Digital Marketing for Private Practice: How to Attract New Patients

Abstract

Digital marketing in the hearing profession can be confusing, difficult, and make any private practice owner or manager frustrated with the results they are or are not getting. This article provides a digital marketing plan for getting new patients to contact your office for hearing healthcare services. Patients are confused when researching hearing aids, audiologists, and hearing tests. Some Web sites advertise bypassing licensed professionals, recommending only an online hearing test or an audiogram faxed into their office for the purpose of fitting hearing aids or other technology. We know this system does not take the place of a licensed professional but, Web sites that provide this information are very believable. Practitioners and managers are frustrated and confused by what they should be doing online. Patients continue to find other sources of misinformation before locating an established practice that can help them hear better and get much more out of their hearing healthcare. This article will give each reader a plan for getting results online and attracting new patients to their practice for less money than any other marketing medium available today.

Digital Marketing for Private Practice

The Challenges for Hearing Healthcare Practitioners

As the internet has evolved into a one-stop shop for the majority of American consumers, hearing healthcare has drastically changed. However, unlike other professions, the medical profession has been slow to adapt. Gone are the days when going to the doctor was nothing more than getting into the car and driving to the nearest or most familiar practitioner. According to a 2013 study conducted by PEW Research, approximately 86% of patients will turn to the internet to conduct health-related research prior to booking an appointment with a physician. Nearly all those patients use a search engine like Google or Yahoo, while 13% searched a medical-related Web site like Mayo Clinic. ¹ Nearly 6 years have passed since the study was completed. Thus, the number of Americans turning to the internet to search for and research physicians has likely only increased.

To further compound matters, many hearing healthcare practitioners operate under the mistaken assumption that they are immune from the movement to all things internet. The belief is that older patients, those most likely in need of treatment for auditory conditions, do not use the internet to the extent that younger patients do. The research, however, indicates otherwise. In a 2010 study conducted by Google and Nielson Online, the authors concluded that not only are boomers (defined as being between 46 and 65 years of age in 2010 and now between 56 and 75 in 2019) just as active as younger age groups in searching for health-related content online but also their searches are much more treatment orientated. “Boomers' health search queries indicate they are further along the patient pathway—queries focus on treatment, drug, and remedy information, indexing highest for medication, medication efficacies, side effects, and risks.” ²

Thus, practitioners encounter patients who are not only knowledgeable about their medical conditions but also know a good deal about the background of their physicians even prior to the first visit. According to a 2012 study conducted by Google and Compete Hospital, 48% of patients spent over 2 weeks researching medical providers prior to booking an appointment. Among those patients, the single most important factor to their decision making was the reputation of the facility. ³

Despite these trends, the medical profession continues to resist the movement toward digital advertising. While spending has increased in recent years, it still lags significantly behind others. According to a 2015 study by Deloitte and Gerson Lehrman Group, pharma and healthcare spending on digital advertising and marketing totaled 1.4 billion per year. While this may seem like a substantial sum, consider that the retail industry spent 11.1 billion and financial services companies spent 6.2 billion. ⁴

There are several reasons for this disparity. Probably the most important factor is the nature of the healthcare profession. Unlike other industries where there are customarily two parties, the merchant or service provider and the consumer, the medical profession has other major participants. Hearing healthcare includes third-party payers, insurance companies, consolidators, and online hearing aid retailers. In the retail sector, for instance, a consumer views an ad on a search engine like Google and decides whether to make a purchase. The consumer may shop around for a better price, but the choice of whether to buy a good or service is his or her own. However, in healthcare, potential patients are typically not able to act prior to consulting with their insurance company. Thus, a potential patient might be highly motivated to make an appointment with a particular doctor or to order medical devices, such as hearing aids, but could be precluded if the goods or services are not covered. This challenge is a difficult one to overcome for many healthcare providers but can be largely mitigated through effective marketing strategies.

Another major challenge faced by healthcare providers is that they are subject to restrictions on data use and sharing that other industries are not. Under HIPAA, Personal Health Information (PHI) cannot be used for marketing purposes without the consent of the patient. This is particularly problematic for hearing healthcare providers, as it poses a significant limitation on the ability to target potential users of amplification.

In addition to the marketing challenges discussed earlier, audiologists are subject to dramatically changing market conditions and patient perceptions. In a 2016 article, Lusis describes what she terms as a “sea of change” within the field of audiology. Lusis attributes changes within the profession to the widespread availability of technology and the blurring of the lines between an audiologist and a hearing aid dispenser. “With the rapid explosion of technology, including the proliferation of personal sound amplification products (PSAPs), baby boomers who embrace technology are searching the web for lower-cost options to what they perceive as expensive hearing aids. They are also turning to big-box stores for their hearing health needs…. Given the focus on the device by many audiologists, consumer and payers also may not realize the difference between hearing aid dispensers and audiologists in terms of education and training.” ⁵

Local small practices will continue to suffer the effects of these emerging market trends unless they act quickly to implement effective digital marketing strategies. With the explosion of big-box hearing aid dispensers offering low-priced devices, as well as third-party payers, insurance companies, consolidators, and online hearing aid retailers, small practitioners are not being found in search results. Consider that the first page results of any Google search get nearly 100% of all web traffic. The simple reality is that consumers trust these listings more. By way of an example, consider a big-box retailer like Amazon. Search for nearly any retail product and Amazon will appear toward the top of the results. Such high positioning results in excellent conversion rates. To compete, hearing healthcare providers need to invest the time to create quality content to educate potential patients on the importance of receiving treatment from a local provider. Moreover, small practices need to take advantage of perhaps the most powerful marketing tool at their disposal, local, online business marketing. Most practices do not realize they can compete against national advertisers successfully at the local level for less money.

The largest digital marketing challenges facing any small business within any industry are a lack of resources. For instance, to create quality content employing proper and effective search engine optimization (SEO) takes time. These small businesses do not have the manpower that larger businesses do. With all the responsibilities that a small business owner has in a given day, a task such as adhering to a consistent content creation schedule is given low priority. This is even more apparent within the hearing care profession where providers are already working long hours seeing patients and managing the practice. And yet, it is well known within the digital marketing industry that creating quality content is the most important aspect of any digital marketing plan. The perceptions that creating content is a time-consuming process and that SEO is a complicated science are wrong.

Hearing care practitioners have a significant amount of knowledge and experience that they can draw from to create excellent and informative content. By adopting some basic SEO principles and consistently publishing informative content, those in private practice can increase their revenue. Alternatively, hearing care providers can hire a company to handle some or all aspects of their digital marketing campaigns. Many practices choose not to incur the additional expenses associated with running digital marketing campaigns or they start only to get discouraged by what they perceive as a lack of results. This misconception is largely the result of unreasonable expectations and relying on faulty measurements of success.

The reality is SEO takes time. No matter how good your content and SEO strategies are, you cannot expect to hit the top of the search results overnight. Many companies give up after just a few months of SEO, discouraged by what they perceive as a low return on investment (ROI). Yet, as a long-term strategy, SEO has one of the largest ROIs of any digital marketing strategy. There are other marketing strategies that generate short-term returns that can be relied on to while an SEO campaign works to gain momentum.

We must, of course, have a way of measuring the success of our digital marketing campaigns. Many healthcare providers make the mistake of solely looking at the costs of any marketing campaign. While costs are obviously important, they must be measured in terms of conversions. A conversion is the measure of a Web site visitor completing any action that the advertiser is seeking. Within the hearing healthcare profession, conversions are typically measured in terms of costs per call and costs per appointment. In other words, how much must a practice spend in advertising dollars for a prospective patient to call in? How much must it spend for a patient to schedule an appointment? Moreover, what is the total revenue on sales generated through digital marketing? Only by analyzing these and the other metrics discussed later can a practitioner fully understand the effectiveness and benefits of a marketing campaign.

The Solution for Successful Digital Marketing

Get Reviews

Most hearing care practices do not place any emphasis on accumulating positive online reviews. This is unfortunate as it is relatively effortless. All that is required is to encourage existing patients to post a review if they have had a positive experience. Moreover, online reviews are an extraordinarily powerful marketing tool for local businesses. According to BrightLocal's 2018 Consumer Review Survey, approximately 86% of consumers read reviews on local businesses. The survey also found that consumers read an average of 10 online reviews prior to feeling able to trust a business and that recent reviews are particularly important. Approximately 40% of online consumers will only consider reviews written within the previous 2 weeks. ⁶

Online reviews are essential, and they must be added continuously. Trust is everything within the hearing care profession. Positive reviews establish that not only does a provider possess the necessary experience and knowledge to adequately treat patients, but that they also received excellent service. Much like consistently writing quality web content, a best practice is to have one person in charge of patient reviews. It could be as simple as having a receptionist inform a patient that if they had a positive experience to please leave a review. The patient could be given a document with instructions for positing a review. Not surprisingly, the easiest way to get reviews is to simply ask. BrightLocal also found that 68% of customers will leave a review if asked.

Another effective method is to follow up with patients by email. The individual responsible for collecting online reviews could use a HIPAA compliant email service to send out email invites, as well as follow-ups and reminders, with links to the appropriate platforms.

There are seemingly countless online review platforms. It is impossible to register for them all, nor should you. Rather, direct your efforts toward maintaining your practice's profile on the sites that matter the most. Research consistently shows that Google reviews are the most important to prospective customers. A 2018 ReviewTrackers Online Reviews Survey found that more than 60% of consumers look at a company's reviews on Google prior to making a purchase. Thus, it is essential for a local hearing care practice to appear in Google business listings. Other platforms that rank high are Facebook, Yelp, HealthyHearing.com, HelpingMeHear.com, and HearingTracker.com. ⁷ Any successful campaign should start with building a profile on Google and accumulating as many reviews as possible. From there a practice could expand into some of the other platforms. Hearing care practices must make getting reviews a priority if they want to succeed. Trust forms the foundation for any successful relationship. The important thing is to be consistent; remember that older reviews do not carry as much weight with consumers as recently posted reviews.

Build a Web Site that Converts with Direct Response Marketing and Educational Material

What is direct response and why is it important? The average marketing plan within the hearing care industry is geared toward brand recognition. The practice's online brochure Web site consists of nothing more than a list of practitioners and their areas of specialty, with perhaps some general contact information. Other than that, the Web site provides the prospective patient with little or no useful information. It also does not encourage the patient to take any meaningful action likely to result in revenue for the practice. While this branding strategy works well for global corporations like Apple, it is not effective for small healthcare practices.

A direct response marketing Web site is designed to encourage a visitor to take meaningful action. You want the prospective patient to be motivated to pick up the phone or engage in a live chat with the practice. If not, the patient will continue to browse through other Web sites, many of them your competitors, prior to booking an appointment elsewhere. In hearing care, conveying a sense of empathy and understanding is particularly important. Many patients fear going to the doctor, especially where there is the possibility of a recommendation for hearing aids. It is important for your Web site to make the patient feel comfortable, and to show the patient that you care and that you are not just after the sale. That comfort is largely a function of providing educational material that removes some of the misunderstanding associated with hearing loss.

Many practices are resistant to providing too much educational material on their Web sites. The belief is that the patient will be provided with enough information that they will somehow be able to self-diagnose their condition and then obtain a suitable hearing device from one of those third-party payer Web sites, insurance companies, consolidators, and online hearing aid retailers that I mentioned earlier. Providing educational material, however, has the opposite effect. Not only does it make the patient feel more comfortable, but it also establishes the practitioner as an expert, someone who the patient can trust and that he or she is interested in consulting for treatment.

The key elements of a direct response Web site . For a direct response Web site to operate effectively, it must do several things. First, it motivates new patients to pick up the phone to make an appointment. The type of response (or action) that you are seeking should be clear. Make the phone number clearly visible on all pages of the Web site, as well as the practice's office hours. It is a good practice to have an answering service to field calls outside of office hours to prevent a potential new patient from placing multiple calls to different practices.

Second, in addition to providing telephone contact information, the Web site should feature an email contact form, as well as a live chat option. Live chat features have become increasingly common and for good reason. Studies show that live chat has become the leading online contact source, with 53% of customers preferring to use online chat before calling a company for support. Moreover, 30% of customers expect a live chat feature on a Web site, while 62% of customers that visit a Web site on a mobile device expect to communicate through a chat feature. ⁸ With the increasing popularity of live chat, there are countless options available that easily can be installed on a Web site. In fact, for Wordpress users, the process is as simple as installing a plugin. Web contact forms are particularly effective for follow-up communication. A web form can be linked to a third-party, HIPAA compliant email service provider. The advantages of this practice are that all potential new patients' contact information will be aggregated into one database. Practically, all these platforms offer autoresponder options so that when a potential new patient submits his or her information, they immediately are provided with relevant information regarding the practice, as well as information on when they can expect a return call. Moreover, the services provide useful tracking measurements to measure the success of any subsequent e-mail communications or marketing campaigns.

The homepage of a Web site is particularly important. Often it is the first page that a potential new patient will encounter. Like other pages on a site, the homepage needs to have useful and informative content. One telling sign of a good homepage is a low bounce rate. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a webpage that navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. The problem with a high bounce rate is that new patients are not hanging around long enough to complete the desired action. It is for this reason that there is a strong inverse relationship between the conversion rate and bounce rate of a webpage. Where the bounce rate is high, typically the conversion rate will be low.

Another way to think about the effectiveness of a homepage is to imagine it as a medical office. The old adage that first impressions are the most important has some truth to it. If a new patient visits for the first time and has a positive experience, they are more likely to return. However, if the experience is negative (perhaps the office is dirty, or the staff is discourteous), they are less likely to return. The same can be said for a webpage. If the visitor to the page has a positive experience, typically in the form of receiving useful content, they are more likely to delve deeper into the site and hang around long enough to take the desired action.

The key to creating any content is to view it from the perspective of a patient. Hearing care practitioners know what questions and concerns their patients have, and have no problem addressing them in person at the office. The same approach needs to be given to a webpage. What concerns do patients seeking treatment for hearing loss or tinnitus have? Does the content on the site address those issues? Does the Web site and content match the quality of care you provide? Just as importantly, does the content convey trust and empathy to compel the visitor to make an appointment?

Start out by examining the problem that a potential visitor is looking to solve. In the hearing care profession, the most common conditions are tinnitus and hearing loss. The solution for many potential patients is to obtain hearing aids and the necessary services. Why should they come to your office rather than simply placing an order with one of those online big-box retailers? What services does your practice offer that particularly appeal to patients? Perhaps it is many years of fitting patients with hearing aids and knowledge of the latest and most effective technology. Or maybe it is an ability to understand what the patient is going through, having worked with hundreds or potentially thousands of patients experiencing the scary process of losing their hearing. It would be particularly effective to include patient reviews on the home page to substantiate any claims regarding services and experience.

The ideal length or number of words on a webpage is a rather controversial topic within the SEO industry. Not too long ago the target number of words on a page was approximately 250 words. However, as Google changed its algorithms, and precluded commonly used optimization methods (i.e., hiding keywords in the background of a page), the word count for SEO purposes has increased substantially. As a general rule of thumb, most SEO practitioners agree that webpages should include between 400 and 1,000 words. Moreover, keyword density, the amount of times a targeted keyword is used relative to the total word count, is generally between 1 and 3%. Backlink conducted an interesting study in 2016. They analyzed one million Google search results to identify factors correlated with sites appearing on the first page of search results. The study concluded that longer content tended to rank higher in Google's search results and that the average webpage to appear on the first page of Google contained 1,890 words. ⁹ While you do not need to create such in-depth pages, it is worth keeping in mind that erring on the side of a higher word count is preferable to a lower word count.

Other findings of the Backlink study are worth considering. Backlinks, which are the number of domains linking back to a webpage, were the highest correlated factor for first page results. Getting backlinks is a complicated process. For those in hearing care, links to a practitioner's site from medical-related domains is particularly effective. Consider contacting relevant Web sites and blogs within the industry to see if they accept guest posts in exchange for a link back to your site. This process takes a little bit of networking, but the requests are generally well received since webpages are always looking for relevant content.

As mentioned earlier, search engine rankings love new content. Equally important, so do prospective patients. Practitioners should try to post at least one new article to the webpage per week. These postings should be a minimum of 400 words and should include one to three relevant keywords. Remember that the goal of content is to be useful. There are potentially unlimited topics within the hearing healthcare industry. If the practitioner is writing the articles, he or she likely possesses the knowledge and experience necessary to write a quality article, with perhaps some limited research required to brush up on certain topics. If the work is delegated to a less knowledgeable staff member or to an SEO professional, some more in-depth research will likely be required but should not require a too much time.

Finally, the advantage of a direct marketing webpage is the ability to use a plethora of analytics and measures to evaluate performance. One essential tool for any webpage is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free service that provides you with important data on how users find and use your webpage. The tool is simple to install. All that is required is to insert a Google-provided tracking code into the header of each of your webpages. For Wordpress users, this is simply a matter of installing a header and footer plugin and pasting the tracking code into the header section which automatically places the code on each of your pages. There are plenty of online tutorials that can show you how to insert the code. If you are unable to figure it out, any web-designer can quickly handle the task for you.

Some of the most important measures accessible within Google Analytics include the number of visitors to the site, the bounce rate of those visitors, where those visitors are coming from (i.e., through a social media account or through a paid ad on Google), the average time spent viewing each page, and important data regarding conversions. Various tools can be used to generate conversion data. Thus, practitioners can view the important metrics discussed earlier in this article, including cost-per-call, cost-per-appointment, and total revenue. These data enable a practitioner to analyze the effectiveness of a digital marketing strategy and to make changes where necessary to optimize the practice's ROI.

Drive as Much Traffic as Possible With SEO and PPC

Once you have several reviews that build trust and a Web site that is built to convert, it is time to drive as much traffic from the search engines as possible with SEO and Pay-Per-Click (PPC). Throughout this article, we have been largely focused on SEO on your Web site and within that context discussing organic search results. There are also SEO strategies off-site with paid advertising that can increase new patient leads. While studies show that SEO offers the best long-term ROI, it is neither the only monetization method, nor are organic search results the only aspect of a search engine results page. In addition to organic results, there are also paid search results, local business results, and some other categories of results depending on what the user is searching for.

Paid search results, known as PPC, is a model in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads are clicked in a search engine results page. On Google, the two most common paid search ads that appear for any given search are text ads and shopping ads. Generally, a search will return at least three paid ads at the top of a search page. These ads are easy to identify since they feature “Ad” with a small green box around the text. Shopping ads generally appear at the top of the search results page in the form of pictures with links to sites where the item searched for is listed for sale, as well as pricing and reviews for the item. Search results for hearing aids do not return shopping ads but do feature many paid ads from those third-party payers, insurance companies, consolidators, and online hearing aid retailers we have been discussing.

A PPC campaign is largely an auction of sorts. A company creates a Google Adwords account and within the dashboard can create one or many ad campaigns. Each campaign will include targeted keywords. Each keyword or ad group will have a daily budget allocated to it. Whether the ad will appear when a user searches for a keyword within an ad group depends on the amount of the bid for the keyword multiplied by what is known about the ad's quality score. What makes up a quality score is beyond the scope of this article; however, suffice to say that even if the advertiser's bid for the given keyword is higher than another advertiser's, if the ad's quality score is low, then it is possible that the ad from the advertiser with the lower bid will appear over the higher bid.

The click rates of both Google search ads are not great, only 1.91%. ¹⁰ Meaning, only 1.91% of the time will a user click on a given search ad. However, PPC ads are useful in that they offer an immediate ROI. Any successful SEO campaign takes time to see any kind of ROI. A good strategy is to run PPC ads at least until the SEO campaign picks up. Even then, it is often advisable to continue with a PPC campaign. While low, PPC ads still generate traffic, and if the site is converting well, still offer a positive ROI.

We talked earlier about the importance of local business reviews on Google, particularly within hearing healthcare. Patients are local consumers and will rely heavily on local business search results. Typically, when a user searches for a local business or product, like “Hearing Aids,” the search results will feature a local map with several listings for local providers. Underneath each listing are the businesses' reviews and contact information. In addition to the reviews, the local listings have added benefits, particularly for mobile users, of providing links for directions and the direct phone number to the practice's office. Establishing your practice's presence among the local business results is essential to your long-term success.

Again, the strategy that offers the greatest possibility of a long-term ROI is an SEO campaign. And yet, many small businesses do not put the time or money into SEO, or even PPC advertising which offers the possibility of immediate returns. A recent survey examined the extent of small business owner knowledge of SEO. The results were startling. Twenty percent of the small business owners said they did not have a Web site. Fifty-four percent said they do not have the budget for SEO. There was also evidence to support the fact that many people believe that SEO campaigns should offer immediate returns: 29% believed that a Web site should start ranking for a keyword as soon as the content is published. ¹¹ These beliefs are not realistic. It takes knowledge, time, and consistency to get new patients contacting your office for an appointment.

The results of the survey highlight one of the most important reasons a hearing healthcare practice should focus on SEO. That is, your competitors are likely not doing it. Thus, for those practitioners who invest the relatively modest amount of time required each week into SEO (and PPC), all other things being equal, they will surpass their competitors. Moreover, the practice will build its brand identity, significantly increase traffic to their Web site, and significantly increase the number of new patients.

There are some unique challenges faced by the hearing healthcare profession within the context of SEO and PPC advertising worth noting and some services to avoid completely. We already explored one earlier: the potential applicability of HIPAA to preclude retargeting campaigns. Retargeting, or remarketing, is a method of advertising to users who previously visited your Web site. The problem is that to the extent data collected by the Web site or practice can be classified as PHI under HIPAA, the data cannot be used for retargeting. This is admittedly a gray area, but one that many within the healthcare industry choose to steer clear of due to the potential for strict fines for any violations of privacy rights.

Another area of concern is what is known as geofencing. Geofencing is where an artificial perimeter is set around a specified location using GPS or radio frequency. The advertiser sets up triggers when a user enters the perimeter, such as causing an ad to pop-up on the user's phone. While the use of geofencing likely does not violate HIPAA where consumers are broadly targeted, and their personal information is not used, a more problematic scenario occurs where the ads follow the user for a period of time following a visit to a medical facility. This will be an issue worth watching over for the next few years to see whether any advertisers are found to have violated HIPAA. ¹² I would recommend avoiding this type of advertising.

Finally, Google display ads, or banner ads, are not generally viewed as offering an effective ROI within hearing healthcare. Display ads work much like PPC ads but rather than appearing on a search results page, they show up on related third-party Web sites. Banner ads are generally considered to be a passive form of advertising. A user visits a webpage and somewhere within the page an advertisement appears. The problem is that potential patients are generally not looking for a healthcare provider at the time that the ad pops up. Rather, when a patient wishes to find a doctor, he or she will specifically search for one, largely relying on local business reviews and organic search results. In addition, banner ads have notoriously low click rates and even worse conversion rates.

As a practical matter, the process for researching keywords for both SEO and PPC campaigns are identical. In recent years, there has been an explosion of web tools for conducting keyword research. One of the most effective research tools is Google's Keyword Planner. In the past, anyone could access the Keyword Planner, but now Google requires that you have a Google Ads account. So, if you decide to run PPC campaigns, you will have access to the Keyword Planner for both PPC and SEO purposes. Using the tool is easy. You simply come up with a list of several keywords and enter them into the search box. A list of related keywords is returned with statistics on average monthly searches for a given term, the competition level for that term and the bid range. The bid range is important for setting your budget for PPC campaigns, while the number of searches and competition level are particularly important for SEO purposes.

Determining your budget for PPC campaigns is easy. Figure out how much you are willing to allocate to digital marketing per month. Divide that total by the number of days in the month and set your budget within your Google Ads account. For instance, if you plan to spend $900 on marketing and there are 30 days in the month, your daily budget will be set at $30.

Soovle.com is another great keyword tool. In addition to Google, Soovle gives you keyword ideas from YouTube, Bing, Amazon, and other major sites. Jaaxy.com also gives you a wide range of keywords as well as useful data. You can run 30 searches for free but are then required for sign up for a membership. One of the best free keyword tools is Neil Patel's ubersuggest.io. The site allows you to do an unlimited number of searches and gives you important metrics such as the number of monthly searches, the level of competition, and your chances of ranking on the first page for a given keyword. Finally, perhaps the most powerful, albeit expensive, SEO tool is semrush.com. In addition to the standard keyword searches of other sites, SEMrush allows you to search a competitor's Web site (as well as your own) to see what keywords they are using. There is perhaps no better strategy than emulating what works for other successful hearing healthcare practices.

To Do it Yourself or to Outsource?

Throughout this article, we have discussed the digital marketing challenges that hearing healthcare practices face. Such challenges are in many ways similar to those of other small businesses, while there are some unique to the medical industry. The biggest challenge is of course a lack of resources. Most practitioners are busy and while many have good intentions to finally sit down and write that new blog post or article, employing proper SEO methods of course, it gets placed on the back-burner as more pressing matters are dealt with. Second, many practices have limited marketing budgets or are already expending large sums on other mediums. Often, however, practitioners fail to consider the potential return from digital marketing and that they are likely to receive their investment back, potentially many-fold. Parting with that first dollar within a medium that many are unfamiliar with can be a major obstacle to overcome.

There is also the time commitment necessary to research SEO strategies, how to run PPC campaigns, how to do keyword research, how to write effective content, and even some basics on using Wordpress to the extent the practitioner will be posting his or her own content. There are many great books and blogs out there that can provide you with a good working knowledge that you can further develop through hands-on experience. To the extent that you can invest the time and consistently create quality content or can employ an assistant within your office to do so, you will likely find digital marketing to be both fascinating and highly rewarding. There is perhaps no greater feeling than seeing the number of new patients increase exponentially through your efforts.

The harsh reality is, however, that the majority of hearing healthcare providers will never find the time to properly run a digital marketing campaign. In addition to long hours treating patients, there are a whole host of administrative tasks that require your time. While hiring a digital marketing specialist or agency may seem like a needless expense, a good company can cause your practice to grow beyond your wildest dreams. There are a whole host of companies that offer digital marketing services. Like any industry, some of them are good and some are not. Like any other business, research them on the internet. Do they have good reviews? Have they been in business for a long time? Do they have a team in the United States, or do they outsource everything overseas? Do they have a proven track record of managing marketing campaigns? Also, what are their policies regarding client involvement in the marketing process? A good digital marketing company will keep you actively involved in the process through regularly scheduled phone calls and appointments. In addition, they will continuously provide you with data and metrics through which you can analyze and adjust your marketing campaigns.

Hearing healthcare is rapidly changing. Developing and maintaining an online presence will be essential to a practice's long-term survival, as third-party payers, insurance companies, consolidators, and online hearing aid retailers spring up and threaten to replace services traditionally offered by local practitioners. Whether you decide to implement a comprehensive digital marketing campaign that you manage through your own efforts or delegate the responsibilities to a digital marketing specialist, it is imperative that your practice develop an online presence or face the very real possibility of being rendered obsolete.