much as you can about your patients. However, if your survey is too lengthy, patients won’t just get bored, they’ll assume that the survey was designed for corporate objectives rather than to improve their experience. Timing is another factor to consider: if you wait too long to send your survey, it won’t elicit a response relevant to the patient journey. It likely won’t elicit any response at all, as it interrupts the customer’s day-to-day life.

Reimagine the survey

To measure customer satisfaction accurately, you’ll have to embrace Customer Journey Thinking. Start from scratch, taking these key points into consideration:

  • What is the patient’s goal? What needs must be met to reach this goal?
  • What did they do right before? This affects how they will respond to an interaction with your practice.
  • What will they do right afterwards? Understand how to best help them with later interactions.
  • What will make them happy? They expect to be satisfied, but how can you go above and beyond their expectations to create a memorable experience?

With these questions in mind, plan the structure of your survey. How can you avoid being lengthy and irrelevant? By being concise and in-the-moment.

Keep your surveys as short as Millennials’ attention spans. 1-2 question surveys sent at critical touch points during the patient journey not only increase response rate, but enable proactive service. Reaching out when the patient is still thinking about your practice gives you time to remediate any problems they’re having and salvage the experience.

Once you start stacking up responses, use them to their full potential. Analyze more than just your scores; examine the driving causes behind them to learn where operational improvements can be made. With the right approach, your surveys can help both you and your customers tremendously. Don’t diminish customer satisfaction by trying to measure it. Instead, use customer surveys to engage with, understand, and optimize the customer experience, consistently.

Many of our clients use Patient Surveys and get very important feedback, good and bad, that can help our clients make improvements where they need to be made. So, surveys do work, you just have to know your patients.

Adapted from BirdEye blog.