Healthcare Marketing During A Pandemic
Marketing your healthcare or senior living facility is always important, but it is especially vital during a pandemic. Even though some healthcare facilities in specific areas of the country are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, others are having to make the difficult decision of laying off staff because the number of elective surgeries and well visits have decreased so dramatically.
As each state loosens its stay-at-home orders, patients will return to healthcare facilities for routine visits and non-emergency surgeries. Families who need help with aging family members may reach out to senior living facilities. Of course, you realize many only do so out of desperation as many will be hesitant to go out in public, especially to places where the coronavirus has been known to be.
How will you give your patients the confidence to visit your facility? One way is to share your COVID plan with the general public.
Before they pick up the phone to make an appointment, your potential patients and clients will turn to Google to find out what your facility is doing to keep visitors safe.
They will want answers to the following questions:
- Is it safe to visit the doctor for non-COVID related illnesses?
- Can I be diagnosed or receive treatment over a video conference call?
- I need to find a senior care facility for my elderly parent. What protocol must we follow to visit your care center?
- What steps are being taken to make sure the elderly are kept safe from coronavirus at your facility?
Think about your healthcare facility’s website. Are you answering these questions? What are you doing to put your potential customers at ease that you are doing everything in your power to keep them safe from the coronavirus?
Where does your healthcare facility rank on a Google search?
As you think about whether or not your website is equipped to answer the COVID-related questions of your customers and clients, it may also be time to analyze your business’ SEO strategy. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and this is a complex strategy that enables your customers to find your webpage in the first place.
If you are old enough to remember printed Yellow Page directories, you may recall how many businesses were named “AAA Plumbing” or “A+ Roofing.” These past business owners knew the importance of appearing first in their category listings.
Appearing first in a Google search is the equivalent of appearing first in a Yellow Page listing. It’s not as easy as renaming your business to start with the letter “A.” Instead, increasing your ranking takes the expertise of an SEO strategist, especially one that specializes in health and elderly care.
The staff of Virtual Surge can help you increase your Google ranking. Here are some of the strategies that we will use to assist customers in finding your business:
- We will set up your local listings in Google My Business, Bing Places, and Yahoo Local.
- We will complete keyword research for your industry and formulate a targeted, keyword strategy that enables clients to find your business based on their Google searches.
- Virtual Surge will optimize your page’s URL.
- We will help you create unique, quality content that will drive traffic to your website.
- Virtual Surge will make sure that your webpage uses title tags, image tags, and backlinks.
Let Virtual Surge get your business to the top of your customers’ Google search pages without paying for expensive ad space.
Here are two SEO strategies for you.
1. It is vital to hire an expert to take care of your SEO needs.
Surgeons continuously retrain to learn best surgical practices. Elderly care coordinators complete continuing education to learn about the best strategies in caring for the aged. SEO experts are also continuously learning how to improve a business’ Google rankings. This is necessary because Google is always changing their “formulas” on how they rank websites.
2. It is important to be patient when working with an SEO strategist.
If you work in the healthcare industry, you probably have seen patients who have abused their bodies for decades but still want overnight cures for their medical problems. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. It takes time to feel better after being sick.
If you are hiring an SEO strategist, it is important to realize that the best results come from long-term commitments. You can’t fix your Google ranking overnight. It takes time and perseverance.
If you are interested in committing to a marketing strategy that will increase the number of visitors to your website, contact the SEO experts at Virtual Surge. Although we are located in Maryland, we serve national and international clients. Even though we specialize in healthcare and the senior care industry, we work in a variety of other sectors as well.
This article was originally posted at Virtual Surge.