How can a doctor help you to build your digital advertising platforms and online advertising platforms to attract your ideal clients in your niche.
My name is Mark Leeds, D.O. I am an osteopathic physician, and have been in practice, full time, since 1999. What does a doctor know about and ? That is a good question.
During the past decade, I have mastered the art of telehealth SEO and how to market telehealth online without a huge marketing budget. As well as working as a traditional doctor, helping patients to feel better, I have also become known as an SEO doctor or SEO therapist.
With my experience in SEO for healthcare providers and how to market telemedicine services, top medical facility owners have contacted me over the years for advice, coaching, and help managing their digital marketing campaigns.
I have helped to set up local SEO for doctors and I have taught doctors how to market telemedicine, outpatient medicine, and inpatient treatment for substance use disorders. In addition to medical SEO and telemedicine SEO platforms, I have also consulted and worked on digital marketing systems beyond the healthcare field, including retail and even car sales.
Another good question would be, what does any know about through ? When a traditional decides to become a , they often do so by connecting with a white-label .
When you speak with a local about building and promoting your website, you are likely talking to a person who is not entirely tech-savvy, but they simply resell services, provided by another , often located in India, or one of several other countries.
Incredibly, many use this tactic, of simply reselling the service of another company, without adding any value to the product. You are paying double, triple, or more, to deal with someone in your own familiar culture, who turns around, and has the white label agency handle all the work of your .
Beware amateur resellers of digital marketing services.
It reminds me of what happened about a decade ago, when we had to replace the roof on our home. A good friend of mine told me that he was in the roofing business, and he would have his top-level roofing team handle the job.
His prices were high, about 30% or more, above the usual prices quoted by other roofing companies. Because I trusted my friend, and his promises of top quality workers and quality work, I agreed to hire him.
As it turned out, the roof replacement was adequate, but not great. The workers took a long time to finish the job. At one point, I pressured my friend to get things moving, and he suggested I speak to the owner of the roofing company!
I was shocked to learn that he had simply taken my money, turned around and paid an established roofing company to come in and do the job. In fact, I could have looked them up myself and paid them a lot less to do the exact same job. To this day, I do not know if my friend knew that these were good roofers, or if he simply looked up the cheapest company, so he could keep more of the profits.
How would you feel if you went to a restaurant that had no kitchen, and simply ran next door to another restaurant to order your food, selling it at a steep markup? Everything would seem fine, until you realize that you could have just gone to the restaurant that made your food, getting it faster, fresher, and cheaper.
Learn from our experience of building top-performing digital platforms.
So, back to the question of what does a doctor know about . Please, let me tell you more about my experience of building a successful , including the one you are currently visiting.
While I always wanted to be a doctor from the time I was very young, to follow in my father’s footsteps, I also always had a high level of interest in technology, computers, programming, and invention in general. Early on, I discovered that I had a natural talent for working with computer code.
Additionally, I was also talented at various creative endeavors, such as music composition, music theory, and creative writing. In college, I majored in abstract mathematics and minored in music at Vassar College.
While I still maintained my focus on pre-med studies, I did explore the possibility of a career in computer science. I was even interviewed by the CIA for a career in software engineering.
Sometimes, in the modern world of , and , and other channels, we forget that underlying all of it, at all levels, is computer science and software engineering. And, the best foundation for an understanding of the abstract concepts involved is an education in abstract mathematics.
Throughout my early medical career, I studied ongoing , but focused mainly on becoming a better doctor, while working at a busy HMO-focused, large medical practice.
In 2005, when I ventured out on my own, to start a new medical practice from scratch, something unheard of in modern times, I returned to my roots of software engineering, applying my skills to working on open source medical software, and learning about ( optimization), , and how to build an effective .
Do not let anyone tell you that starting a new business is impossible.
When I shared my idea of starting a fresh, new medical practice, other community doctors, including my own father, told me that it would be impossible to be successful. Historically, the only way to own a medical practice in our region was to buy one from a retiring doctor, or to join a practice in hopes of one day taking it over.
The problem was reaching prospective new patients. T was simply far too expensive and also not very effective. When you pay for print ads, including fancy featured articles in local magazines, or online ads, they may generate phone calls, but most, if not all, calls will be from people who will not be an ideal fit for your practice.
So, with the high cost of traditional , you may find that you have to take out a large business loan to survive. And then, when the patients calling have insurance that you do not accept, or are looking for procedures you do not perform, you may find yourself modifying your practice to meet their demands.
Next thing you know, you are doing everything in your business to meet the demands of a group of clients you do not especially want to work with in the first place. While my experience was in building a medical practice, these principles apply to starting any small business.
The most important aspect of building a business is attracting new customers.
If paying customers patronize your business, everything else will fall into place. If customers do not show up, nothing else matters.
A fancy website, clean and well-equipped office space, business cards and pens. None of it does any good without customers, and is always a hard problem. and budgets are often wasted.
When you are trying to reach a , and you use a , such as paid online ads or paid print ads, you will be fighting for attention in a very crowded space. The customers of advertisers are businesses who want to attract customers.
Advertisers work for you, but they also work for your competition. In fact, some paid advertisers go as far as to promote your competitors if you do not pay up for your own ad with them.
Zocdoc is an example of this in healthcare . I once discussed putting an ad in with them, and they told me directly that if I am not a paying customer, they would maintain a page for me, but it would promote my competition.
How do you stand out when your competitors are listed right next to you in paid advertising?
How do you stand out, when all of your competitors are right there alongside you in the same space? People who browse through paid , such as on the Yellow Pages online, often call through the directory, looking for the best in price and availability.
Imagine how you would feel when a customer calls and says that one of your competitors is offering the same service or product for less money. What do you do? Do you lower your prices?
What if you don’t want to compete for the bottom in pricing? What if you know your service is superior to most, or even all, of your competition. How do you get the word out that you are different?
Another issue with paid is that, when you turn it off, it is completely gone, as if it had never existed. The phone calls and emails stop immediately. No new people will see your ad after you stop paying.
On the other hand, if you are building a of your own with a solid of creating high performing content for , you are the owner of your platform. While you can, and should, pay for and content building services, you can choose your provider, switch providers, or even take a break from paid service.
The solution to long-term success is owning your own marketing platform.
Even if you stop paying for service to build your digital advertising platform, your platform still stands and will still reach your . Unlike traditional paid ads, your platform does not vanish into thin air when you stop paying.
An analogy that might help is to think of it like a hose filling a swimming pool compared to a hose watering the grass. When the hose watering the grass is turned off, the water is simply gone.
Unless you turn the hose back on, your grass is no longer getting any water. On the other hand, if you fill your swimming pool with water, there is still water in the pool when you turn off the hose.
While the water will evaporate over time, and will require chemical maintenance, your pool full of water does not instantly disappear after turning off the hose. That pool full of water is your water, and may serve you well for years to come.
Let’s get back to the topic of standing out as unique and superior to the competition. First, you may be superior to your competition only for a specific population of customers.
For example, there is a small subset of people who enjoy driving fancy cars, such as Bentleys and Aston Martins. They understand the value of a hand-built car, filled with luxurious amenities.
Learn how to dominate your business niche to attract your ideal clientele.
On the other hand, most people will be perfectly happy with a Honda, Toyota, Ford, or Volkswagen. Why not? They are reliable and can get you from one place to another, just like fancy cars.
If you enjoy providing personalized service to a special niche in your business category, then your should include a signature . While a website is the starting point, it is only the tip of the iceberg.
Over a period of weeks to months to years, you will build a powerful library of content that performs at the top of Google searches and search on other platforms, including Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, and voice search. The ultimate goal is to build authority and always appear on page one.
While authority already exists online in your field, there are legitimate tactics that will help you to approach the challenge from many directions, to help you climb the ladder of recognition and authority. Your content will be a source of information for many people, and some will make the decision to reach out and become customers.
The power of this type of digital platform building is in how it helps organically to match your unique personality and services with your most ideal customers. Imagine how great it will feel to meet with a new customer and find that they already know you very well, and they are already happy with you before you even say a single word.
Building a digital advertising platform takes time, but it is worth the time and effort.
Performance metrics will show improvement in the early weeks and months. It may take longer to start getting the phone calls and emails from your ideal customers, but once it starts, it is like a snowball rolling down the side of a snowy mountain. The power of your will grow exponentially, and you will see incredible results in the form of ideal clients who understand your value.
There are no shortcuts or tricks to building such a platform that will stand the test of time. However, with the help of a provider with experience and success in building high-performing and systems, will make all the difference in your long-term success.
Please contact me for more information and to schedule a consulting session to learn more about how to build your .