Guest post by Rachel Cunningham of iMatrix
Now is the time to prepare your 2014 online marketing strategy. If you wait until after the holidays, your plan won’t be ready and you’ll end up with some lag time. Take advantage of the holiday downtime in your business and spend a few hours of quality time preparing for the new year and your 2014 marketing strategy.
Changes in SEO & Social Media
By now, you likely have heard about recent changes in internet marketing such as
Google’s Hummingbird, Social Search, and updates from Google+, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven’t heard, here is what you need to know about how these changes affect your 2014 marketing plan. First, Hummingbird focuses on “user intent,” meaning that search results will no longer return results that have only one matching term. All terms in a search are now relevant to the results. Second, social media pages are showing up in search results and social networks are becoming searchable. Both of these will affect online marketing going forward. If you have been ignoring social media hoping it was a fad, don’t ignore it any longer.
Lastly, let’s take a quick peek at three of the major social media networks and their most important updates. Google+ made significant changes this year; the biggest one being the requirement of a Google+ profile to make comments on YouTube. This enables businesses to closely moderate YouTube Channels and create relevant discussions. Twitter has adapted to make its newsfeed more visual by showing pictures rather than just links to pictures. On a network of 130 characters, a picture will certainly make a post stand out. Finally, Facebook introduced Graph Search and has continually made more and more information searchable. Optimizing posts and a business page on Facebook can make a big difference in expanding reach. There are many more updates and changes that were rolled out in 2013, but these are the major ones that affect optometry practices.
An Overview: 2014 Marketing Strategy
A successful online marketing strategy for 2014 will include several fundamental factors. Creating an online presence is absolutely essential to success, especially in a local market. More and more consumers are turning to mobile devices and online search to find local businesses in their own neighborhoods.
Websites Optimized for People
The foundation of your online marketing strategy in 2014 is a high quality website. Potential patients are extremely savvy and expect local businesses to have a user-friendly, informative website. If a fifth-grade class can have a website to raise money selling candy bars, a well-established, local business absolutely needs a professional website.
What is a high quality website? A high quality website has clearly visible contact information (Name, Address, Phone Number), information explaining what the business provides, hours, etc. With the roll-out of Hummingbird, it’s no longer effective to have one single page on “eye exams” to show up in search engine results pages (SERPs). Rather, the entire website should contain custom content that explains about the business and services offered. Additionally, regularly updated, fresh content will positively contribute to rankings. The best way to achieve this is with a blog that is on the website. Blogging even once a month about eye care, optometry advancements, eye health, etc. will make a difference. Finally, set up your Google Authorship (here Google+ makes another appearance). Google considers Authorship so it can properly gauge your expertise and credibility.
Overall, the best gauge for a high quality website is functionality and usability. Make it easy for potential patients to find what they need and give them plenty of information on why eye health matters, how eye exams work, etc. The foundation of search engine optimization is always usability.
Social Media Requires Strategy
Simply setting up a Facebook page and posting to it only when you remember will not extend the reach of your business or engage your audience. When outlining your social media strategy, there are several things to consider. First, is your social media clearly connected to your website in a highly visible area? Top of the page or above the fold is best for placement. Next, how often will you reasonably be able to post? If you can schedule five minutes every morning before patients arrive or right after lunch to post, that is ideal. Create a posting calendar based on your time availability. Monthly themes (like “back-to-school” or “summer vacation”) are a great way to brainstorm for ideas.
After you have integrated your social media into your website and set up a posting schedule, focus on optimizing your posts. Mention your optometry business, list your phone number, or call out local events if they are relevant. Be sure to include hashtags when possible. Here is an example of proper use of a hashtag:
#PinkEye is a highly contagious infection. With school starting, instruct your kids to wash their hands regularly and not touch their eyes.
Every post does not need to include a hashtag or a location, but include them when relevant. Before you share anything on social media, ask yourself: “Will my patients think this is interesting?” The biggest mistake that businesses make is to forget who their audience is when they post on social media.
Video & Paid Advertising Drive Traffic
With the close integration of all Google services, Google AdWords and YouTube are necessary to any successful online marketing plan. When planning for next year, include video creation in your overall planning calendar. Determine a reasonable schedule for creating videos. Typically, if you are shooting videos yourself, one video a month is doable. Once you have filmed and uploaded the videos, be sure to embed them on your website. Studies have shown that it’s easier to communicate a large amount of information using video and that online users tend to favor video over written text.
Google Adwords and Bing Ads are great platforms for driving traffic (and business!) to your website. Budget a portion of your 2014 marketing budget to pay-per-click advertising on one or both of these PPC networks. In addition to PPC ads, local businesses can benefit from in-stream and in-display video ads. These are the ads that run before YouTube videos. It’s best to have a professional quality video ad produced for these types of ad campaigns, so evaluate production costs when determining your advertising budget. If custom video ad creation is not immediately available in your budget, you can still incorporate traditional pay-per-click advertising.
Adaptation Is Key
Creating a comprehensive optometry office online marketing strategy can take an investment of time and resources, but the planning will make execution of the strategy cost-effective and efficient. There are three things that are essential to effectively maintaining and properly managing an online marketing strategy: staying current, being flexible, and reviewing metrics. If three months into 2014, Facebook changes their algorithm, you need to be aware of the changes and be able to incorporate or accommodate to those changes. Additionally, online user needs can change over time and preferences can shift. By continually reviewing metrics and analytics available, your strategy can adapt to those preferences.
This is a lot of information to compute. Don’t get discouraged. Grab your laptop or tablet and get started by simply typing out a rough outline of goals for 2014. Follow the instructions listed in this blog and check off items as you go. Often, the biggest barrier to planning is simply getting motivated to sit down and do it.
Rachel Cunningham is a Marketing Content Writer at iMatrix, a provider of affordable web marketing solutions for small, practice based businesses. She earned a Master of Arts degree in English from CSU Long Beach and a Bachelor of Science from Boston College in General Management. Rachel is experienced in writing content optimized for search engines and users, creating engaging content for social media, and crafting articles about SEO and social media marketing for small businesses.
