4 Clinic Marketing Mistakes To Avoid In 2020

Whether you’re marketing a vein clinic, a dental office, or an independent direct to consumer clinic, there are many pitfalls to avoid when implementing and executing an effective marketing plan. Here are four pitfalls to avoid in 2020.

No CRM

If you don’t have an effective customer relationship management system that collects all of your marketing data in one location, you are a step behind the competition. An effective CRM system simplifies reporting and can help you to see the ‘big picture’ view of your marketing efforts. Our personal favorite is Ontraport – landing pages, CRM, and social media reporting all wrapped into one neat package.

What are the benefits of a CRM?

Simply put, a CRM can take all of the customer data you have floating around in your head as a business owner and centralize it in one place for your employees to leverage. Did you most recent patient mention that her birthday is coming up next month? Put it in the CRM. Did you get great feedback about a recent procedure? Put it in the CRM. Over time, this data becomes a goldmine of knowledge that your team can use to better inform their marketing efforts over time.

Poorly Designed Landing Pages

Landing page design is as important, if not more important, than properly targeting your digital marketing spend. You could be targeting the perfect prospective customer, but if the page they arrive at on your website is poorly formatted, they will not convert. Most often we see the following problems with the landing pages we analyze.

• Lack of mobile responsiveness
• No clear call to action
• Too many choices

A great landing page is tailored to the search query or person that clicked on your ad. For example, if you own a dental clinic that is running ads for teeth whitening, you want the landing page that corresponds to that ad to speak exclusively about your teeth whitening services, with a clear call to action. Great call to actions are concise, specific, and easy to execute.

• Call Us Now To Schedule Your Whitening!
• Sign Up For Our Free Teeth Whitening Guide!
• Sign Up To Learn Which Foods Make Your Teeth Yellow!

Oftentimes we see clinics that have well-optimized Google Ads campaigns that all direct to the same page: the home page of a website. This shows a lack of understanding for your target customer – imagine seeing an ad for teeth whitening, and arriving on a page that doesn’t mention teeth whitening at all! It is misleading for prospective patients and undermines the trustworthiness of your brand. By better catering your landing pages to your target market you can decrease your cost per conversion and maximize your existing ad spend.

Poor Copywriting

Copywriting is the most undervalued aspect of clinic marketing. How you speak to prospective customer says everything about your business & your brand. Do you use emojis in your copy? Is Every Word Capitalized? What about speelling misteaks?

How you format your copy revolves around who your target customer is. You don’t speak to your mother in the same way that you speak to your dog – the same principle applies to copywriting. Suburban moms speak & think differently than urban millennials. Spend the time to cater your messaging to your target market and watch your engagement skyrocket.

Our favorite copywriting tip? Ask a question! We are wired to look for answers to questions, and asking your audience questions can increase click through rate. This is one of the reasons you can’t help but click on the news article titled ‘You won’t believe what Donald Trump tweeted this morning!’

A/B Testing

As business owners, we think we know our customers. We deal with them every day – who could know them better than us? Unfortunately, human beings are fickle creatures, and oftentimes we know less about what other people want than we think we do.

A/B testing allows us to take the guesswork out of learning about our customers. Instead of deciding what image or landing page layout will convert the most traffic into paying customers, let the data decide for you! By setting up a variety of A/B tests, you can better optimize your marketing efforts over time. Maybe your target market prefers colloquial copy vs. formal copy. Maybe they can’t get enough of dog-themed images. Maybe they tend to convert at a higher rate with the ‘Call Now!’ button is red instead of blue. Whatever the outcome, A/B testing allows you to approach your marketing strategy scientifically instead of superficially.