An effective marketing strategy for your audiology practice can work wonders if it’s created to be impactful, original and able to evolve with your brand.
With that in mind, here are five ways to effectively market your audiology practice and showcase how you stand out from the competition.
Digital advertising can be a little tricky to get started with. Not only is it a little intimidating to get started with (sooo many questions), it can also be a challenge to get your conversion tracking and such set up.
Here are our biggest tips to be successful with digital advertising.
1) Keep it simple. You're probably never going to need to advertise outside of Google and Facebook. Since Google owns Youtube and Facebook owns Instagram, you can reach a huge audience with just those two tools.
2) Have a good offer, and a good landing page. A lot of people make the mistake of pushing all of their advertising traffic to their homepage. However, most homepages are designed to help people get acquainted with your company - not to sell. You're buying this traffic, so you need to sell.
Use your landing page to create synergy between the ad that you're showing them and the action you want them to take. If you're advertising a free hearing test, take them to a landing page that talks about the free hearing test and has a form for them to book it right on that page. Don't make them navigate to a different page or call - make it super easy for them to start doing business with you right there on the page.
3) Make sure you're tracking conversions. This is a crucial, although technical, part of running ads. The easiest way to do this is to redirect the user to a thank you page after they fill out a form or request a consultation. In your ads manager account, you can set a rule so that a conversion is counted whenever that thank you page is viewed. This helps you measure the return on your advertising investment, and it also helps the Google and Facebook algorithms optimize your ad delivery over time so you can be more successful.
4) Don't be afraid to get help! If you get stuck anywhere, hire a marketing expert to help you get up and running.
Referrals are on another level and should 100% be a part of your overall business plan. They’re so powerful because they often come from you r happiest customers, and they are really important factors for your prospects when they're deciding between you and a competitor.
Getting referrals is simple: Delight every customer and then ask them to tell their friends about it.
You should create a review process where you're asking every customer what their experience was like and whether or not they'd recommend you to a friend or family member. Not only does that help you keep a pulse on the job that you and your staff is doing, it keeps you aware of any problems, and allows you to identify your happiest customers.
These customers should be incentivized to leave reviews on your site, Google, and Facebook (and any other review site that your customers might be looking at when making a decision), and you should go out of your way to display these reviews on your website, across social media and as part of your advertising campaigns.
Social media is a great way to stay connected to your customers and prospects, and it can be a nice way to engage, ask and answer questions, or have conversations with your audience.
If you enjoy managing social media pages, great! You'll probably want to be on all the major social media platforms, and you'll probably enjoy yourself.
If you think of social media as a pain or just one more thing on the to-do list, then you should be more particular about how you spend your time managing your social media accounts.
Is your audience mostly older? If so, get on Facebook and don't worry about the other networks.
Maybe you specialize in children with hearing loss and your audience is young parents. Then you'll probably have more success on Instagram. Find the place you'll be most successful in and focus there, especially if you don't have a lot of time or energy to put toward it.
Here's a pro tip: Use social media as a place to amplify your customers voices, so rather than every post being about how they should schedule an appointment, share testimonials, or answer questions that you've been asked throughout the day. Share funny stories, and keep it as "human" as you can.
Blogging can be really powerful for a number of reasons. First, it gives you a chance to show off your knowledge to potential customers. Since 96% of the people visiting your site are likely not ready to buy, it's a great space for you to provide lots of value, which will keep you top of mind as they get closer to a buying decision. Blogging is also a great opportunity for you to show search engines like Google that you are an authority in your field and will increase the likelihood that you will show up in search results.
It's important to be consistent and to provide as much value as you can. One strategy might be to write down all the questions that you're asked by the customers in your office, and commit once a week to writing a quick blog article answering that question as best you can.
Not only does that keep you consistent, it's allowing you to answer real life questions that your customers (and potential customers) have. And it's a sure bet that if someone is asking you a particular question, there is a host of potential customers turning to Google with that exact question.
Contests and giveaways can be a great way to boost customer engagement. The best part: They can incorporate word of mouth, your website and your social media platforms.
For your contests and giveaways, you can give away basically anything from practice swag such as cups or pens to movie tickets or gift cards.
A great way to stay connected to your community is to work with a local business to get a free dinner or free tickets to something. Then when you do the giveaway, tag that business. This is a great way to gain connections, showcase that you're a team player in your community.
The sky's the limit, so use your creativity and try different things to see what works with your audience.
We hope that you've found this helpful and insightful, and we believe that these are 5 of the must-dos for any audiology practice.
We're excited for you and hope to see you gain more customers, spread your brand and get people talking about why your practice is the best one out there.