Have you heard of Facebook? Or Twitter? Or Instagram? I am sure you must be using at least one of these social networks to connect with your friends or putting across your point of view to your followers. If you have been using these platforms for more than a decade, like I have, have you noticed how much the number of Ads that you see on your timeline has increased in these years?

You are constantly bombarded with theses Ads whenever you visit your feed or profile. But how many of these do you ever find useful to click on? Think about it. Since you are reading this article, it is clear that either you also put out Ads on these networks or you intend to start soon.

I am writing this, so you don’t make the mistakes that one of my doctor friends made. He paid thousands of Rupees to Facebook in Ads to gain about a thousand followers on his page. But do you know how many of these followers interact with his posts? On most days it is 1-2 likes and no comments. And out of these followers only 5 turned into paying customers.

Do you think spending so much money and effort for such abysmal returns is worth it? I am sure your answer is a big ‘NO’. After a brief discussion, I advised my friend to make some changes in his strategy and he got 4-5 paying customers by spending just a few hundred Rupees with his next Facebook Ad.

If you intend to start social media marketing for your clinic and do not want to waste your money, do not make the mistakes mentioned below. 

1. Starting out without a plan

Do you drive a car without knowing how much fuel you have in the car or without knowing the way to your destination? Starting your social media marketing without a plan is akin to driving a car without any idea about the fuel and journey.

Majority of the people actually make this blunder, and they are pretty much just giving away their hard-earned money to Facebook and Google. No wonder these companies make so much profit with these Ads.

Before spending a single Rupees on digital marketing, you need to write down your goals, budget, key performance indicators and a plan of action outlining what you want to achieve and how you are going to do it.

2. Hiring a marketing firm without vetting

Almost all healthcare professionals struggle to create content for social media and marketing it while managing their clinic. Some of them hire a digital marketing firm to help them with it. But this step can make or break your business if you are not very cautious about it.

There are certain benefits that come with hiring a marketing agency like: it frees up your time to run your practice, helps you formulate a social media strategy, and will be less costly than hiring an in-house team. But first you need to find out whether the marketing agency has ever managed a healthcare business before?

Hiring Industry-specific marketing agencies is always the best bet for small businesses because such agencies have great understanding of what the customers are looking for and how to cater to their needs. There are minimal chances that a marketing firm that has only worked with E-commerce businesses would be able to get you your desired results.

In e-commerce, the value proposition can be low price, higher discount, or faster delivery. But the healthcare industry is different, trust in the Doctor supersedes everything. Your content and marketing strategy should focus on establishing trust and not on selling something to the customer. Hence, you need somebody that knows the nitty-gritty of the healthcare business.

Any agency without any prior experience in healthcare industry won’t be able to relay the right message to the target audience.  They might know the best settings of the social networks but won’t have the knowledge to create the best content that will be of value to your prospective clients.

3. Not knowing the target audience

Promoting your content to a targeted audience gives far better returns than promoting it to broader audience. By knowing your target audience, you can craft your message accordingly.

For example, if you are a Physiotherapist having a clinic in Gurgaon, showing your social media ads to people living in Noida won’t make any sense. How many patients would travel so far, every day to take physiotherapy treatment (Unless you also offer telephonic/video consultation). If you target such a broad audience, most of your money is going to go down the drain.

You need to have a clear idea about your target audience, what is their age, where do they live, what are their problems, etc. and then tailor your content and marketing strategy to achieve the best possible engagement.

4. Not engaging with customers

Many Doctors just use social media to post their content and never even bother to reply to the comments or questions on that post.

The point of using social media is not to just coney your message to your audience, but also to listen to their feedback/queries and respond to them. It should be a two-way communication. Each comment should be responded to, no matter how busy your schedule is.

Otherwise, the visitors to your post would believe that you don’t care about your customers and the purpose of putting so much effort of writing a good article to get more patients would just be a waste of time and effort. Do you know that 78% of customers would buy from a company after a positive interaction with them on social media?

There is no point in having thousands of followers who don’t interact with your content. People who take out time to comment on your post can later turn into your loyal fans, who would do your marketing themselves. Don’t lose out on such a great opportunity by ignoring them. Also, the algorithm of almost all social media networks takes the higher engagement positively and boosts your organic reach. 

5. Being on all social media channels

Managing multiple social networks well with a busy schedule is a herculean task and is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. The best approach is to know your target audience and then choose your social network.

Youngsters are more active on Instagram and middle age and older people on Facebook. If you are a plastic surgeon, posting before and after pictures of your patients on Instagram would get you far more customer queries than posting it on Facebook or Twitter. People are looking for transformation results on Instagram, not on Facebook.

But on Facebook, long videos and blog articles perform well. So, if you are an orthopedician and you need to explain to your audience about an ailment, Facebook is your best bet.

By understanding which platform helps you reach your target audience most efficiently, you can save a lot of money on marketing and grow much faster.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that you should have social media presence, but choosing the right platform and creating the right content for your audience will be the key to your success. I hope that after reading such a long article, you got some valuable information and you will put it to good use. And when you do get those results, do not forget to tell me about it. I would love to hear from you. If you want to tell me about the mistakes that you have made in your journey and how you changed your course or if you want to ask me anything, just drop a comment or get in touch with me here. May success be with you always.