According to the Pew Research Center, more than eight million Americans go online every day in search of health care information. But what do they think when they find a medical practice on the Web? What does the dog who chases cars do when he catches one?It's one thing to be found. It's another thing to be known and respected. This is especially true with doctors.
What's a doctor's most valuable asset? Trust. Patients don't really have the tools to objectively measure a physician's ability. They have to rely on what others say about that doctor.
Through the power of public relations, MedMarketLink moves doctors' reputations to the top of their class.
The fastest way for a doctor to become well-respected is to be featured on television and in newspapers (including online versions). That's third-party credibility. If the media say you're an expert and one of the best, it must be true.
A MedMarketLink public relations program is designed to make certain physicians famous and reputable, each in their online and offline communities. This visibility builds a practice in three ways:
- Many TV viewers and newspaper readers who learn about a doctor featured in a health report will go straight to the Internet and start looking for him or her. A highly searchable Web site brings them to the right place.
- News coverage will raise a practice's search engine rankings. That means new patients searching for medical information will find the practice faster, even if they haven’t seen the media coverage first hand.
- After learning about a physician who practices a medical specialty they are interested in, new patients often go right for the phone.
Branding a practice through PR
An ongoing public relations program almost always costs a fraction of advertising and usually has many times more impact. Itʼs not really what you sell that matters but how you lead people to think of it. Whatʼs the difference between Starbucks and Folgerʼs? Why are there lines of people willing to spend $4 on one and no waiting to plop down 50 cents on the other?
Why does Apple's iPad get the front cover of Newsweek magazine for free and Amazon's Kindle have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for an advertisement on the back cover of the same edition? That's the power of PR.
Similarly, determining and communicating the key difference in a medical practice is how our PR efforts and news-media placements have been able to help:
- Grow patient caseload by nearly 10 percent in one year for one medical practice, when patient visits for that specialty nationally were flat in the same year – and in a state that led the nation in both personal and business bankruptcies.
- Kick-start a brand-new practice with four physicians but no patients of its own – but within one year and some $70,000 in unpaid news-media coverage later was averaging 130 new patients per month.
- Book 25 new-patient appointments at one location within 24 hours of a TV news story – all of whom said they called in response to the coverage. Among the media outlets that have featured MedMarketLink practices through our efforts:
