Daniel Gocsman

We are in the thick of autumn. It’s almost time to “fall back” and change our clocks for Daylight Savings Time. It’s also the time of year when many public safety and fire departments advise people to replace the batteries in their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Aurora Information Technology, a medical marketing company based in Garrison, New York, also asks doctors and healthcare providers take a look at their websites as well to see if their message and marketing may need a recharge, or even a replacement.

Aurora IT believes that a marketing update is important for doctors to consider whether they already have a website, or are considering creating one. For doctors with existing websites, six months in the market is a long time, and much can change. With emerging scientific discoveries and technology, the medical information on their sites may already be out of date, or at least in desperate need of a revision. The same holds true for their photos and videos. Even their search engine optimization (SEO) keywords may need a second look. Life and business move that fast.

For those healthcare providers that do not have a website and are wondering if they even need one, Aurora IT asks, “what are you waiting for?” Online business marketing practices are moving at such a warp speed that it is incomprehensible not to be a part of the movement. Miss a little and miss a lot. A website gives doctors an opportunity to manage their brand presence and offer services quickly and distinctively. The lack of a presence may not only hurt their bottom line but also their reputation. Doctors need to manage their marketing message and character with an interactive website and a constant Internet presence.

Word–of–mouth advertising is huge and is growing exponentially with the burgeoning trend of videos in search engine results. Aurora IT suggests that, especially in healthcare marketing, online video tutorials and testimonials can be a very effective way of reaching a target audience on a large scale. These very same websites should also feature peer-to-peer functional features, such as “bookmark this site”, “share this site” (with social media networks like Facebook or MySpace) and the all-important “refer to a friend”. A practice’s website and its visitors are driving their brands, not just their paid advertising and marketing efforts.

And if a healthcare website is not involved in some sort of social media, it should be. Social media works by patients communicating with other patients, rather than doctors talking “at” their patients; again, word-of-mouth advertising. Prospective patients tend to trust other’s experiences before they trust a marketing message, and they are talking everywhere. More and more hospitals are using social media tools to market to their patients. According to a recent study, social media influenced more than half of 25-to-34 year old Internet visitors. So a healthcare provider’s brand and website must be everywhere to manage these visitors.

New technologies, practices and marketing ideas are emerging weekly. Online search is a big part of health-information research. If a doctor wants to drive traffic to his information site, it must rank very high in organic search results, which is why SEO is so vital. Aurora IT advises that healthcare providers update their websites before the landscape changes again. The season and the market will always change, so the method and the message must change right along with these forces. Otherwise your practice will soon be buried in an outdated snowdrift.

Tags: Advises, Aurora, Autumn, Company, Information, Marketing, Means, Medical, Presence, Recharging, Technology, Website