Medical Marketing Enterprises, L.L.C.

Website Optimization, SEO, Reputation Management for Medical Practices

Want to Grow Your Practice? You Need a Lead Magnet

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Use a Lead Magnet to Grow Your Practice | Healthcare and Medical MarketingA lead magnet is also known as a value offer.  These are marketing terms used to describe what you, the website owner, will give away in exchange for an email address.

The goal of using a lead magnet is to grow your email list.  Your list is the key to using  your website to grow your practice.  As you are learning, patients do NOT call your practice just because they found your website…using a lead magnet is the beginning of the process to convert a visitor to become a patient.

The Value Offer

Your lead “magnet,” or value offer can be your health-related newsletter, eBook, or presentation.  The value in your lead magnet is patient education.

You are offering education materials in exchange for an email address.  It’s a promise of an exchange of something valuable for contact information.

The usual lead magnet for most websites is a newsletter.  More ambitious practices might consider an eBook.  A cookbook or recipes for diabetic patients would be a great example.

Lead Magnet Starts Patient Conversion

Converting a website reader into a patient requires a process.  That process includes the following 5 steps;

  1. Find your website (your website has to rank)
  2. Consider your value offer (newsletter in exchange for email address)
  3. Appreciate value through your “magnet” (newsletter)
  4. Develop trust
  5. Make an appointment

Everyone equates website rankings with SEO (search engine optimization).  Once your next patient notices your website, you start the process of engagement, or conversion, by obtaining their contact information.

The value offer or lead magnet is your request for their email address.

Randy

Email Your Patients Regularly…to grow your practice

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Email your patients | All of us should be emailing our patients.  Well, perhaps not material fit for a privacy portal, but you should be emailing your patients about practice news and information about their health.

Here’s why.

Your patients want to hear from you.  News of the office, new developments in the staff, new EMR system or diagnostic gizmo…they want to know.

Emails containing links to your latest patient education article are very valuable and can be automated.

Collecting Email Addresses

You should be collecting email addresses of existing patients. This can be done manually when they sign in or check out.  Just start a list.  If you have a website, you should have a subscription
opt-in” form which asks readers for their email address.

If you don’t have a website, still collect emails in the office.   You don’t need a website to start send out electronic newsletters.

Why Email?

You already have a trusted relationship with your existing patients.  Educating them and keeping them up to date is the easiest way to transform them as ambassadors of your practice.  The better informed they are about who you are and what you do, the more likely, and effectively, they’ll talk about your practice through word of mouth.

The same email newsletter should be sent to prospective patients as well.  Your patient education news creates value and news of the practice demonstrates transparency of your business and how you practice.

Use your email to engage with your existing patients and your contacts.

Opt-In and Ask Permission

Regardless of how you collect email addresses, it is important to ask permission.  If collecting in the office simply, try something like, “Would you like to receive our newsletter?”

Subscription opt-in forms are managed by an email service provider (ESP) such as Mailchimp or aWeber.  They automatically send a follow up email to verifiy that the sender wants to share their email address with you.

This all assures the Internet that you are not sending out spam and that you have legitimately collected email addresses from interested individcuals.

Get Sending

The easiest scenario is to start producing articles on your website.  With each publication, an email will be sent to your subscriber list and you are done!

By the way, for most of us, this can be done very for free.

All the best!

Randy

 

Create an Email List for Your Blog

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OptinYou need an email list.  An email list is an easy way to stay in touch with your patients and with those who follow your website.  These are people who are  your “fans.”  Email newsletters are an easy way to keep them abreast of news of the practice, medicine and new posts on your blog.

It can help you develop your brand.

Sending email newsletters inform your closest followers news about your practice.  Make it easy for your biggest fans to know what’s happening!

Maintaining an email newsletter is easy, completely automated and cheap (free).

Why Do You Need an Email List

Permission based communication.  By giving you their email address, you have permission to communicate with them.  For many, this is a tighter and more meaningful bond/relationship compared to Twitter and Facebook where many of your patients never visit.

Ownership.  You own this list.  You’ve collected addresses via an opt-in subscription box or a generated a list during a patient encounter (you should be collecting email addresses as part of your initial intake encounter, that is, when a new patient is visiting for the first time).  Unlike social media platforms where changes in policy could cause you to lose access to  your followers, you’ll always have this list.

Everyone Uses Email.  It’s an easy way to communicate news of the office and to keep your readers current on your blog.  They don’t have to visit your site or figure out how RSS works, let alone what it means.

Email doesn’t disappear.  Unlike FB or Twitter where your message likely gets missed or buried.

Highly targeted List.  This list is composed of patients and readers interested in what you have to say.  Let them keep up to date with events of your office and blog as easily as possible.

Email Lists are Fully Automated

Creating an email list is easy.  The whole process can be completely automated;

1.  Collect Email Address:  This is the standard “subscription” box you see on most sites.  Your reader has the ability “opt-in” to receive your emails.  This is a crucial step to avoiding liability for spamming.  The best is a double “opt-in” process.

After completing the subscription box, an email is sent to confirm and verify the reader’s desire to receive future emails from you.  This two step process is called a double “opt-in.”

That’s it.  You have a new subscriber!

2.  Send Email Notification:  Each and every time you write a post, you’re entire email list gets notified via email!  Best of all, it’s done automatically!  Every blog automatically generates an RSS feed every time a new post is published on your site.

NOTE:  RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a digital announcement of your new post and contains all the basic information about your new publication.  Many people follow websites by subscribing to the RSS feed.

For your purposes, the RSS feed automatically fills in information about your new article on your email newsletter.  No extra work!

Next Post:  Email Services:  Feedburner, aWeber and MailChimp

Randall V. Wong, M.D.
Medical Website Optimization
www.MedicalMarketingEnterprises.com

 

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