DIGITAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS BOOST ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY BOOKINGS
orldwide, our orthopedic surgeon clients in private W practice are experiencing increased competition. They ask us for help to develop new ways to connect with patients
and prospects and to design their strategies and tactics to support their business growth goals. Consumers spend hours looking online for health services and specialists. They don’t seem to spend as much time reviewing the brick and mortar facility because most agree to let the surgeon or specialist choose the place where they will have their surgery. Actually, in the USA this makes sense because not every doctor maintains unrestricted medical staff privileges on every hospital in town. In medical tourism at destinations outside the USA, American patients are often put off that the hospital is doing the marketing because they tend to place their trust in the man or woman who will cut them open, not the building where the surgery will take place. This differentiation between systems design confuses American patients because they are not accustomed to being “assigned” to a specialists or consulting physician’s “service.” As a result, Americans click through most medical tourism facilities’ boring websites and click off with a low engagement high drop off rate leaving medical tourism hospitals scratching their heads. A proper digital campaign strategy for orthopedics is a great way to take a more targeted approach, and drive more leads with a reduced cost per acquisition. It takes only a few months to drive leads that can be nurtured to mature into lucrative surgery bookings. The key to digital marketing campaign effectiveness is to identify the targeted micro audience where patients are likely to be located. For local and regional care, targeting a standard metropolitan statistical area together with adjacent counties is best. For medical tourism, the usual radius is about 2000
km from wherever the destination is located. The Need to Transform In the past, most of our orthopedic surgery clients used only traditional campaigns: mass mailings; TV, radio, recall cards, and out-of-home advertising; and billboards. Since they rarely knew better, they thought little about what they could do better. Many of the orthopedic surgeons actually liked driving by their pictures on the billboards. Unfortunately, these types of campaigns rarely generate the results they need, especially in the face of increased competitive marketing and advertising by hospital employed physicians and paid for by hefty advertising budgets at the hospitals. Hospitals can outspend a private practice physician on these “big brand” tactics and strategies. Solo surgeons and small groups must begin to develop an arsenal of new tactics to support their business’ growth goals by using a different approach. Direct digital marketing is the way forward for surgeons who can’t compete with the advertising approaches used by bigger brands such as hospitals and enormous multicity/multi-state health systems who often allocate 3% of net revenue to advertising and marketing budgets. Digital campaigns are the only way to drive more leads and reduce the cost per acquisition for a surgeon. How to Connect with the Market Consumers look online for health services, which means there are more ways to interact with the consumer. By developing a strategy with a more targeted approach that integrates traditional and digital marketing, we can connect with consumers in ways that are relevant to what they are searching for in the moment. We don’t have to wait for the commercial to run, or for them to open the newspaper, read the mail, or to drive by the billboard at exactly the time that the light turns red so they have time to read the billboard.