Boothe Media just finished a very short video about how you can boost your word of mouth advertising by using social networking websites on the internet. The example we chose was a doctor as most of our experience comes from Lasik advertising and medical advertising. We are planning to post many educational marketing videos, and would love any feedback you have to help us improve on this series.

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IOL and Cataract Patients – The Traditional and Older Patient

The IOL and Cataract patients are the “baby boomers” and are a little older in age range. This demographic responds to traditional forms of advertising and if your medical practice is aiming at this group, you should use radio, tv,  newspaper, etc. There is plenty of material on traditional advertising out in books and on the internet, so I won’t cover.

Lasik Advertising – The Young Patient

The Lasik patient is a younger patient and is responding less and less to traditional forms of medical marketing. This new generation reads the newspaper on the internet, reads blogs (much like this one), watches TV, listens to the radio, listens to pod casts. To many, this new generation is a complete mystery and advertising to this group can be a difficult task. When it comes to this generation, the internet is not being used nearly enough.

Simple Ideas on Using the Internet in Your Advertising and Marketing

There are some obviouse ways to make the internet work for you to improve your Lasik patient volume. One is pay per click (PPC). Organic listings in search engines is another really good way. This is about as far as some practices go to advertise on the internet. Consider using social networking sites to target your demographic. Produce some low budget youtube videos about your patients before and after surgery. Make your banner ads interactive or use compelling video/animation to draw patients in.

Knowing your audience isn’t always easy, but we have given you a few ideas to experiment with in your medical advertising campaigns.

Figuring Out Where to Spend Your Money Online.

Let me start off saying that there is no sure fire answer to this question. But I can give you some ideas and pointers to lead you in the right direction. First off, it might not be a bad idea to have a small questionare for your younger patients asking them what websites they frequent. I can guarantee you sites like myspace and facebook will pop up frequently, but I bet most Lasik surgeons don’t know what a myspace is, let alone have an account on myspace.

Also, consider many of your local newspapers. Younger patients arn’t going to be reading the newspaper anymore. They read the news on internet. So you could consider running banners on some local newspaper websites.

Search engines like Google and Yahoo are another place that people are flocking to find their lasik surgeon. These are probably the most obvious places to advertise and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a big plus to get first page ranking.

Pitfalls of Online Advertising

Well, I just mentioned SEO, and most Lasik surgeons have a company doing SEO for them currently. But sometimes your SEO company is doing nothing at all, or even causing damage. Here are a few tips to keep your SEO company in line

• Ask for weekly progress reports from your SEO company.
• Keep your SEO company in the loop. Let them know what’s going on in your practice. Sometimes Online PR can do good
• Gather testimonials from your patients and send them to your SEO company for content
• Have your SEO company explain everything they are doing to build your site’s rank
• Read up on SEO. It’s not really as complicated as they want you to believe, it just takes work.

Other pitfalls come from putting your banners on a site cluttered with banners or that use pop-ups. There is a thin line of creating online advertising that is eye-catching while not annoying the viewer. I have found that creating interactive banners can do really well in catching and keeping the attention of the viewer.

Final Note

There is no sure fire easy way to succeed in online marketing, but I have seen the cost per call (CPC) of internet marketing for lasik and it can be much lower than the CPC for traditional marketing.