How to Assess Your Healthcare Marketing Efforts Like a Digital Marketing Pro

Today, nearly 60% of consumers will use the internet to search for a new service or care site. Many healthcare marketing agencies offer digital marketing assessments to see if your practice’s marketing efforts are up to par.

Seeking an evaluation from a reputable healthcare marketing company offers a valuable outside perspective. However, we understand that some practices may prefer to conduct their own assessments. In this article, we’ll lay out how to evaluate your healthcare digital marketing efforts like a pro.

Website Design and User Experience

Your website is often the first point of contact that potential patients will have with your practice, so it’s critical that it supports conversion.

Some questions a marketer may ask:

• Is your site ADA and HIPAA-compliant?
• Is your conversion rate equal to or more than 6%?
• Is your website easy to navigate with a clean and user-friendly design?
• Is your site responsive on both web and mobile?
• Is your content easy to understand? Does it support the patient’s decision-making process?
• Do you have a Google Search Console set up? If so, are you utilizing it?

If you answered “yes” to all those questions, then congrats! Your site is in good shape. If you answered “yes” to 5 to 7 questions, your website may need further optimization. If you answered “yes” to 4 questions or less, your website might need significant refinement to encourage patient conversion.

To gain insights into your SEO performance, we recommend using a marketing insight tool such as SEMrush. Once you log in, you can select the SEO Dashboard bar on the left column. From there, you can look at your Site Health Score. Your score is based on the number of errors and warnings on your site. The higher the score, the fewer problems your site has.

• Is your Site Health Score above or equal to the average health industry score (shown in the dropdown menu)?

In the “Domain Overview” bar on the left, you can input your site URL. From there, press the “compare domains,” and you can add your competitor’s URLs for comparison.

• Is your site authority score higher than your competition?
• Is your organic traffic higher than your competition?

If you answered “no” to any of these 3 SEO-related questions, it might be a sign that your website needs further optimization to compete in your healthcare market.

Digital Advertising (Google)

Google Ads allows businesses to create and display ads on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). As the most popular search engine in the world, any healthcare business looking to grow should consider investing.

A great healthcare digital marketer would look at meaningful metrics the platform offers and benchmark them against industry averages. In the case that you’re using Google Ads, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Is your CPC equal to or less than $2.62?
• Is your CTR equal to or more than 3.27%?
• Is your conversion rate equal to or more than 3.36%?
• Is your CPL equal to or less than $30?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, it may be time to adjust your current strategies so you can meet those standards.

Patient Engagement

Patient engagement is the involvement and active participation of patients in their healthcare. This collaborative approach to healthcare builds trust and keeps patients invested in their care.

Some questions a marketer may ask:

• Do you have after-hours call capability?
• Do you have overflow call coverage?
• Do you have 2-way SMS & Secure Chat?
• Do you have intelligent reminders?
• Do you have multi-channel campaigns?
• Does your website have HIPAA-compliant frictionless forms? Do they allow electronic signatures and complex data capture, like credit cards?

If you answered “yes” to all those questions, then congrats! Your patient engagement setup is excellent. If you answered “yes” to five or six questions, your patient engagement strategies are satisfactory but require fine-tuning. However, if you answered “yes” to four or fewer questions, significant improvements may be necessary to ensure quality patient engagement.

Google Business Profile (GBP)

Local listings and directories like Google Business Profile are powerful tools for attracting new patients. Optimizing your local listings and directories can improve your local search engine visibility, attracting new patients.

Some questions a marketer may ask:

• Have you claimed your Google Business Profile?
• Is it updated regularly, with updates made within the last month?
• Does it contain a photo, locations, a website link, and reviews?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, we recommended that you prioritize meeting those goals to ensure your online presence is reeling in potential patients.