Early-career medical professionals often have a hard time getting their feet in the door to launch their new careers. In the modern age, digital branding is essential to helping patients and employers to find you.
When it’s done the right way, digital branding can position you as an expert in your field while allowing you to remain relatable to your patients.
If you are ready to embark on your digital marketing campaign, here are a few tips specifically designed for medical professionals.
Set Up a Personally Branded Website
One way to ensure that others can find you is to set up your own personally branded website. A site should reflect who you are, your accomplishments, and what you can offer to the community.
Make sure that you have a strong bio on the page. If you’re unsure about what kinds of things to write, check out Patrick Ladapo’s about page for inspiration.
Along with creating a sleek website listing all of your accolades, you should also ensure that you keep a good search engine optimization (SEO) strategy in mind. After all, one survey demonstrates that most traffic comes from search engines. BrightEdge found that 68 percent of all trackable website traffic results from organic or paid searches.
Using keywords that will perform well on search engines is key to helping others find your page. There are many free tools that you can use to determine what keywords are right for your industry, such as Google Keyword Planner.
Invest Time in Social Media
There’s no way to avoid social media platforms if you want to succeed as an early-career medical professional. Create a profile that you will use specifically for work purposes and post fresh content regularly. Most employers will take a brief search for your online presence, and you may even find new patients through your social media presence.
Facebook is perhaps one of the largest social media outlets in the world. More than two-thirds of adults in the United States admit spending time on the platform via a Pew Research Center study.
Utilize the free analytic tools that Facebook offers to help you track your engagement, figure out when your followers are active, and more. These tools can help you manage paid campaigns and lead to new connections.
Establish Routine Content Marketing
Do you want an opportunity to prove just how valuable your services are to potential patients or companies? One way to establish yourself as an expert in a given area is to set up routine content marketing. The most popular content marketing method is blogging.
Set up a blog to post regular articles related to your field of expertise. Once you prove yourself to be an expert and leader, you may have the opportunity to become a guest on other blogs. “Guest posts” direct clients back to your personally branded website, which can expand your readership.
Remember, SEO is extremely important when you’re creating content. You should research and think carefully about what keywords you would like to rank for. Find ways to naturally integrate them into your articles for high readability and a positive user experience.
Do you want a pro tip? Focus on backlinks and provide more value than the other top pages that rank for the same keyword. This is the best way to ensure that you come out on top with your content marketing strategy.
Email Marketing Campaign
If you’re already running a blog, why not send out a regular email newsletter, too? Early-career medical professionals can use this marketing method to share the latest research in their field, new promotions, and advertise recent blog posts.
On your personally branded website, you should have an opt-in for your visitors to receive a monthly newsletter from you.
This strategy has another bonus-it puts your business in front of your clients more often, helping you stay top of mind, even if they forget about your blog and other content marketing strategies. After all, they won’t be able to avoid seeing your name pop up in their inbox.
A solid email marketing campaign should be sent out regularly, usually once or twice per month. This can also prompt your base to check your website for new content, promotions, specials, and more information about what you can offer them. That way, you don’t risk overwhelming people with too much content.
Most important, be consistent with your newsletter so that recipients know what to expect from you.
Adopt a Multimedia Approach
While content marketing is a great way to start putting your name out there, many professionals consider adopting a multimedia approach. Videos are popular outlets for patients who want more information on a given topic.
This allows you to literally put your face in front of them while simultaneously establishing yourself as a knowledgeable and caring expert in your field.
What should you make videos about? Here are a few brainstorming tips and video ideas to get you started.
- Jot down common questions your patients ask you.
- Research similar providers and see what topics they are covering.
- Education about a specific topic.
- Patient testimonials.
Once you get started making your videos, you will find that the list of potential topics is almost endless. Always return to those frequently asked questions if you run short on ideas for a new video.
And finally, as with all content marketing, make sure to post new material on a regular and predictable schedule.
Generate More Reviews
People are more likely to discover you as an early-career medical professional based on the recommendation of their friends and family members.
Your patients want to know that you can be trusted with their health and well-being. One of the best ways to put their minds at ease is to show them how you have helped other patients in similar situations.
At first, it can be awkward to ask patients to leave you a glowing review. Get in the habit of asking for a review at the end of every interaction with a patient. You may even want to make some business cards that provide information about the platforms you might want to encourage reviews on.
Surprisingly, even a negative review gives you an opportunity to tell your side of the story. Prospective patients will often consider reviews and the responses you give to them when deciding whether they want to entrust themselves into your care.
Don’t Be Afraid to Spend Money on Ads
The truth is that as an early-career medical professional, you aren’t likely to have patients lined up at the door. You need to do a lot of digital branding to make your name known within the local community.
In addition to the other digital branding tips in this article, you should also be willing to invest some of your income into advertisements that will put you directly in front of prospective patients.
First, you will need to determine who your average patient is. Consider their age, gender, and geographic location. This will help you to target ads to the appropriate segment of the population and allow you to make the best use of your marketing dollars.
From there, consider where you’re most likely to find prospective patients. Some medical professionals get their referrals through social media platforms like Facebook. Doubling down on social media could be the jumpstart you need to start creating more meaningful connections within the community.
If you haven’t seen tremendous success with your social media accounts, then you may want to consider paying for Google ads instead. You will still need to think carefully about the campaigns you choose to run, what keywords people will search to find you, and where you want to search for prospective patients.
While you can’t fine-tune your ads as much as you can with a social media advertising campaign, Google and pay-per-click ads on search engines can still be an effective way to promote your personal brand.
Pay Attention to Analytics
If you want to know whether your digital branding is effective, there is no better solution than to pay attention to your analytics. Social media platforms can offer software that provides insight into who is connecting with your brand, what times of day they are most active, and other helpful details about your reach.
Even free tools like Google Search Console can give you more specific insights into the success of your branded website. This tool shows you what terms people search for when they come across your page and which platforms drive the most traffic to your site.
Setting up this platform is essential to any early-career medical professional who is serious about branding their business.
Take the First Steps Toward Digital Branding
There is no avoiding the fact that more people than ever before are on the internet. As an early-career medical professional, you need to meet people where they are.
By taking these first steps toward digital branding, you can start to get recognition and establish yourself as a thought expert in your given community or field.
