Online marketing has undoubtedly emerged as one of the most powerful and cost-effective means of promotion, particularly for small and medium businesses and professional practitioners such as you. Independent doctors, dentists and other medical professionals have embraced online healthcare marketing, considering its affordable costs, targeted reach and multi-media approach.

However, ever since the global economic slowdown began in 2008, businesses and professionals have felt the pressing need to justify every marketing dollar before it is spent. Doctors and dentists have not been immune to this prevailing economic situation, and a large number of practitioners are forced to run their marketing campaigns on shoestring budgets. The ultimate goal of an online healthcare marketing campaign is to improve the profit margins at a minimal marketing cost.

The growing power of search engines has compelled most of the medical and dental marketing experts to make search engine optimization (SEO) as one of the key focuses of their online marketing strategy. Some of the practices are pouring in tens of thousands of dollars into online marketing every year. But the big question must be answered: How much of a benefit do you really get out of your online marketing efforts for your practice?

Hire a Professional Online Medical Marketing Firm

If you are unclear about how much your medical or dental practice is really benefitting from your online marketing efforts, perhaps it is time to consider hiring a professional online marketing services provider. A professionally designed online marketing campaign should produce visible and measurable results for your practice.

One of the interesting trends in online marketing for doctors and dentists is that potential patients who visit their office through online marketing efforts, fix an appointment offline. In many cases, the patients may identify the doctors online, but may not inform that they found them through a search engine.

The Power of Search Engine Marketing

According to a 2010 Kelsey Group study 97% of consumers use the Internet to research products or services in their local area. More than 90% of these consumers use search engines as their specific online research tool. This reinforces the value of great local content, local SEO, and local visibility in general. In fact, according to the study, consumers use 7.9 different media sources for research when looking for local products and services. That speaks about the importance of being visible on a number of channels — your own website, Social Media, Google Maps, Citysearch, important industry sites, and prominent blogs and forums. Diversity of presence makes a big difference.

Another study conducted in 2012 by Digital Influence Index showed that 89 percent percent of the consumers surveyed used Internet search engines to make purchasing decisions and when choosing healthcare products and services.

So what this all means is your medical website, social media and reputation profiles, back links are vital in persuading a potential patient to go with you. However, this does not necessarily mean they will make an appointment via your website.

A Cobalt research shows that phone calls have actually outpaced email leads in a dramatic fashion. The research shows that in March 2010, there were approximately seven phone calls for every two email leads. In March 2011, that ratio jumped to almost 10 phone calls for every two email leads.

These statistics do not mean that your online health marketing efforts are wasted. It just means that with advanced technology clicking on the phone number on your medical or dental website is becoming easier than filling out an appointment request form.

Overall if you are seeing a downward trend in the patients coming to you, perhaps it is time to schedule an appointment with an experienced online medical marketing company to evaluate your website and get it moving in the right direction.