Six Legitimate Business Goals Of A Social Media Campaign
Social medias stereotype as a massive time waster comes from millions of people actually wasting extraordinary amounts of time on it. Here are some legitimate business goals to keep your team focused on why youre really doing this...
1. Add new patients
At some level, all marketing is a touch point. Its a place to get your phone number in front of a potential patient. Its a place to create a connection with the patient. Its a place to show you care. Social media is a great way to get in front of more eyes. The number one goal of your social media campaign is adding new patients. Everything you write and all the pieces you put in there should be to grow your practice. Make sure your marketing people remember that, too. Its easy to get wrapped up in the technology, FORGET why were doing social media, and waste a lot of time.
2. Support your existing patient base
People make decisions based on touch points. Once you get someone following your Facebook page you can send them an e-mail anytime you want - they're subscribed to your news feed. It gives them a great, low cost way to stay in contact with the practice. Communicating with your patient base is stroking and maintaining your number one referral source. It keeps you in your markets collective consciousness. Practices that do this get more business.
3. Promote specials and events
There are few successful practices in this economy that arent thinking about their practice in terms of events. Night of Beauty, Seminars, Summer Specials, Etc... Why is that important? It keeps you in the consciousness of the community. It gives you a time-sensitive thing to hinge your business on. It creates news. Most social media, when it comes down to it, is pictures, videos, and news of whats happening. So if you think about your practice in terms of events, youre thinking about your business in terms of newsworthy info. Make sure everything is an event, is a time-sensitive thing. It creates more buzz and that creates more patients.
4. Improve your search engine optimization
Search engines give websites significance based on how many things are linked to them. The more respectable the source, the more value that link has. So, if youve got a link on CNN that says Amazing plastic surgeon, Click here Google is going to think, Okay, this guy is probably a significant plastic surgeon because of the strength of that link. So, when you build a social media campaign, its got a big search engine benefit. Youre creating all sorts of in-bound links to your web page. At some level, youre creating more web pages with your name and phone number on it. Right or wrong, thats got a big search engine benefit. A Facebook page with all your information on it, is that so different than your website? Who cares if they saw you on your site or your Facebook page? We just want more patients. A true legitimate business goal of a social media campaign is the benefit on the search engines for you and your proprietary website.
5. Build targeted lists
People pay thousands of dollars for direct mail all the time. A good industry benchmark is three bucks per lead when you look at printing, postage, and design. That means a list of a thousand people costs $3,000 every time you send it out. By this reasoning, a list of a thousand emails or facebook fans is worth $3000.00 every single time you send them something. In fact, your list will me much more targeted and VALUEABLE than a list from a direct mail house. Social media is no different than a great rolodex. Its your people in your market. Its your referral base. Sadly, almost NO practices we work with make any effort to keep a list of patients and prospect emails. Lists of targeted emails are hugely valuable.
6. Protect your reputation
Soon, everything will be reviewed online. Google is already headed in that direction. Its a pretty good way to pick a movie, so why not pick your doctor based on what other people think? Space that you can control on the web does a lot to protect your reputation. The more you can control the search for you the safer your reputation will be. A social media campaign catalogs really well and you want positive info out there. This is much better than a third party coming up well under searches or you. Putting good information about you helps to protect you from the opposite, bad information.
