Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends Your Practice Should Adopt in 2020

12/18/19 | by Terrnekia Collier | Marketing

As the year begins to wind down and we look to the future of a new decade, there are so many digital marketing trends to look forward to. Creating an online marketing strategy can seem like a daunting task if you aren’t sure what should be included in your plan. But we’ve got a great set of tools that can make this next year for your practice a success.

Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends Your Practice Should Adopt in 2020

Having an optimized professional website, engaging on social media, and reputation management are just a few of the crucial elements of a solid marketing strategy. We’ve come up with a list of the top five digital marketing trends that you should adopt at your practice for the new year. Let’s begin.

1. An Optimized Professional Website

Website icon
When you visit a website and it isn’t professional, functional, well-designed, or easy to navigate, how long do you browse before exiting the site? In order to persuade people to stay on your site long enough for them to inquire about your products and services, you have to ensure your practice’s website looks the part.

It’s important that your website is cohesive and includes components like:

a homepage
services pages
a contact page
and a few more

100 Milliseconds Although your navigation bar does not have to be at the top of your page (because some websites have sidebars) it should be easily identifiable by patients and clients so they know where to locate each page.
Your website should also function at high-speed so that your bounce rate does not increase and web visitors stay on there as long as possible and eventually make their way to the appointment page and schedule a time to see you.

According to Unbounce, a 100-millisecond delay in load time can cause conversion rates to drop by 7 percent. If visitors are not satisfied with how long it takes for your website to load, they will leave and find one that will load quickly.

Eliminating or improving parts of your website that are causing a slow loading time can make a big difference in encouraging visitors to stay longer.

In order to increase your page speed, you can:

Compress large files
Optimize images
Use browser caching
Steer clear of redirects

The more you reduce loading time, the quicker your website traffic and lead conversion can increase.

2. Social Media Engagement

Social media has been and continues to be an integral part of a good marketing strategy. If you want to build a relationship with your clients or patients outside of your office, social media is a great place to do so. More and more healthcare professionals are utilizing social media to interact with patients and you should too.

The key to successful social media platforms is engagement. And to engage with your clients, you need to know where they are. While a majority of individuals are on Facebook, you may find that your practice’s audience prefers Instagram more because they like to consume and engage with pretty photos. Connect with your community on the platform you know they’re at.

Post your own content on your social accounts but don’t forget to engage with the content of others as well. Like, share, and comment on the posts of other businesses in your industry that compliment your practice.

When you interact with people on social media for your practice, you should always remember that it’s not for personal use, but for your business. It represents what you stand for as a brand and the language you use, the content you post, and how you reply should match your brand’s essence.

Yes, social media is much less formal than other types of communication with your clients, but you should still practice responding or interacting with them the way you would over the phone, through email, or in person. Professionalism is key!

3. Video Marketing Strategy

Are you utilizing video to reach more people? Video is being used by businesses now more than ever to show customers who they are and what they do. People are consuming video content at a much higher rate than in the past and this will increase as time goes on.

By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times higher than it was in 2017. – Cisco

Formulating a video marketing strategy is essential to any marketing plan. Videos have the ability to not only drive people to your website through social and ad promotion but will also help to keep visitors on your site longer and get prospects more interested in your business. Videos can be used to educate, teach people about your products and services, or to give people a better glimpse of who your practice is.

Posting video content on your social media platforms is an excellent way to get more engagement; you can also embed these videos on your website as well. If your videos are present on your website, this will help increase their viewership and encourage visitors to stay on your website even longer.

4. Reputation Management

If you don’t have a good reputation in your industry, people are less likely to come to your practice. Online reviews via Google, Yelp, and other business listing platforms can either help draw more people to your practice or discourage them from even making that first appointment. This is why providing excellent service should always be top of mind at every visit. After each visit, you can encourage your clientele to write an online review about their experience.

Online Reviews Percent

Potential patients and clients are researching your practice before making a conscious decision to visit. When people see positive reviews, it builds trust that can convert them into loyal clients.

When people leave reviews about your practice, it’s also an excellent way for you to gain more online visibility. The more positive reviews you get from your patients or clients, the higher your ranking will be on websites like Yelp. The higher your ranking is, the more clicks you’ll receive to your website. As those people are directed to your website, your traffic increases.

This is an important factor in helping to boost your overall Google ranking in the search engine result pages (SERPs) and helping to show you as an authority figure in your industry.

5. Geo-Targeted Advertisements

Pay-per-click advertisement, or PPC, is an efficient method to increase visibility to more prospective patients and better your return-on-investment. When you pay to have your ads appear on search engine results pages, you have the option to set specific location parameters of where you want your ad to be shown in order to target your ideal demographic. This is referred to as geo-targeting.
As a location-based practice, your ideal patient is most likely right in your backyard. When you use geo-targeting, your chances of getting seen by people actively seeking services like yours in their area increases.

With pay-per-click ads, you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. It’s important to note that some locations require more ad spend due to the cost per click in that area. To consider how much you can spend and maximize these efforts by bidding on keywords that are exact matches and relevant to keywords that your ideal patients are searching for.

Geotargeting also helps you to save money and not waste clicks on someone who isn’t actually interested in your services by specifying what area to show your ad in. If someone is not in your local area, you want to avoid having them see an ad click on your business’s advertisement.

Digital Marketing Trends

As we switch gears and head into the new year, you’ll have new opportunities to reach the level of success you’ve always envisioned for your practice. But in order to do this, you need to prepare a solid marketing plan and we’re the perfect people to help you achieve this.

If you aren’t sure how to incorporate these trends into your strategy for the new decade, our marketing experts can show you how. Find out how our digital marketing solutions can help your practice reach new heights and attract more business by contacting us today.