With technology and consumer behaviour constantly evolving, it’s crucial to adapt your methods to stay relevant. From managing your online reputation to optimizing your website for search engines, every detail counts. Here, the Virus Santé Communication team explains how dental marketing can transform your dental clinic and help you reach your professional goals.

The importance of dental marketing

Competition in the dental sector

In the dental sector, competition is intensifying as new clinics open and established chains expand. In this competitive environment, standing out becomes crucial to attract and retain patients. Dental marketing plays an essential role by allowing dentists to highlight their specialties, advanced technologies and exceptional services. By adopting targeted marketing strategies, you can increase your dental practice’s visibility in the local market and beyond. This requires a thorough understanding of the tools available, such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media and email marketing, to reach your target audiences effectively.

How marketing influences patients’ decisions

Choosing a dentist is often complicated for patients, who now have a multitude of options thanks to the internet. Dental marketing strongly influences this decision by highlighting a dental clinic’s expertise and welcoming environment. An active social media presence helps build trust with potential patients by regularly sharing oral health tips, news about your services or even moments captured with your team. A well-designed marketing plan is therefore essential to communicate your values and strengths effectively to your target audience.

Effective dental marketing strategies

Digital marketing and SEO

In the competitive world of dental marketing, optimizing your online presence is crucial. Search engine optimization (or SEO) helps your site rank well in search engine results. This involves using relevant keywords related to the dental services you offer, such as “dental implants,” “orthodontist in [city]” or “teeth whitening.” By strategically integrating these terms into your website’s titles, descriptions and content, you increase your chances of being found by potential patients.

Social media as a growth driver

Social media offers an invaluable opportunity to increase your dental practice’s visibility. Create and maintain profiles on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to share relevant content: dental care tips, before-and-after shots of cosmetic treatments, or introductions to your team. These actions strengthen your relationship with current patients and attract new clients through sharing and social interaction. Investing in paid advertising on these platforms also lets you target users specifically based on their location, interests and online behaviour.

Digital word of mouth

Word of mouth has always been a pillar of dental marketing; today, it has gone digital. Encouraging satisfied patients to leave a positive review on Google My Business or other health-specific platforms can significantly influence a potential new patient’s decision. Responding professionally to negative reviews also shows that you listen to feedback and are committed to continuously improving your services. You can also use email to politely ask for these reviews after a visit, while complying with GDPR consent standards.

By implementing these effective digital dental marketing strategies — search engine optimization (SEO), smart use of social media and leveraging digital word of mouth — you’re well positioned to improve your dental office’s online visibility, attract more patients and build a thriving practice.

Paid advertising for dental clinics

Paid advertising plays a major role in dental marketing, allowing practices to stand out in a competitive market. By leveraging platforms like Google Ads and social networks such as Facebook and Instagram, you can precisely target your clientele, attract new patients and boost your dental clinic’s online visibility.

Google Ads for dentists

Google Ads is a powerful tool for promoting dental services directly to people actively looking for dental care. With a well-designed Google Ads campaign, your practice appears at the top of search results, which significantly increases the likelihood of being chosen by potential patients.

Use specific keywords related to your areas of practice (for example, “dental implants” or “pediatric dentist”) to attract qualified traffic to your website. It’s crucial to regularly adjust your bids and refine your target audiences to optimize your return on investment. Ads should be clear and engaging and include a strong call to action that prompts prospects to book an appointment.

Facebook and Instagram advertising

Facebook and Instagram offer remarkable opportunities to reach a wider audience thanks to their advanced targeting options based on users’ interests, demographics and online behaviour. By creating attractive visual content — before-and-after photos, video testimonials from satisfied patients, virtual tours of the clinic — you can spark interest and encourage engagement with your brand.

The key to success on these platforms lies in telling your business’s story in a way that resonates with your target audience. Advertising campaigns should aim to create an emotional connection, showing how your services can improve patients’ quality of life. Don’t forget to include a clear call to action in every ad to encourage people to book appointments directly through these platforms.

By effectively combining Google Ads with Facebook and Instagram advertising, you maximize the reach and effectiveness of your paid marketing efforts. This not only helps boost your brand awareness immediately but also builds a solid foundation for your dental practice’s future growth.

SEO for dentists

Having highlighted the importance of digital marketing for standing out in the dental sector, it’s crucial to focus on organic search (SEO) as a pillar of your online visibility. SEO helps you position your website at the top of search results, attracting more potential patients to your clinic. With this in mind, here are two essential strategies: creating a blog with dental care tips and optimizing your site’s pages.

Start a blog with dental care tips

A blog is an effective way to improve your dental website’s organic search ranking. By regularly publishing relevant, informative articles on dental health, you can attract qualified traffic to your site. These articles should answer patients’ frequently asked questions, offer oral hygiene tips and present the latest innovations in dentistry. By using relevant keywords throughout your articles, you’ll increase your chances of appearing in searches related to dental health.

• Publish regularly: make sure you add fresh, relevant content every month to keep your audience engaged.
• Use targeted keywords: include terms your potential patients are likely to use when looking for information about dental treatments.
• Provide added value: every article should educate or inform your readers, giving them a reason to come back to your site.

Ensure your pages are optimized

On-page optimization plays a crucial role in improving your website’s SEO ranking. It involves the smart use of relevant keywords in your titles, meta descriptions, body text and URLs. Each page should be optimized for a specific keyword that best reflects its content.

• Optimize titles and meta descriptions: these elements should include the page’s main target keyword and be appealing enough to encourage clicks from the results page.
• Improve your URL structure: use short, descriptive URLs that also include the main keyword.
• Increase site speed: fast loading times not only improve the user experience but also have a positive impact on SEO rankings.

By implementing these dental-specific strategies, you can significantly increase your dental clinic’s online visibility. This helps attract more qualified visitors to your website, who can then become new patients at your clinic.

Mastering dental marketing is crucial to setting yourself apart in a competitive market. By adopting an approach that skilfully combines search engine optimization, social media and email marketing, you’ll increase your visibility and attract more patients. By applying these tips, you’ll be able to strengthen your online presence and attract a targeted clientele. That’s exactly what the Virus Santé Communication team offers to do. Together, we’ll apply these effective dental marketing strategies, which will not only help you gain new patients but also retain the ones you already have!

What is a lead?

In digital marketing, a lead refers to a first contact made with a potential client. Another term for lead is prospect. As we’ll see, this can happen in several ways, through your various web tools and your social media.

When you have a lead, it’s important to have a team that can convert it. A prospect is converted when the first contact made with them translates into an appointment booked at the clinic, as well as the purchase of services or products.

Where do leads come from on the web?

Website: an effective website lets you get leads from visitors. To do this, you need to use calls to action (CTAs) to collect information from visitors who are looking for a service. Appointment request forms are particularly useful for this. They let you obtain clients’ information so the receptionists can then contact them.

Social media: social networks like Facebook let you run different types of ad campaigns. These include campaigns designed to generate prospects. People interested in a specific dental treatment or promotion can then send you their contact information directly. All that remains is for your customer service team to convert these prospects into actual clients. A well-managed Google My Business profile can also generate leads, since it lets visitors ask questions about your services. By answering quickly and appropriately, you can keep in touch with this potential client, who could then book an appointment at your clinic.

Google AdWords: AdWords is Google’s marketing tool that lets you bid on keywords relevant to your business so you appear among the top paid results for consumers’ searches. An effective AdWords strategy directs these consumers to your website or a landing page. These must be designed to convert visitors into leads by letting you collect their information, for example through a form.

How do you turn a lead into a client?

You already have the information of someone who has made first contact with your clinic, but the job is only partly done… This person still has to make a real commitment to your business!

Your team therefore needs to put a few strategies in place. In private clinics and dental clinics, the receptionists are responsible for calling prospects back to convert them into appointments. This part of the team must therefore be trained to achieve this goal and ensure a good conversion rate.

Also, in general, a prospect who has provided their information expects to be called back fairly quickly, within 24 hours. So make sure you’re responsive in following up on requests received through your various web marketing tools.

The importance of good customer service

As we mentioned, once your clinic gets a lead, the rest of the work is in the hands of the receptionists responsible for customer service.

Since you’ve collected information about the client and the service they’re interested in, make sure you’re well prepared when you call back. Here are a few tips:

• Call the prospect back as soon as possible, ideally the same day you received the request.
• Be ready to offer the client an appointment by having a few available time slots on hand.
• Have all the information about the requested service on hand: price, treatment steps, etc.
• Talk about your expertise related to the requested service (the dentist’s qualifications, technologies, etc.)
• Offer personalized service: address the prospect by name and make them feel important.
• Be proactive with the leads you receive. Fast, personalized service will help you convert them into booked appointments!

The Virus Santé Communication team can help you set up a strategy to collect leads and convert them effectively. Our web marketing experts work closely with your clinic’s team to develop and implement a conversion strategy perfectly tailored to your clinic’s needs.

Why does my dental clinic need to be on social media?

Social networks like Facebook and Instagram are accessible, affordable ways to reach your target clientele, even for a healthcare business like a dental clinic. Social networks now make it possible to reach people of all age groups. The days when only young people were on these platforms are over!

According to data published by CEFRIO for 2016, 35% of Quebecers aged 65 to 74 use Facebook. In 2018, people aged 65 and over made up more than 10% of the platform’s users, a proportion that is trending upward. We also see that people in these age groups are generally more engaged with the social media posts and ads aimed at them.

Our experts’ tips for standing out on social media

Now let’s get serious! Unfortunately, simply creating a “Business” page on Facebook or another social network isn’t enough to enjoy the benefits of these platforms. You need an effective posting strategy that takes into account the few tips we share here.

1. Choose the right platforms

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok… Which platform(s) should you focus your efforts on? It’s important to think carefully about your goals and select the social networks that will help you achieve them. Each platform has its own features and advantages. So rather than spreading your efforts and resources thin to be everywhere, it’s better to select one or two social networks. This supports an effective presence on them, making it easier to stand out. You also need to plan the time and resources you can devote to managing social media. That’s another factor that should definitely guide your choice!

1. Post regularly

Whichever social network(s) you choose to prioritize, make sure you post regularly. A consistent presence not only keeps your followers interested, it’s also beneficial from an algorithm standpoint. Generally, pages that post consistently, without overdoing it or spamming, are seen by the algorithms as more relevant and of higher quality. This can help encourage follower engagement (interactions) with your posts organically, meaning without having to spend money on ads.

1. Be professional

Professionalism is always called for in your interactions with your clientele, even when those interactions are virtual and take place on social media. So don’t neglect the quality of your posts, particularly the quality of the visuals, as well as spelling and grammar.

It’s also always best to avoid negative posts, such as those aimed at competitors. It’s essential to avoid sharing content that is controversial or comes from unverified sources. Even if you have opinions as individuals, they shouldn’t interfere with your business’s identity, as this could seriously undermine your credibility.

1. Show your true colours

Social media is the tool of choice for communicating a business’s identity and values. Seize this opportunity to show your human side and build real connections with your clientele. For example, share photos of your team, the clinic and everyday life at your business. This way, potential clients will feel like they already know you, which encourages them to choose you over a competitor. They’ll tend to remember you, because you’ll have already built a bond of trust.

1. Your website: a showcase you shouldn’t neglect

We all know that today, a business needs a modern, user-friendly website. It’s a communication tool you can’t afford to neglect, since it lets your clientele find all the information they’re looking for. In a social media strategy, you also shouldn’t overlook your website’s visual appeal and effectiveness. Although Facebook or another network may be the first point of contact with potential clients, chances are they’ll eventually be redirected to your site. If your social media posts are attractive and effective but your site doesn’t convey the same things because it’s outdated, the bond of trust with the consumer may break. There may then be a conflict between the image conveyed on social media and the one perceived on your site. The client could feel disappointed; the bond would break, because you would then seem to be selling “lies.”

As you can see, maintaining an effective presence on Facebook, Instagram and other popular platforms is no easy task! If you need a hand managing your social media presence, think of the healthcare marketing experts at Virus Santé Communication.

Unfortunately, these updates, which affect the ranking of certain results, can translate into a drop in web traffic for businesses in various sectors. How should you respond to these algorithm changes? Below, our SEO experts give a brief overview.

A 2^nd update in 2020

The May Core Update is the 2^nd major update to Google’s algorithm in 2020, the previous one dating back to January. Google generally publishes little information about the changes made in these updates, but for the one we’re interested in here, one aspect is important to consider.

It’s the first major update since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The pandemic has affected the economy and the online consumer habits of virtually the entire planet. It has also had an impact on searches performed on Google, a large share of which are now related to the new coronavirus.

Google has also made smaller updates since the start of the pandemic, notably to help verified, quality content rank better in search results, particularly local news.

May Core Update: which industries are most affected?

It’s important to note that you generally have to wait several days to observe the changes that occur after a major update like the May Core Update.

In the weeks following the update, some industries saw the volatility of their rankings affected, meaning the largest variations in search results were observed for keywords related to those industries. In the case we’re interested in here, the streaming, travel, real estate, health and pet products industries seem to be the most affected…

What should I do if I notice a drop in traffic to my site?

Before you give in to panic, keep in mind that Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving to adapt to its users’ search habits, but also because of the thousands of new search results created every day (new websites, articles, videos, etc.).

SEO is a complex area of web marketing; dozens of variables must be taken into account to explain one business’s good rankings and another’s poorer ones… That’s why we recommend entrusting your website to our experts. They can accurately assess all the variables and metrics related to your website’s SEO to better explain your rankings for important keywords and your site’s web traffic.

As for the May Core Update, our team did extensive research and closely monitored the rankings and traffic of all our clients. No significant drop was recorded for them, as was the case with the August 2018 update. Our SEO experts continue to monitor developments very closely.

If you’ve lost a few spots in Google’s search results because of the latest update, your website traffic may be directly affected. For any questions or concerns about your Google rankings or web traffic, our team is here to shed some light.

With the government set to present its reopening plan soon, it’s time to start preparing for a return to a more “normal” situation. We thought we’d share some tips with our healthcare clients to help them prepare to relaunch their social media strategy after the COVID-19 crisis.

A word about social media

While your other marketing tools aim directly to promote your products or services and convert your audience into clients, it’s important to be aware of the distinction between these tools and social media.

Facebook, Instagram and other popular social networks are instead channels for building awareness of your brand and developing clients’ sense of belonging to it. They let you build a community around your business and your brand. As a result, it can be hard for a small business to see the point of investing in developing a social media strategy and managing it day to day, since this doesn’t necessarily translate into a tangible, direct return on investment. However, it’s important to understand that social media lets you communicate effectively with audiences you can easily target and define, at a cost that remains relatively low.

Still, you need to know how to set the right tone, and find the right message, to address your audience and understand its needs in a given situation. This brings us to our first tip…

Adapt your social media communications

During the crisis, we advised our clients not to stop posting on social media. Instead, the previously planned publishing strategy had to be revised to fit businesses’ new reality: more limited services, reduced opening hours, public health measures… More importantly, we had to adapt to the reality of followers, which had also been turned upside down by the crisis, notably by helping clients feel supported and cared for despite postponed appointments.

With social media, you must always make sure you understand your target audience’s needs in real time and show how your business’s mission or services meet those needs.

Concrete actions for our clients during the crisis

• Adapted social media content that reflected their situation.
• Pausing AdWords campaigns to avoid wasting budgets.

Inform and reassure

The post-COVID-19 return to “normal” raises a host of questions. So put the first tip into practice and adapt your communications to answer them. First, make sure you answer questions about the issues specific to your business. Announce the resumption of your activities, and their scope, well in advance; talk about the measures you’ll take to comply with the authorities’ guidelines. At the same time, you’ll be able to reassure your clientele and followers. Social media is there to help you build trust with your audience!

Concrete actions for our clients during the crisis

• Real-time website updates to relay professional orders’ guidelines on the COVID-19 crisis and the closure of certain clinics.
• Email information campaign to keep current clients informed as the situation evolved.

Engage your community

With social media, it’s easy to share many types of quality content: photos, videos, articles… and the list goes on! Use them to share your expertise in your specific field with your followers. Give them tips that will have a positive impact on their daily lives and, at the same time, inform them about your services and promote them.

Some social networks, such as Instagram, also let you show the human side of your business by sharing everyday life, introducing your team and so on. Take advantage of this to build a real connection with your followers and prospects. After all, when potential clients already feel they know you a little, it will be much easier for them to trust you and use your services.

Concrete actions for our clients during the crisis

Producing Facebook Live videos with some dentists to maintain a connection with their patients and reduce the distance between them. These videos aimed to answer patients’ questions in real time about the crisis, but also about dental health.

If you need help getting your business’s recovery under way, our healthcare marketing experts are here for you! Our team will help you face your industry’s new reality and choose the right marketing tools to get there.

A few weeks ago, Google announced that it had rolled out an update, and a massive one at that, called BERT.

Of course, every algorithm update will shift the rankings of many sites. Some will see their traffic drop, while others will gain audience.

1 in 10 searches will be affected by this latest update

BERT, which stands for “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers,” is billed as one of the major updates that will allow Google to break down the importance of each word in a query in order to infer the user’s intent and then offer the best possible result.

In a dedicated article on the BERT update, Google gave several examples of queries and BERT’s impact on the results.

For example, for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa,” the word “to” and its relationship to the other words in the query are particularly important for understanding the meaning. It’s about a Brazilian travelling to the United States, not the other way around. Previously, the algorithm didn’t understand the importance of this connection and returned results about U.S. citizens travelling to Brazil. With BERT, the algorithm can grasp this nuance and know that the word “to” matters a lot here, so that Google can provide a much more relevant result for this query.

Thanks to BERT, Google infers that the user intends to travel to the United States soon, and instead suggests the official website of the U.S. Embassy, which answers the user’s question while also letting them go further and apply for a visa.

Conclusion

Google says that, fundamentally, there’s nothing website publishers need to do to better meet BERT’s requirements. But as experts in healthcare marketing and organic search, we believe this change will favour sites with quality content that gives users the highest-quality answers possible.

If you think your site has been affected by the latest Google update, our experts in organic search can tell you more. Contact us!

Our clients in the dental field often ask us whether it makes sense to add Instagram to their social media presence and, more broadly, to their marketing communications strategy. So in what follows, we take a closer look at the question!

Instagram: facts and figures

Launched on mobile platforms in 2010, Instagram was originally a photo-sharing app. Over time, several features were added to the app, which Facebook bought in 2012: messaging, sharing Stories, the launch of Shopping on Instagram… Instagram has thus evolved into a platform used not only by individuals, but also by celebrities, brands, businesses and more.

In June 2018, Instagram passed the milestone of one billion monthly users. More than 95 million photos and videos are posted on Instagram every day, while its users hand out 4.2 billion likes on posts, day after day! The app has now become a very powerful marketing tool, whether for sharing branded content, running targeted ads or communicating directly with potential customers. That’s probably why about 60% of brands are now present on the network.

In Quebec, Instagram’s usage rate rose from 15% in 2016 to 24% in 2018, and it keeps climbing. Users are concentrated in the youngest age groups: 62% of 18- to 24-year-olds and 33% of 25- to 34-year-olds. Nevertheless, 30% of 35- to 44-year-olds use it daily, and that proportion is 18% among 45- to 54-year-olds. In short, being on Instagram means reaching a significant share of Quebec’s population with original, interactive content.

Instagram in the dental field

As a dentist-owner or dental clinic manager, are you wondering whether Instagram should be part of your web presence? As you’ve seen, being active on this social platform will let you reach a significant number of people who may be part of your target audience. What kind of content should you share there, as a player in the dental field, to have a relevant presence?

First of all, you should know that because Instagram focuses on sharing photos and videos, it’s a network full of attractive, eye-catching content. In a dentistry context, it’s therefore the perfect platform for promoting cosmetic dentistry services: Invisalign, teeth whitening, dental veneers, etc. Appearance is a key aspect of Instagram, and a beautiful smile is a major asset for looking good!

You should also know that Instagram allows a business to represent itself, showcase its brand image and share personalized content with added social value. For example, as a dental clinic, you can show life at the clinic, your staff, photos and testimonials from satisfied patients, etc. In a field as competitive as dentistry, an attractive Instagram presence can make all the difference for a patient looking for a new dentist. If you’re active on Instagram and communicate the essence of your business well, a potential patient will feel as if they already know you and will be more inclined to visit you rather than a competitor’s clinic!

The importance of managing Instagram comprehensively

On Instagram, it’s not enough to be present: you also have to be active! That involves planning and creating content, preparing posts, managing followers and the community, advertising and many other aspects. As a dental professional, it therefore makes more than good sense to call on dental marketing experts: the Virus Santé Communication team. Our community managers work closely with your team to plan and manage your Instagram page!

Sources:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/20/17484420/instagram-users-one-billion-count; https://isarta.com/infos/500-millions-dutilisateurs-actifs-pour-instagram/; https://cefrio.qc.ca/media/2023/netendances-2018_medias-sociaux.pdf

What we know about the Google update

Google keeps refining its algorithms to make its search results better for its users.
On August 8, 2018, Google confirmed on Twitter that its August 1 update had been fully rolled out.

Google advises webmasters not to make fixes to their pages if their website was affected by this latest update. Instead, they should keep improving their website, and Google may recognize these changes over time and improve their ranking.

What interests us most, as an agency specializing in healthcare marketing, is that we noticed some significant fluctuations for Nutrition-themed sites and Health sites in general. Fortunately, the impact was sometimes positive and sometimes negative.

We could also see that the update affected organic results rather than local results (on the Google map).

Conclusion

This update is still in its early days, and there’s no doubt that more data will be published over time.

If you think your site has been affected by the latest Google update, our SEO experts can shed more light on it. Contact us!

One element of a brand is its targeting. Targeting is the act of determining which audiences you want to address when communicating messages about your brand. This applies to all web marketing activities, including social media management, a service we offer in our toolkit to increase your visibility!

The challenges of social media

We can point to several cases of targeting that didn’t work optimally. For example, some Facebook pages may show that the page has many followers, but those followers aren’t necessarily people likely to use the business’s services. Many Facebook pages are visible to all internet users around the world, yet the services they offer are local in nature, like a dentist’s services. Although this phenomenon doesn’t have negative consequences as such, it produces false results when assessing media monitoring, since they don’t reflect the brand’s true local situation.

Why is it important to get your targeting right?

To do this, you need to take steps that let all internet users see the brand while allowing only those in the target audience to like the page. This way, the brand is still visible, but its results aren’t skewed by the global openness of social media.

With well-executed targeting, you can better understand your brand’s positioning within its market and see more concretely what works and what doesn’t with your target audience. This way, you can make sure you’re well positioned and stay true to the essence of the brand.

How do you apply these rules in healthcare?

This knowledge of targeting techniques is particularly important in healthcare. Since people rarely travel from elsewhere in the world to see a dentist or a chiropractor, it’s important to make sure the clientele targeted in your communications is the one most likely to use your services, meaning the one closest to your business. This way, you make sure your time and financial resources are properly allocated and managed.

It’s important to execute your brand’s communications well on social media, since users tend to be very responsive to posts. That’s why we recommend entrusting us with this responsibility: we’ll ensure you get quality strategies, specialized service and results that reflect your investment!

In 2014, CEFRIO (Centre facilitant la recherche et l’innovation dans les organisations) conducted the NETendances study, which led to various conclusions highlighting the prominent place social media holds in the habits of Quebec’s population.

Here’s a quick overview to help you understand the current situation. Let’s see whether, after reading it, you still doubt the need for your healthcare business to include social media in its marketing strategy!

Who is interested in social media?

According to the study’s results, 85% of Quebecers who go online use social networks. This percentage highlights how widely these platforms have penetrated Quebec. Logging on to them is part of the daily routine of most of the population, especially younger people. While 60% of the Quebec adults surveyed by CEFRIO are registered on the various platforms and log on daily, this proportion climbs as high as 100% among 18- to 24-year-olds and 97.5% among 25- to 34-year-olds.

More generally, social media remains more popular among people under 45, but regardless of education or income, four out of five Quebecers use it daily.

Quebecers prefer sharing content to creating it

The main activities of Quebec internet users on social media are logging on to an account and viewing content. More than three-quarters of internet users do these social media activities every day. According to the same data, 51% of internet users share content, while only 31% create it.

It’s important to put these statistics in perspective, since they date from 2014. Social media use increases from year to year, but users’ behaviour on these platforms changes little. You might think that the proportion of users who create content would rise in step with the proportion who log on and share content, but from 2014 to 2015, it actually fell slightly.

This shows how important it is for a business on social media to share content that will spark users’ interest and that they will then pass on. Quebec internet users’ behaviour must be taken into account when creating a social media strategy.

Social media and buying behaviour

Social networks now play a leading role in many internet users’ buying process. Again according to the NETendances study, more than 25% of internet users aged 18 to 44 check social networks when they shop. Among internet users aged 18 to 35, more than 60% check other users’ reviews on these platforms before buying a product or service.

Every business should include social media in its web strategy, because it’s a real way to give potential customers crucial information about the products and services it offers. Social media also lets businesses inform them about topics related to their field by sharing original content, while providing a genuine space for dialogue between brands and their users.

As you’ve probably guessed, your healthcare business is no exception to this trend, which affects virtually all Quebecers. To find out how to harness the full potential of social networks to promote your products and services, talk to the healthcare marketing professionals at Virus Santé Communication!

Marketing automation works through a specific platform and by means of pre-established, predesigned scenarios. These encourage your prospects and customers to begin either a purchasing or loyalty process, or an education or engagement process.

Marketing automation: toward a winning strategy

Marketing automation is changing all the old methods of advertising and contacting prospects by relying on smart, reliable and efficient systems. Connected to a trusted CRM, marketing automation lets you track the behaviour of each visitor to your website and of each customer individually. This paves the way for classifying your clientele according to different criteria, always with the goal of building campaigns specially tailored to each group’s characteristics.

So-called “mass” marketing actions, such as radio, TV or newspaper ads, are aimed at all consumers without any specific distinction. Marketing automation, on the other hand, falls within relationship marketing, since it lets you target your audience according to specific characteristics. The campaigns it enables therefore vary and are specially tailored to each person’s behaviour and profile.

Combine a marketing automation system with your CRM and you’ll get crucial information to help you understand who you’re dealing with behind each click by a visitor or customer. You’ll then be able to identify their expectations and send them personalized content.

Marketing automation: using it effectively

Through marketing automation, you’ll develop better-targeted campaigns that will help you get a better return on investment. To get there, here are the steps to follow:

• Using the information collected through your CRM, you should segment your audience in order to create offers and promotions that target each category separately. To do this, segment your audience by region, preferences, level of engagement with your services, etc.;
• Converting your website visitors into leads is essential to the success of your marketing operations. Anonymous visitors are hard to target, but if you manage to get a visitor to leave their contact information, you can more easily convert them into a prospect by sending them personalized information;
• Once a visitor has been converted into a lead, you then need to do what’s called lead nurturing. This involves nurturing your new relationship by presenting the information about your business, products and services that you consider relevant to their profile. The goal is to stay in touch with this potential customer;
• Using lead scoring, you can sort leads according to their interest in your business and your offers. This should allow you to focus your efforts on the most interested ones and mobilize your sales team to get them to take action;
• Marketing automation lets you create sales pipelines in which to sort your prospects in real time. This will help you set sales stages, follow up, re-engage prospects and prepare your business’s financial forecasts;

In short, marketing automation lets you determine the right processes for converting your site’s visitors into actual customers and keeping them loyal. It lets you determine the best conversion channel to use based on the different profiles represented in the lead data you’ve collected.

Count on marketing automation to make your business’s online marketing pay off!

To achieve this goal, one marketing concept has been widely used for many years: the persona. This technique helps the marketing efforts of the businesses that use it bear more fruit by adopting an effective approach to understanding and anticipating their target audience’s behaviour.

The “persona”: definition and characteristics

In a marketing context, a persona is an imaginary profile representing a segment of the population. This technique is widely used in projects involving the development of a new product or a new service.

In other words, a persona is a model with fictional characteristics that are themselves based on concrete data. This data is collected beforehand during marketing research and is then used to create a profile whose assigned characteristics are representative of the individuals who make up the segment targeted by the business.

The persona is therefore a tool of choice for all marketing managers who, when launching a product or service, want to reach their target segment appropriately and effectively. Combined with the business’s commercial objectives, the data used to create the persona helps guide not only the choice of communication channels to prioritize and the content to be presented on them, but also the development of a product or service whose features match the target segment’s needs.

The importance of the persona in healthcare marketing

The field of healthcare marketing is no exception. Creating personas gives any business working in the healthcare sector an accurate understanding of the consumers who make up its target. Creating such a typical profile provides an overall view of the preferences, lifestyle habits and purchasing behaviour of clients and prospects. The business is then able to adapt its products and services, as well as its messages, by aligning them with its target’s preferences and expectations.

Personas therefore allow a business to launch targeted offers and personalized services for each category of individuals it targets in its marketing efforts.

To give a concrete example, you clearly wouldn’t communicate the same way if you wanted to sell dietary supplements for people who work out as you would if you were a dental clinic wanting to promote its cosmetic dentistry services. These services are usually popular with an older, more affluent clientele, while fitness is popular mainly with young people. Not only will the nature of the message and the tone differ, but the communication tools used will probably not be the same either.

Some companies offer training in creating communication and digital marketing plans, in which creating personas is one of the main steps.

In this context, creating “personas” helps you build usage scenarios for a product or service, with the goal of putting in place an effective strategy for promoting and distributing it to consumers. Thanks to personas, healthcare marketing specialists are able to better identify consumers’ needs in order to satisfy them by adapting both the offer and the way it is communicated.

Personas are fictional users, but oh so important for the design and success of a marketing strategy! To that end, the Virus Santé Communication team can help you define your personas and categorize them according to your business projects. Whether you’re a start-up or a business looking to promote a new offer, calling on the support of marketing professionals will guarantee that you better achieve your goals!

So that you can understand the wide range of benefits this feature offers your business, this article explains how it can improve your visibility on the web.

Google My Business: how to use it

These days, every business must have an online presence to showcase its products and services, stay in touch with its customers, attract new prospects and communicate its offers, promotions and news. With this in mind, Google offers the “My business” feature, which allows any business that signs up to:

• Have a business listing that appears in Google search results. It includes useful information for future customers, such as contact details, opening hours, photos of the business’s premises, a link to the website and customer reviews;
• Get better organic search rankings on Google. The search engine does indeed favour businesses that use “Google My Business” when ranking the results of searches carried out on it;
• Be located directly on Google Maps.

Here is Virus Santé Communication’s Google My Business listing. It shows the important information about the business’s contact details, as well as its location on Google Maps. You can also easily access customer reviews left on various sites and social networks.

Google My Business: many benefits

The Google My Business interface, which replaces the former “Google Places” and “Google+ Local” features, is a very easy-to-use tool that guarantees you a better web presence, management of your business’s visibility and effective communication with your customers and with all the users who are prospects for your business.

Besides improving your business’s visibility, using Google My Business also benefits users who want to find out about you. When they search for your business on Google, users will have direct access to your company’s customized listing, allowing them to get practical information in just a few clicks. Using this Google feature will also benefit your SEO.

What’s more, since Google My Business lets you edit all the information on your listing as you see fit, it will be easy for you to let users know about certain changes, such as a change in your opening hours.

Also, when you create a Google My Business page, a Google+ profile linked to your business listing is automatically created. On this profile, you can promote the products or services you offer or let users know what’s new. This platform is also a place to interact with your clientele, where you can collect reviews and exchange through comments. It’s also a great platform for sharing visual and interactive content, such as photos and videos, to highlight events or news about your company.

Finally, with access to an “Insights” section, you’ll be able to get useful data about your business’s visibility on the web. With the data collected, you can adjust your strategies to improve your performance.

A feature not to be overlooked

Google My Business is a feature that can be accessed from traditional computers as well as mobile devices. So it will be easy for all users searching for you on Google to find the information they need.

Google My Business thus proves to be an essential tool for any business that wants a strong web presence, for all the reasons mentioned in this article. Don’t miss out on all the opportunities offered by this feature, which is a true virtual showcase for your business. It’s a powerful tool for getting known on the web.

To make the most of Google My Business’s many advantages, call on web marketing professionals!

A survey conducted by CEFRIO to gauge web trends looked at the relationship between Quebec internet users and social networks, and found that these networks have a remarkable influence on their purchasing decisions. So what defines the relationship between Quebecers and social media? What impact does social media have on the buying process?

Quebecers are increasingly interested in social media

Social media has taken the world by storm over the past several years. It is credited with ever-greater influence in many areas, including e-commerce, advertising, the flow of information and even economic and political projects.

Quebecers have made social media part of their daily lives, with these platforms working their way into every sphere of our everyday routine. The results of surveys conducted by CEFRIO show that 72.8% of Quebecers use social media, and do so on a daily basis. The two most frequent activities are logging into an account and viewing various types of content.

Facebook holds first place, used by 62.4% of Quebecers, and YouTube comes in 2^nd place with 57.4%. 27.3% of Quebecers are active on Google+ and 16.5% on LinkedIn, followed by Twitter and Pinterest, respectively. These percentages show how well social media has become part of Quebecers’ daily lives.

Social media at the heart of purchasing decisions in Quebec

40.4% of Quebec internet users ask their friends, acquaintances or contacts on social networks for their opinion while they’re shopping. 29.7% of internet users, for their part, check with their network before buying a product.

This highlights the crucial, fundamental role social media now plays in commerce. As spaces for exchange and discussion, social networks are now seen by marketers as an essential asset. Businesses’ investments in the various social networks to promote their products and services keep growing. According to a 2015 eMarketer study, North American businesses were expected to spend US$15.15 billion on social media advertising in 2017. In 2015, the figure was just over US$10 billion. This shows the ever-growing place these platforms occupy in businesses’ advertising budgets, gradually eating into the share of those budgets previously allocated to traditional forms of advertising.

One may therefore wonder whether Quebecers consider social media a reliable source of information. According to the NETendances survey by CEFRIO, many people buy a product after seeing people in their network use it. Moreover, according to the same survey, positive reviews shared on pages or in discussion groups have a significant influence on the purchasing decisions of many Quebec internet users. In many cases, people buy a new product only after checking the favourable reviews and recommendations posted on Facebook or another popular social network.

There’s no longer any denying that social networks now play an important role in Quebec internet users’ buying process. Your healthcare business must seize the business opportunities these new media offer. You need to build an online community around your brand by encouraging satisfied clients to share their opinions with their network. The influence of these reviews should not be underestimated, as more and more internet users rely on them.

If you’d like advice on seizing these opportunities, ask the healthcare marketing experts at Virus Santé Communication. They’ll give you sound advice to help you develop your social media presence so that it becomes a real asset for your business.

Well-integrated advertising

As we browse the internet, whether searching on Google or YouTube or scrolling through social media, we see ads embedded within the pages we visit. These ads blend in with the content on those pages, fitting in seamlessly with it.

This type of ad, which has been very popular for a few years now, is called native advertising. As we mentioned, these ads fit harmoniously and naturally into different types of content, such as a search result, a video or simply a web page. They are discreet so as not to seem intrusive or be perceived as spam by users. Native advertising thus relies on quality content such as an image, a link, a video or a text to blend into a flow of reading or information without disrupting the user’s experience. Unlike traditional display, pop-up or YouTube video ads, native advertising fits seamlessly into the setting the user is browsing. This integration allows it to achieve better results than conventional ads that invade web pages and disrupt users.

These ads have the advantage of being integrated with the editorial content of the host site on which they appear, closely resembling it. Native advertising is therefore an effective and engaging format that any advertiser would benefit from using.

So what are the characteristics of a successful native ad?

Recent studies prove the effectiveness of native ads. The results show that they have a strong impact on users, particularly by steering their purchasing decisions, what they read and even the sites they’ll visit.

To achieve these results, a native ad must meet a few criteria:

• Match users’ interests by capturing their attention;
• Present interesting, brief and effective content;
• Be integrated as naturally as possible into the host platform so as not to bother the user;
• Carry a “sponsored” or “ad” label.

Native advertising offers a range of advantages, making it an attractive and effective tool for businesses that want to promote their products and services on the web. The Virus Santé Communication team can advise you on the form of native advertising best suited to the needs and objectives of your business in the healthcare field. To take advantage of the many benefits of this form of online advertising, contact us today!

SEO is based on several techniques that, when followed and properly applied, will give you an optimized website. That way, it will meet the criteria for indexing (the website becomes known to all search tools) and ranking (the site holds a good position in keyword search results).

However, some SEO practices that many people adopt to optimize their website aren’t as effective as you might think. What are these bad practices in SEO? What impact do they have on a website’s reputation and success? In this article, we’ll detail the practices to avoid to help you be effective and reach your goals.

Bad SEO practices, also known as Black SEO or Black Hat, are techniques that are not recommended, as opposed to certified organic search tools.

Here are some bad SEO practices that don’t comply with Google Search Console requirements, summarized in 10 key points:

1. Using a bad CMS that doesn’t meet basic SEO requirements is a major constraint for your website. You need to choose your CMS carefully from among those considered Google-friendly, since it forms the underlying structure of your website. It obviously has to be optimized to meet search engine requirements.
2. Bad SEO practices include the excessive use of images and Flash on your website, which holds back its ranking because search engines can’t read this kind of content. It is therefore worthless for a site’s SEO.
3. A lack of internal links on your website hinders navigation for both visitors and search engines.
4. Overusing keywords is a very bad SEO practice that Google penalizes. It’s likely to drive visitors away from your site, as they won’t appreciate repetitive content. Search engines will also see it as a sign that you’re trying to manipulate their algorithms (Keyword Stuffing).
5. Multiplying links to your website isn’t necessarily effective. You need to make sure that links from other sites pointing to yours come from sites with a good reputation in Google’s eyes. Used wrongly, this practice will hurt the site’s SEO. (Backlinks)
6. Comments on websites and blogs that contain links to your website are also a bad practice that undermines your professionalism in Google’s eyes. (Comment spam)
7. Reusing the same content to optimize your website, meaning presenting identical content on two different pages, is the most common SEO mistake. Google accepts some duplicated content, but other cases are heavily penalized, ranging from a loss of ranking to a ban from Google’s index (duplicate content).
8. Hiding content, which means serving Google’s robots content that is invisible to users, is a dangerous practice (Cloaking).
9. Rewriting content from other sites by paraphrasing, using synonyms and changing the order of information is a dangerous approach. Google’s robots are likely to detect it, which will result in a penalty. (Scraping)

Now that we’ve outlined these bad SEO practices, we advise you to steer clear of them and apply the organic search rules designed and certified by Google. By following this advice, you’ll get concrete results in optimizing your website.

SEO is a real key to success on the web, so use it properly!

In this article, we’ll show you that many other factors come into play when it comes to making your website engaging and turning it into a real asset for your business.

A communication tool, first and foremost

When you create your website, you aim to attract visitors and invite them to read the content on it, as well as encourage them to buy your products or check your offers and news every day. In that sense, you’ll need to convert potential visitors to your web page into prospects or loyal subscribers, who will no longer have any reason to look elsewhere for the information or offer they’re seeking.

You therefore need to think of an effective way to keep visitors on your site once they’re there, in order to increase the length of their visits. This factor is decisive for your business objectives. With this in mind, design becomes a real asset for your site!

Your business’s website is your point of contact and your hub for online communication, since it serves as a virtual showcase for your image and your offering. That’s why the site’s design is as important as the product or service offered. It plays a role as important as the quality of your offering, since it’s at the heart of the customer’s experience with your business.

An element not to be overlooked

It goes without saying, then, that design is a key value of your web presence, allowing you to stand out, hold users’ attention and, of course, reach your business objectives. Here are some sound tips that every business with an online presence should put into practice.

• Define your colours: the colours used in your website’s design must match your business’s overall brand image. Remember to use colour sparingly, since neutral colours often give a more professional and modern look. Brighter colours should be used to draw users’ attention to predefined elements that will help you reach your objectives;
• Versatile typefaces: the fonts used for your website’s text must be easy for users to read, on every device on which your site can be viewed. In other words, these fonts must be just as legible on the desktop version of your site as on its mobile version.
• Put yourself in the user’s shoes: these days, users are used to finding the information they’re looking for online quickly and easily. It’s therefore very important to prioritize the user experience by letting them find the information they want in just a few clicks. Navigating your site should feel smooth, so avoid complex drop-down menus that could put users off and make them want to look elsewhere.
• Don’t neglect the responsive version: more and more users are abandoning their traditional computer in favour of mobile devices. For this reason, if your business’s site isn’t adapted to these device formats, you’re probably missing out on a significant number of business opportunities!
• Prioritize quality content: all the content on your website must reflect your business’s professionalism, whether it’s text, video, photos, etc. Always favour original content, especially when it comes to images. This will add to your site’s authenticity and fit even better with its unique design.
• Avoid overloading your site: always favour a clean design that lets users easily find what they’re looking for without having to go through content that isn’t relevant to them. Leaving empty or neutral space is an excellent strategy for drawing attention to the most important elements.
• Pay special attention to every page: in the past, most users arrived on a site through the main entrance, that is, the home page. However, with the proliferation of search tools, pages that were once considered secondary are becoming increasingly important. You should therefore think of every page as a first point of contact between users and your business. So all the rules presented here apply to every page of your site.

Creating a design that follows the rules of the web is a matter of appeal and professionalism. The quality of the design is directly linked to converting users into customers. The more closely you follow the rules of web design, the easier it will be for your business to reach its objectives.

Working with professionals

At Virus Santé Communication, we’ve developed extensive expertise in website design. Our strategists will work with you to determine the right techniques for your website’s content, and our designers will bring to life a website that respects your identity, your strategy and the many criteria mentioned above.

Today, a professional, attractive and user-friendly design is no longer optional on the web: it’s a necessity!

So, what is it?

It’s indeed no coincidence that you see these ads! They’re the result of a very interesting technique called remarketing, which involves compiling data on users who have already visited your site in order to create ads for your offers that target those visitors specifically and personally. That’s why this method is also called retargeting. Unlike conventional ads, ads created with this technique are worthwhile in more ways than one:

First, they let you stay in touch with a user who didn’t complete a purchase on your website, didn’t subscribe to your articles or didn’t fill out a form that would let you contact them again. Second, they help you win back a visitor who left your website without your offers meeting their expectations and, third, they guarantee that you promote your site and its content strategically by being everywhere on the websites and mobile apps your users visit and use.

How do you use remarketing?

Remarketing is an effective, high-performing tool, offered by Google AdWords and Facebook, that lets you create a list of your site’s visitors to use later when creating your ad campaigns. To do this, you’ll need to follow a simple, reliable method to install the necessary tools.

First, to activate the user retargeting tool, you need to set up your website by installing the remarketing tag on all of the site’s sections and pages. The tag works with a code provided by Google AdWords.

Next, once this step is done, the cookies of users who have visited your site will start being collected. This will be followed by the creation of the remarketing list(s), previously set up in AdWords, containing the visitors’ data.

Finally, your ads will come to life through retargeting, by creating ad campaigns that showcase either your site in general or each product individually, in order to reach as many of your page’s visitors as possible.

Ads created with the strategic remarketing tool can be served across the entire Google Display Network, which includes thousands of sites, as well as on Facebook and Instagram, on YouTube, or simply in the search engine itself. You’ll be spoiled for choice among these many placement options.

If you want to showcase your website with a technique that delivers concrete results, helps you attract users who have already shown interest in your business and acts on them according to their needs, don’t hesitate to choose remarketing! This tool is high-performing, promising and effective, while also being inexpensive.

Consult Virus Santé Communication’s web marketing professionals to find out how remarketing can help your healthcare business gain new business opportunities!

Influencers or ambassadors?

Consumers who use social media to promote a brand fall into two main categories: influencers and ambassadors. Although both types of consumers use word of mouth on social networks to promote a brand, they differ in many respects. So it’s worth distinguishing between them.

Influencers are individuals with a certain credibility in a particular field. They can be bloggers, journalists or ordinary people who have built a large network of followers through their social media presence. Their strength lies in the size of their audience. Businesses have long used them in their communication strategies to reach their audience, and the makeup of that audience is a key factor in choosing an influencer. In most cases, the business offers a product or financial compensation in exchange for posts published on the chosen person’s social network(s).

Ambassadors, on the other hand, are individuals who are highly engaged with a brand. They are generally customers who are extremely satisfied with the business’s offering and who use social networks to express their opinion and share it with the people around them. When they have a favourable opinion of a brand, they communicate it on social networks and become carriers of the brand’s message. Their strength lies in the authenticity of their opinion and of the message they share, which stems from a genuine commitment to the brand.

In the era of relationship marketing

Since mass marketing has been making way for a more personalized relationship with consumers, the effectiveness of traditional forms of advertising has been waning. In its annual report entitled “Global Trust in Advertising,” the American research firm Nielsen shows that, on every continent, the most valuable and credible source of information in consumers’ eyes is the opinions and recommendations of the people around them.

That’s why, in many people’s eyes, ambassadors are becoming the new way to reach people on social networks. Their profile as satisfied consumers, ready to recommend the brand and equipped with the communication channels needed to do so, makes them immensely valuable to businesses. Their commitment comes from genuine satisfaction with the business’s service offering, not from a financial incentive that will soon be forgotten.

Attention or Action

The main criterion that will determine the effectiveness of an influencer versus an ambassador for your strategy obviously depends on your objectives. Thanks to their large audience, influencers can be very useful to new businesses looking to get known or to businesses that want to promote a new product line. However, the strength of their influence is often limited to the size of their audience.

Ambassadors, for their part, are more likely to have a real influence on the people around them and to spur them to action, because of the ever-growing importance consumers place on word of mouth. What’s more, their enthusiasm for your brand gives the relationship you maintain with them a much better chance of lasting over a long period.

Social networks represent an opportunity to connect with consumers that every business should seize. By putting a solid social media strategy in place, you can turn influencers and ambassadors into strong allies who carry your message and influence the opinions of potential customers.

The proliferation of mobile apps has allowed these small devices to creep in everywhere. We use them to stay in touch with our friends, take all kinds of photos, access our banking services and find the nearest gas station. In short, we use them often, everywhere and for many reasons.

Here are some interesting statistics that show the supremacy of this new way of consuming.

Mobile here and elsewhere

In 2015, nearly 4.5 billion people worldwide owned a mobile phone, and that figure is expected to exceed 5 billion by 2019. That means nearly 60% of the world’s population owns a mobile phone, a proportion that keeps growing over time. By 2019, more than 50% of mobile phone users are expected to own a smartphone.

In Canada, smartphone penetration of the national market rose from 54% in 2014 to 68% in 2015, a considerable increase of 14% in twelve months! (https://catalyst.ca/2015-canadian-smartphone-market/)

Mobile and consumer habits

This near-universal adoption of mobile devices brings with it a change in the way we consume and in what consumers expect from businesses. Worldwide, 60% of mobile device users have adopted them as their only way to access the internet.

The importance of optimizing your website for mobile devices therefore no longer needs to be proven. According to a Google study of more than 1,000 smartphone users in the United States, 67% of consumers said they were more likely to buy a product or use a service if the website they visit is optimized for their device. Meanwhile, 61% of consumers would quickly leave a website if they can’t easily find what they’re looking for. Mobile traffic now accounts for more than half of the traffic to e-commerce sites, hence the importance of not neglecting mobile users in a web strategy.

But what makes a “mobile-friendly” site user-friendly in the eyes of those who browse it? Again according to Google, consumers expect a site that loads quickly, even on their cellphone, buttons suited to the screen size and big enough to be easy to use, and quick access to the business’s contact information.

Are we addicted?

Some would say that consumers, especially younger ones, have become truly hooked on their smartphones, but what’s the reality?

66% of consumers say they sleep with their phone, which probably means it’s the last thing they check before falling asleep and the first thing they do when they wake up. This is an incredible opportunity for businesses that want to connect with consumers, who are giving them the chance to reach right into their bedrooms.

In a nationwide U.S. survey of adults with mobile devices, respondents were asked what they would give up for a week rather than their cellphone. The results are surprising! In fact, 55% of respondents would rather go without coffee for seven days than not use their phone, while 70% said they would rather give up alcohol for a week. Worse still, 22% of respondents would rather go without their toothbrush for seven days, and 21% would give up their shoes in favour of their mobile phone! These statistics show how much the use of these devices is now part of our habits and how firmly rooted they are in our daily lives.

In light of this information, it’s hard to argue with those who say we’ve become addicted to our cellphones. Although many people criticize this phenomenon, it presents an invaluable opportunity for businesses, which can now connect with their audience wherever it may be.

The desktop is dead, long live mobile?

People are spending more and more time on their mobile devices. In fact, 2015 was the first year in which the share of total time spent online on a mobile device exceeded the time spent on a computer or other type of device. Does that mean we should abandon “regular” computers and focus web strategies solely on mobile devices? Of course not!

Although consumers increasingly browse the web on their smartphones and prefer to use them to get directions and business hours, contact businesses, look up information or shop online, regular computers are still preferred in certain situations. Consumers are reportedly more inclined to use a desktop computer for in-depth research, reading product reviews or making complex, high-involvement purchases.

Even though mobile device users make up an ever-growing share of internet users, you shouldn’t necessarily put all your eggs in one basket. Mobile strategies should complement your overall web strategy in order to reach as many potential customers as possible.

Do you have questions about how mobile marketing can bring you new customers? The professionals at Virus Santé Communication can offer sound advice on integrating mobile marketing into your web strategy!

What kind of rate?

Bounce rate relates to the browsing behaviour of Google users.

To calculate it, Google analyzes the number of sessions in which the user visited only one page without interacting further with the site, that is, without visiting any page other than the one their Google search led them to. Bounce rate is therefore the proportion of these users compared with users who kept browsing for a longer period by viewing other pages.

Its effects on your site’s performance

It’s easy to see why bounce rate is a good indicator of your website’s relevance. A user who leaves a site without viewing more than one page signals to Google’s robot that the site’s content isn’t relevant to the keywords the user typed. So if a website attracts thousands of users every day because it contains high-traffic keywords, its position in search results may drop if too large a share of users stop browsing after the first page they visit.

At a time when Google wants its results to show the sites with the most relevant content for each search, bounce rate is clearly a key indicator of a site’s relevance and of the quality of its content. A high bounce rate indicates that action is needed to make your site more relevant and appealing to visitors. Here are a few tips to help you lower your site’s bounce rate.

An eye-catching home page

A website is a communication tool in the truest sense, and neglecting its design can prove to be a serious mistake that will put off consumers searching the web. Your site must be attractive, both graphically and in terms of the readability of its content.

Using colour contrast on your site is also an important design element, since it will let you draw consumers’ attention to the important parts of your pages, such as the online appointment booking form.

A website optimized for mobile devices

With more than half of Google searches worldwide now done on mobile devices, optimizing your site for them is essential!

A user searching on their smartphone for a dental clinic in an emergency will be very likely to leave your website within seconds if they can’t navigate it easily.

A site as fast as the consumer

A website’s speed isn’t just a factor that influences how Google ranks your site; it’s also a real measure of user satisfaction with the experience on it. In fact, 47% of consumers reportedly expect a site’s pages to load in 2 seconds or less!

Several strategies can be implemented to improve your website’s page load speed, including optimizing the content displayed, whether images, videos, etc.

Taking the consumer further

A good way to encourage consumers to view other pages on your website is to include a search box. Most websites now have one, and that’s no accident. Including one on your site’s pages will let consumers quickly find the information they’re looking for. They’ll be less likely to leave your site, and using the search box will take them to a second page!

Other techniques can be used to encourage users to view more than one page. For example, including a “similar products” section or an “if you liked this article, you’ll also like…” section can be a good way to lead consumers deeper into your website!

In light of this information, you’ll probably find it easier to interpret your website’s bounce rate. If it’s too high, putting the few tips in this article into practice will be a good start toward fixing the situation. In addition, advice from web marketing professionals will be invaluable in helping you make your site appealing to those who visit it.

Google has therefore made a major change to its Google Ads platform, removing the ads shown in the right-hand column and increasing the number of ads shown at the top of the page from three to four. This change, which surprised many, was noticed in the results of some searches last December and is being applied to all searches on Google in every country where the search engine is used.

At first glance, Google’s motives may be hard to understand, but when you look into it, the choice becomes clearer. The main reason the web giant changed how paid ads are displayed is a strategy it has been pursuing for some time now: the shift to mobile, following the lead of all the big names in the digital world. Last year, the share of searches performed on mobile devices actually overtook searches on “regular” computers! Google must therefore adapt to the format of mobile screens, which differ from computer screens and on which right-hand ads lose their effectiveness.

What’s actually changing?

The disappearance of ads from the right-hand sidebar comes with the addition of an extra paid result above the organic results. The number of paid results in that spot thus increases from three to four. In addition, three ad results now appear below the organic results at the bottom of search pages. Since this change, the number of paid ads is capped at seven per page, whereas there could be up to eleven before.

Removing the ads from the right-hand column doesn’t mean Google has decided to forget about that space. Quite the opposite! The space will now be used for content that has more value in users’ eyes.

Product Listing Ads & Knowledge Graph

With the right-hand space freed from traditional Google Ads, it will now be occupied by modules that let Google present more relevant search results to consumers.

Product Listing Ads are the first module Google plans to use more. They are visual ads that appear when a search is directly related to buying a product. These ads, which are more interactive than Google Ads sponsored links, let consumers buy a product in a few clicks. Product Listing Ads are therefore a tool that simplifies the path between the moment a query is entered in the search engine and the moment of purchase.

The Knowledge Graph is another module that will replace sponsored links in the right-hand space. It refers to the information Google takes care to include in the results of certain searches, such as the synopsis, cast and reviews for a search about a movie. Google plans to use the Knowledge Graph to include ads in various forms. In this example, the information shown could include links where you can rent or buy the movie in question.

What impact for consumers and advertisers?

For consumers searching with the aim of buying a product, this major change will have rather positive effects! Google says the change will highlight results with high commercial value that contain better information for consumers and will deliver better performance for advertisers. Ads shown in Product Listing Ads or in the Knowledge Graph will thus target users who have already started their buying process.

For advertisers, the change will sometimes have more negative impacts. With regard to SEO strategies, a website that used to appear at the bottom of a page will be pushed even lower, or even to the second page, which will affect its effectiveness. Bids on certain keywords in Google AdWords are also likely to rise, since fewer ad spots will no doubt increase competition.

In short, this change in how Google displays paid results on results pages will mainly affect how relevant consumers find the ads. For health professionals who want to keep enjoying good visibility on the web, some changes may be in store, especially if your position in the organic results is affected. Fortunately, the web marketing professionals at Virus Santé Communication are here to make sure your visibility won’t be affected!

The battle to attract advertisers is raging between the two giants, and it can be hard for businesses to know which one is the better advertising investment. Is it possible to determine which platform, Facebook Ads or Google AdWords, delivers the best return? Let’s look at how they work to find an answer to this question!

Different targeting features

The Facebook social network lets you choose the audience for your ads, and several targeting options are available to you. Whether by geographic criteria such as the user’s city of residence, or by demographic criteria such as age, gender, education level or even occupation, the possibilities are vast! Targeting options can go even further, letting you base your targeting on users’ interests and behaviours, such as the pages they like, their hobbies or the browsing platforms they use.

This way, when you advertise on Facebook, you have a very good chance of reaching the right target, since your ads will be seen only by users whose profiles match the criteria you’ve chosen.

Google AdWords also lets you target the users you want to reach based on geographic and demographic criteria. However, AdWords doesn’t analyze what its users like, the pages they follow or the data in their profiles. The relevance of Google AdWords ads is therefore judged based on the keywords users include in their searches.

In other words, Facebook targets users based on their characteristics, while Google AdWords targets what users are searching for.

The importance of a strong brand

The Facebook Ads and Google AdWords advertising platforms give you the opportunity to build your brand, but in very different ways!
Clicking a link shown in AdWords results after a search takes the user to your business’s website. It’s therefore essential that the site’s design and content be original and relevant enough to encourage the user to keep browsing. A site with too high a bounce rate, meaning too large a share of users who leave as soon as they arrive, will be viewed less favourably by Google AdWords.

Facebook, for its part, uses peer influence, among other things, to increase the reach of its ads. If you see an ad from a business whose page is liked by someone you know, you’ll be more inclined to trust that business. Facebook Ads also uses repetition by showing the same ad to the same user several times. Facebook also gives you the chance to include original content in your ads, along with a photo, which will be visible directly in users’ news feeds.

Different costs

The cost of advertising on Google AdWords or Facebook Ads varies widely. On AdWords, the cost per click ranges from a few cents to several tens of dollars, depending on the size of the businesses bidding on those keywords and on their reach. The conversion rate varies from one industry to another, but in most cases hovers between 2% and 5%.

Facebook ads, on the other hand, have a cost per click that is almost always under $1; the retail industry average is $0.45. The average conversion rate for Facebook ads is lower, generally between 1% and 2%.

Different goals

In light of this information, we can conclude that the effectiveness of Google AdWords and Facebook Ads depends on the type of consumer you want to reach. Google lets you reach consumers who have already started their search process. If you want to reach consumers in a specific area who are looking for a dental clinic or a podiatrist, AdWords advertising is the right choice for you.

Facebook ads, meanwhile, have the advantage of increasing your business’s visibility by letting you connect with new consumers. Facebook won’t necessarily let you make more sales or instantly increase the number of appointments booked at your clinic. Its advertising platform will let you nurture a relationship with consumers you have targeted beforehand. If you want to increase your clinic’s visibility in your area, Facebook Ads advertising will be your ally!

Google AdWords and Facebook Ads advertising each have their advantages and reach different consumers. Both platforms should therefore be considered when it comes time to set up a web strategy, so you can improve your brand awareness while reaching consumers likely to become your clients quickly.

This loss of influence is forcing marketing professionals to find better ways to capture consumers’ attention and, above all, spark their interest. That’s how content marketing was born: an increasingly popular way to interact with consumers.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing (or brand marketing) aims to attract and hold consumers’ attention by creating and sharing original content that is relevant to its audience. It’s more about creating content that belongs to your brand than renting advertising space, as with traditional media.

The primary purpose of this original content is not to get consumers to buy a product or service. Rather than directly promoting your products or services, the idea is to give consumers information that will change or improve their behaviour. When properly integrated into your overall marketing strategy, this original content, delivered as relevant information, will positively influence how consumers perceive your business.

Major brands from many fields, such as Procter&Gamble, IBM and Dolce&Gabbana, use content marketing. A study by American media research firm PQ Media put global investment in content marketing at more than US$144 billion in 2014. That figure will jump to more than US$313 billion in 2019, an increase of more than 217%!

Marketing in many forms

The content created and shared takes different forms, so content marketing is as accessible to small and medium-sized businesses as it is to large companies.

Whether through a blog, apps, print or digital publications, or even a good social media management strategy, the possibilities are almost endless! Here are a few examples of major brands that have created playful content that is no less relevant to their target clientele.

Pineapple Magazine by Airbnb

Online rental giant Airbnb, present in 34,000 cities around the world, launched the print magazine Pineapple Magazine in 2014. It features customer stories alongside articles highlighting the company’s values, all accompanied by photos and infographics with an attractive look and a clear editorial line.

L.L.Bean on Pinterest

American outdoor brand L.L.Bean is the perfect example of smart use of Pinterest. With 5.1 million users following 33 boards featuring 1,800 pins, L.L.Bean’s marketers have made the most of this popular social network. The brand shares content on various themes, including camping, fishing and wildlife. This content isn’t necessarily centred on the products the company sells; instead, the emphasis is on the activities its customers do with its products.

A giant game of Jenga with Caterpillar

Industrial equipment and vehicle manufacturer Caterpillar uses videos to showcase its products’ features while highlighting its history and values. In the first video shared, various Caterpillar machines combine their specific capabilities to play a giant game of Jenga, in which each block weighs 600 pounds. Although it operates in a technical field that doesn’t seem very playful at first glance, Caterpillar has managed to create original content that delivers its message while motivating consumers to watch the video to the end.

As health professionals, you can easily get started with content marketing without spending a fortune. Rigorously managing your social media according to an editorial line and a detailed calendar, or publishing articles related to your field on a blog, are good ways to communicate with your current and potential clients. Remember: originality and relevance are the watchwords!

Buying photos

Photos can easily be bought on websites such as Stockphoto, Shutterstock, Getty Images and many other similar sites. These photos are often inexpensive, and many businesses with a smaller marketing communications budget will opt for this solution. Buying photos online is also the best choice if you have to deliver a website on a fairly tight deadline, since buying photos takes very little time. Photos found on the web will allow you to demonstrate what you want most for your healthcare business: professionalism.

The key, then, is to choose the right photos, ones that reflect your business, so you avoid having rather common and/or bland photos on your web pages. Try to steer clear of certain traps, for example images of people who look “perfectly happy.” Of course, rest assured, buying photos online isn’t bad in itself. However, it can be difficult to stand out from your many online competitors in the same healthcare field. That’s the biggest trap to avoid!

Original photography

Hiring a professional photographer to photograph your healthcare business is probably the best way to get original photos on your website’s pages. They will help you stand out by presenting your business’s own products and showcasing your work environment. What’s more, these photos will let you personalize the image you want to project for your business, on the web as well as on social media.

On the other hand, keep in mind that a professional photographer will be more expensive and will require more conceptual work on your part than photos bought online. You will need to think about the concept you’d like to adopt for the images, but also about the time you’ll set aside to produce these photos. Producing these photos will also require a larger budget in order to get quality shots. Know, however, that hiring a photographer is a good investment and shows how meticulous you are in your work.

Need help making a choice? Contact Virus Santé Communication: our team of experts can guide you and help you make informed decisions for your healthcare business!

• Twitter’s first name was actually “Twttr.”
• In 2006, co-founder Jack Dorsey sent his first Tweet: “Just setting up my twttr.”
• 60% of Twitter users are women.
• Twitter is available in more than 25 languages.
• 100 million users are active every day.
• 32% of internet users use the Twitter social network.
• Twitter has 3,600 employees, half of whom are engineers.
• Currently, the number one leader on Twitter is Barack Obama.
• Katy Perry is the person with the most followers on Twitter, with more than 77 million.
• YouTube is the most followed brand on this social network, with 40 million followers.
• Why only 140 characters in a Twitter message? The social network was actually designed like a cellphone text message box, which limited its character count.
• China is the country with the most users, with 35 million accounts.
• Facebook tried to buy Twitter twice, without success.
• It took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day to reach 1 billion Tweets.
• The bird is Twitter’s mascot and is named Larry, in honour of American basketball player Larry Bird.
• The most retweeted post in history was Ellen DeGeneres’s popular selfie surrounded by stars at the 2014 Oscars, with 3.4 million retweets.
• Twitter is largely responsible for the appearance of hashtags on social media.
• Whether you type the URL “Twittter.com” or “Twiter.com,” you’ll automatically be directed to Twitter’s official site.
• 50% of Twitter users use their cellphone to visit the social network.
• The average time a Twitter user spends on the social network per month is 170 minutes.
• Twitter is worth US$31 billion and is the 8th most visited website in the world.

Want a Twitter account for your healthcare business? Don’t hesitate to contact us to open a Twitter account for you or to advise you on using this social network!

If your clients subscribed to your newsletter, it’s to learn more about you and your products. The relevant information in your newsletter will let your clients keep an eye on your business’s activities, changes and important decisions. Keep your text short and concise to avoid losing the reader. The information in your newsletter will also help keep an active line of communication open between you and your clients.

1. Benefits

Your newsletter must stand out from the other emails your clients receive. It must contain content that benefits the people who receive it. Whether it’s a scoop, a discount, a contest or exclusive content, the newsletter should offer added value to whoever receives it. Clients will then have one more reason to stay in touch with your business on an ongoing basis. For example, a 30% discount coupon on your healthcare business’s services or products.

1. Good design

Your newsletter’s presentation is very important, since it’s what will make subscribers decide whether or not to read you. Choose images that will pique your subscribers’ curiosity while also reflecting your organization. For example, using your own photos would be much more interesting than images bought online. They let your clients follow your activities in a much more personal way. Also, don’t forget to present your newsletter with colour palettes that go well with the layout of your text.

1. Catchy headlines

While your newsletter’s content is very important, be sure to work on how your text is presented. Catchy headlines that start with a verb and are short and appealing to readers are ideal for keeping subscribers on the lookout for your latest news. That way, you make sure you’ve piqued your subscribers’ curiosity and hold their attention until the end of the newsletter.

1. Calls to action

Also known as a CTA, this web feature is ideal for drawing your newsletter subscribers’ attention and generating clicks to the designated page. That way, you can ensure interaction with the online client and document and track changes in your conversion rates (readers who become clients). Calls to action can be used in different ways depending on the type of business you run and your area of expertise in health. The most important thing is that the feature be easy to use for whoever clicks on it.

Want to build a newsletter now? Let our experts at Virus Santé Communication create content and a design that reflect your healthcare organization.

1 in 13 people on Earth has a Facebook account!

Facebook generated US$12.47 billion in revenue in 2014, a 58% increase year over year.

Facebook is translated into 70 different languages around the world.

In 2014, the company increased its number of employees by 48%, bringing its workforce to 10,082 employees in its offices.

75% of Facebook’s revenue comes from selling advertising!

Facebook generates US$1.4 million in revenue every hour.

Facebook celebrated its 10th anniversary on February 4, 2014! Yes, already!

Facebook reached 1 billion users in April 2012. Today, in 2015, it has 1.4 billion.

47% of all internet users worldwide have a Facebook account.

During Facebook’s very first summer, Mark Zuckerberg spent $85,000 to keep the company afloat. In September 2013, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth was US$19 billion.

When Facebook began selling shares to the public and trading on the NASDAQ on May 18, 2012, its shares were issued at $38, which meant the company was valued at more than US$100 billion. It also meant that Facebook was worth more than eBay, Yahoo, Groupon, LinkedIn, Netflix, IAC, AOL, Zynga and Pandora… combined.

The first name Zuckerberg gave his social network was Thefacebook.com. It was on the advice of Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, that they decided to change the name to Facebook. The company had to pay $200,000 to acquire the domain name!

On average, a Facebook user spends between 18 and 20 minutes on their account. Combined, all users would spend 20 billion minutes on Facebook.

Every morning when they wake up, 48% of Americans aged 18 to 34 check their Facebook account. 28% of this demographic group check their Facebook page before even getting out of bed.

The average Facebook user is exposed to 1,500 different potential pieces of content every day.

About 7.5 million websites have Facebook’s “Like” or “Share” buttons on their pages.

Although the Facebook social network is officially blocked by the Chinese Communist Party, there are about 95 million users in China.

Facebook’s engineers originally wanted to call the “Like” button “Awesome.”

Every 20 minutes on Facebook, 1 million links are shared, 2 million friend requests are made and 3 million messages are sent.

4.5 billion “Likes” are clicked every day on Facebook.

There are 1.3 billion monthly users on Facebook, 680 million of them on mobile devices.

People share 1.3 million pieces of content on Facebook every minute.

On April 9, 2012, Facebook acquired the mobile social network Instagram for US$1 billion.

On November 15, 2010, Facebook bought the domain name fb.com, Facebook’s initials, for US$8.5 million!

On February 19, 2014, Facebook bought the instant messaging app “WhatsApp” for US$9 billion!

A product engineer working at Facebook in the United States earns US$172,343 a year.

According to the highly respected Forbes magazine, Facebook ranks as the 15^th best employer in the United States!

Indeed, this web analytics tool has completely revolutionized the way businesses use the pages of their websites. With this system, all the data is recorded in tables and/or charts. This helps analysts get a better idea of a website’s reach in a given region, but also around the world. By registering your URL in Google Analytics, you can get real-time updates on visitors’ comings and goings.

Dashboard

The Dashboard will quickly become your best friend! On this analytics page, you’ll find several tables that clearly and precisely explain the habits of the people who visit your website. Everything from the type of web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Explorer) to the number of users (new and returning) is displayed. The dashboard gives you a clear, precise overview of your site. But that’s not all! Google Analytics can track visitors’ browsing patterns on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. That way, you can find out on which dates your site got the most visits. And with a little more digging, you can figure out what caused traffic to your web pages to rise or fall.

Real-Time

You’ll also find the Real-Time tab, which counts the number of people currently on your website. This tab also shows you where the visitors browsing your web pages are coming from at the very moment you’re looking at the analytics page. Google Analytics can also build a profile of your audience. This tab will help you better understand the behaviours, habits and interests of your page’s users. You can then discover the profile of your business’s current or potential clients and adjust your aim with regard to your communication and marketing plan. This tool is important because it helps your business better understand consumers and thus better meet their needs.

Acquisition

The Acquisition tab, for its part, will help you find out which channel users came through to reach your page. Social media? A search engine? Your Facebook campaign? You’ll find all the data in this section! The Google Analytics system can also analyze the social networks you register in it. You’ll then know everything about what’s happening on your website, as well as on the social networks linked to it.

Contact us to find out how Virus Santé Communication will optimize your SEO with this Google analytics tool.

What exactly is Instagram?

The name of this social network is actually a combination of two words that describe the app well: “instant” and “telegram.” This social network, available only on your mobile phone, is an effective way to share photos (or videos) with the public.

How do you use the app?

Want to share photos of your clinic on Instagram? It’s easy! After downloading the app to your smartphone, start by adding a profile photo. Don’t forget to add a brief description of your business in the text box so the public can learn more about your business and services. Then, to start sharing images on your profile, take photos that will be relevant to users and future clients of your business. For example, you could make your first post a picture of your medical clinic.

The fun thing about this social network is that it lets you showcase your “artistic” talents. By adjusting the filters, colours, tints, lighting and sharpness of the photos you post, you can customize your profile however you like. Before posting your photo publicly, take the time to add a short description in the “Write a caption…” and “Add location” sections. That way, people can better find out where your clinic is located and reach you more easily.

You’re probably wondering, “But when does it make sense to post a new image on my Instagram account?” Unfortunately, there’s no magic answer to that question. If you want your account to stay active and interesting for users, it’s recommended to post 2 to 3 new photos a week. You can post photos of your workspace, your employees, announcements of your new services and even photos of local sports teams you sponsor. Anything goes! However, always keep in mind that the photos you post must be in line with your communication goals, namely medical services.

How can I optimize my visibility?

It’s often recommended to keep the same photographic theme when you post photos to your profile. For example, if you post photos using specific colour filters, keep posting photos in those same tones. Your profile will then be much more attractive to users. Here’s a simple tip: keep your photos uncluttered. When a photo has too many elements, it’s easy to lose the user’s attention on the photo’s key element or elements.

Hashtags are also essential for giving your business the visibility it’s hoping for. Hashtags are a way for users to search by keyword in the “Explore” section. These keywords can then lead Instagram users to your photos. After adding your description in the “Write a caption…” box, add appropriate hashtags to your photo. For example, if you take a photo of your clinic located in Montréal:

Come see us today at our Montréal clinic between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m. for a half-price dental cleaning! – #Montréal #Montreal #cliniquedentaireMontréal #Montrealdentalclinic #cliniquedentaire #dentalclinic #medical #médicale #health #santé #dentiste #dentist.

Notice that the hashtag keywords are not only in French but also in English. It’s important to use keywords in both languages since your clinic serves a bilingual region. To optimize your visibility on the social network, it’s therefore important to use as many keywords as possible that a user might type into the search engine.

Also, don’t wait to encourage your clinic’s patients to share happy moments by creating a hashtag specific to your clinic. For example, by creating #clinicmtl3000, you’ll be able to find all your clinic’s photos under a single keyword. You can also add it to all the photos you post. This hashtag will then be linked to and personalized for your Montréal clinic.

A great place for sharing, Instagram has become a must-have mobile app for all social media fans since 2010. Want to attract new clients to your clinic, but may not have the budget to run large advertising campaigns? Instagram is an effective tool for drawing new eyes to your medical services, and it’s free! So, grab your phone!

Traditional marketing vs. web marketing

Although some businesses still use traditional marketing services, web marketing is increasingly present to help small and large organizations alike. Unlike traditional marketing, web marketing, if well planned, can be much less expensive and much more effective for you. It will also get your business seen on the internet, an essential medium in the age of Web 2.0. Indeed, in the health sector, large TV, radio and billboard campaigns are often very expensive and end up reaching their target audience less precisely. Web marketing, on the other hand, offers several effective tools that will help you establish your position as an expert in the health field.

Web marketing tools

Whether you want to attract new consumers or build loyalty among your current clients, these tools are valuable for ensuring your organization’s long-term success:

Organic search and paid search

Organic search gives websites better visibility when people use web search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Consumers therefore don’t need to know your business to end up clicking through and browsing your business’s website. It’s thanks to various keywords related to your type of business that web users will be able to find your site on different search engines. As for paid search (also known as search engine advertising or SEA), it lets businesses position themselves above those that have opted for organic search alone. Users of search engines like Google will then find you in a flash among the first links they are shown.

Site skins and banner ads

Once you’ve targeted your audience by interests, geolocation or socio-demographic profile, you can use site skins and banner ads. Although this method is known to be rather traditional as far as web marketing goes, it remains an effective way to attract your target audience’s attention. Banners are ad spaces that come in several formats (squares and rectangles of various sizes) where businesses can place your ad. You’ll often find these banners at the top or along the sides of web pages. Site skins, for their part, sit in the background of the website, anchoring your visibility on multiple websites. For example, online magazines focused on your area of health expertise could be a good place to display your services as site skins or banner ads.

Social media

Several advertising services, both free and paid, are available on social media. Depending on your business’s goals, they can help you maintain good visibility. Indeed, your presence on social media is essential to help your business establish itself more easily online, but also to make your information more accessible to web users. You’ll be able to share news of interest to your clients (or future clients) on the various social networks you manage (for example: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram). Buying ads is also convenient and very effective for increasing your visibility on a social network like Facebook. What’s more, buying sponsored posts will, without a doubt, let you reach new audiences.

Mobile marketing

In 2015, few people don’t own a mobile phone or tablet. Having a mobile-friendly website therefore becomes essential. So that consumers can easily access your information, wherever they are, it would be wise to have a website adapted to your business’s services. The easier your site is to use on a mobile device, the more inclined consumers will be to browse it and then buy your products and/or services. Today, web users are no longer content with using a laptop, which is why it’s important for your business to adapt to the new reality of how people use new technologies.

New discoveries and new technologies emerge every day in your health field. Keep in mind that the communications field is also evolving very quickly. It’s therefore important for you to keep up with the latest web marketing trends to meet your clients’ demands. These tools can then help you reach your audience continuously, whatever its habits. Used wisely, they can meet your clientele’s needs, exceed your clients’ expectations and make you shine online!

In other words, everything visual in your business is recorded in this “bible.”

Creating it

It’s not something you dash off on the back of a napkin: a style guide is created in conjunction with the person in charge of graphic design and anyone else responsible for the business’s visibility to the public. The graphic designer must have a good understanding of the company’s services, but also know what image it wants to project to its audience.

A style guide normally includes:

• The logo and its usage rules (or logotype, if the logo is made up of letters, like FedEx).
• The colour code. Specific colours are generally provided (defined with a Pantone code), and only those colours should be used.
• The fonts to use in official documents.

Tips

To convey your intentions to the company managers who will consult the style guide, writing a text that sums up the intentions behind the creation of the visual identity can be an excellent initiative. Among other things, it can explain the meaning of the logo and the choice of colours used in creating it.

Examples

Just look around and you can already see the benefits of a style guide.

• Can you imagine Pepsi using its logo only in red and white? That would be enough to make consumers confuse it with its competitor, Coca-Cola!

• Would you be tempted to go to McDonald’s if it replaced the famous golden yellow of its logo with green? It might just put you off!

So we can say that a style guide reinforces the message a company wants to convey to consumers.

Here are two concrete examples from the Montréal area: the city’s two French-language universities.

• Around the turn of the 2000s, the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) treated itself to a new logo, courtesy of renowned designer Frederic Metz. All eyes immediately turned to the grave accent over the A, a decision the public found bold because “UQÀM” isn’t normally written that way. The grave accent was meant to reaffirm UQAM’s place as a major French-language public university in Canada. It is therefore unthinkable for anyone authorized to use the UQAM logo to use it without its acute accent or its blue colour.

• Around the same time, its counterpart on the mountain was also searching for its identity. The publications of the various departments making up the Université de Montréal lacked graphic unity: nothing looked alike. The Université de Montréal’s Bureau des communications et des relations publiques therefore introduced a very precise standards guide (available to everyone). By unifying all the communications issued by all of the university’s entities, this change proved beneficial for the university’s brand as a whole.

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Need help with your company’s branding? Don’t hesitate to contact us to learn about our services!

The acronym SEO stands for search engine optimization, which covers all the techniques that help your website rank well in search engines, including Google. The goal? To please search engines, comply with their standards and appear among their top results. We have to admit it: Google is the main reference for SEO, worldwide.

There are many of these techniques, and they are highly relevant; one of them specifically concerns local SEO. We could write a blog post about each of the dozens of tips surrounding SEO. In this post, we focus on local SEO.

Do you offer plumbing services in the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region? Then it’s probably of little use to you if someone searching from Châteauguay finds your website in first position on Google. Generally speaking, consumers look for goods and services close to their home or workplace. A student in Sherbrooke knows there’s a yoga school right near the university residences, but she doesn’t know the exact address. Help her find you quickly! This consumer should be able to find you directly on Google Maps with her smartphone and use the “Directions” feature, or quickly find your yoga centre’s class schedule and opening hours.

Quality keywords

In local SEO, it’s essential that the names of the cities you serve appear clearly in the content of your pages. Set aside a section for your “service area,” but also mention it in various other contexts throughout your website.

There are many tools and directories that can increase your presence in search engines. Examples include Yelp, Google My Business, Google AdWords (which lets you run effective online media campaigns with paid search and sponsored links), Foursquare and more. As you can see, Google offers a range of very useful products for local SEO, which are often free, such as Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. We’ll soon publish a post devoted entirely to Google Analytics and its main features for local SEO, so stay tuned!

Of course, social media platforms (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube) are very useful for local SEO, so don’t neglect them. Offer quality content on your various pages, and don’t constantly try to promote your products and services. Instead, become the go-to reference in your field!

In conclusion, there’s nothing magical about local SEO: you have to be proactive and perhaps even call on a web specialist. SEO rules change quickly, and it can sometimes be hard to keep track. However, it’s worth getting familiar with the different tools and choosing the ones that really suit your field of activity. Remember: don’t try to fool Google. Give it unique, quality content, which can take a lot of your time but will be very profitable in the end!

Other useful directories for local SEO:

• MontrealPlus
• CanPages
• Trip Advisor (for the travel, tourism and hospitality industry)
• Urban Spoon and OpenTable (for restaurants)
• Yellow Pages
• Yahoo Local

This change is international and applies to all languages. Historically, this kind of change was first tested in the United States and in English, but this time, it will be global!

This algorithm change will only affect searches made on mobile devices. Web pages that have been adapted for mobile will be “boosted” by the search engine. Pages that haven’t been adapted, on the other hand, will rank lower as a result.

Earlier in the year, Google had already paved the way by introducing a visual label to indicate sites with mobile platforms (mobile-friendly).

What is Google’s goal?

Google’s goal is to give its users a better browsing experience. People who use the search engine on a mobile device will enjoy more pleasant, smoother access. Designed specifically for the device used, this access will help improve search results, speed up downloads and make navigation easier.

Why is Google imposing this new rule?

Google currently holds 81% of the smartphone software market with Android, which represents about one billion active devices in 2015. Worldwide, Google’s search engine holds a 90.3% market share, making it the undisputed leader in the field. It is therefore very much in Google’s interest to introduce this new standard.

With this new rollout, Google will be able to offer new advertising services and refine some existing ones. Searches could then be optimized for “non-mobile-friendly” sites, with their profitability increased through Google AdWords.

Is your clinic’s website not mobile-friendly?

Here are the possible consequences if you don’t add a mobile version.

The data compiled by CEFRIO speak for themselves. According to its 2014 study, in Quebec alone, more than 70% of adults aged 18 to 44 use their smartphone to access the internet.

As for tablets, adults aged 25 to 54 (44.8%) stand out, with a higher proportion of users going online.[1]

The company Market Domination Media agrees, with figures to back it up: “88% of consumers who search for a type of local business on their mobile device call or visit the business directly within 24 hours of their search.”

Losing a prime search engine position to your competitor could mean a significant loss of new clients and lower revenue for your healthcare business!

1 https://www.cefrio.qc.ca/netendances/mobilite-quebec-la-croissance-se-poursuit/activites-realisees-sur-mobile/#les-appareils-mobiles-des-outils-de-communication-web

How can you tell whether your website has a mobile version?

Google has thought of everything! It has put a tool online that detects mobile versions. To find out whether your site is available in a mobile version, just use the link right here:

Google Mobile-Friendly Test.

A call to action is a marketing prompt designed to encourage your target audience to take action on the offer presented to them. A call to action can make it easier for people to get in touch, make a purchase or sign up.

How important is a call to action on your clinic’s website?

A call to action is essential to your website if you want to convert your site’s web traffic into potential clients.

A well-targeted, strategically placed call to action will help you steer as many visitors as possible toward the service provider, which will translate into inquiries, higher sales or more sign-ups for your blog or email list.

How do you create effective calls to action?

Here are a few tips for creating good calls to action:

The position, size and colour of the call to action

Calls to action must be strategically positioned on your website. For a dentist’s website, we recommend placing one right on the home page. The icon should contain the phone number and remain visible at all times so that visitors can reach you quickly.

Also, add one at the end of each of your blog posts to invite readers to receive your posts by email.

Size and colour matter too. They must be chosen carefully with the goal of converting as many visitors as possible: a call to action that’s too small won’t be visible enough or used enough, while one that’s too big will annoy your audience. The same principle applies to colours.

Visible, but not aggressive

Your call to action should be visible almost all the time, but it must not get in the way of visitors looking for information on your website. Some websites block navigation to force visitors to act on a call to action. This tactic is strongly discouraged because it’s too aggressive. The risk of losing your audience is high, as visitors would rather switch to another website than have a choice forced on them.

Simple and effective

A call to action should lead to an extremely simple purchase, contact or sign-up process. Ask for as few clicks and as little information as possible to increase your conversion rate. A form that’s too long will discourage visitors and make them turn back. When it comes to purchases, do some research online: some available modules let people buy in 3 clicks or less!

Use the imperative

The text should reflect what you have to offer and show its added value. We also recommend phrasing calls to action in the imperative.

For example:

Sign up for our newsletter to receive practical sports health tips.

Book an appointment with one of our animal health specialists.

Vary your offers

Vary your offers and your calls to action. Just because visitors don’t want to contact you doesn’t mean they don’t want to follow your blog or sign up for your newsletter. Since you don’t know where visitors are in their buying process, give them a chance to stay in close contact with your business so you can keep moving them forward in that process.

Vary your calls to action

Use different types of calls to action and track their effectiveness with Google Analytics. The results will show you which of your calls to action works best for your target audience.

1. Personalize each of your connection requests with a short, concise message. The members of your network will appreciate you taking the time to write them personalized messages, and they’ll remember you better.
2. Customize your personal LinkedIn URL by including your name in it.
3. Make your profile 100% complete.
4. Use a professional photo of yourself that accurately reflects who you are and your professionalism.
5. Don’t hesitate to ask key people in your industry for recommendations: they will highlight your skills and the value you bring.
6. Turn off notifications about changes to your profile. They tend to annoy the members of your network.
7. Talk with your network, nurture it and share information it may find useful. You have experience in a specific field: share it.
8. Post relevant information every day related to your area of expertise and the services you offer.
9. Feel free to answer questions from your network that relate to your area of expertise.

THE “DON’TS”

1. Avoid liking posts that have nothing to do with what you bring to your network. Everything you like automatically shows up in your community’s news feed. Even if you like an image, a comment or an article, you don’t necessarily want to be associated with it.
2. Never treat LinkedIn as your 2^nd LinkedIn is a professional social network.
3. Don’t promote yourself in your posts. For example: “If you need a good graphic designer, visit my web page!” Instead, simply say: “I’m pleased to share a few projects we worked on over the past 3 months.”
4. Make constructive comments and avoid passing judgment at all costs.
5. Avoid posting too much on your LinkedIn account; once or twice a day is enough.
6. Don’t show off your lifestyle: your restaurants, your celebrity encounters and your Liberal Party conventions don’t interest your network.
7. If you’re an entrepreneur who loves motivational business quotes, save them for your Facebook.
8. Don’t post articles or photos without text. The members of your community will appreciate it when you add some commentary.
9. Don’t talk about sex, politics, your family, your personal problems, illness, or hobbies unrelated to your professional field.

As part of their mandate, the writer of your business blog could be entrusted with confidential, privileged or embarrassing information. Even if that’s not the case, remember that this person needs to understand you well: after all, they are your voice and they represent you. So choose a person or a team you trust. Make sure to give them the time they need to do proper work and to check that the information is accurate.

Your healthcare business’s lone writer

Advantages:

Since a single writer is responsible for keeping the business blog up to date, the writing style is consistent and harmonious. If changes need to be made, they are easier to carry out. What’s more, if privileged or confidential information has to be made available to the writer, access to it is limited.

Another important point: the limited training time and cost, although they vary depending on your employee’s writing and technology skills, make this the most economical option for your healthcare business.

Disadvantages:

Just as with an external writer, a single person bears the weight of your blog’s success or failure. Be careful, though: if you don’t see a significant increase in your traffic, the cause may lie elsewhere. When in doubt, don’t hesitate to contact web marketing experts who can help you pinpoint the cause.

Should this person suddenly be unable to write or work, due to illness or a resignation, for example, you’ll have to turn to someone else and train them for the task on short notice. Training a second person in-house could prove useful one day.

Specify in the employee’s list of duties that writing is one of their assigned tasks; otherwise, the time spent writing the blog and posting articles will come at the expense of their other daily activities.

The whole team pitches in

Advantages:

You spread the workload among all or some of your employees, at the same time or in turn. You can also form teams. Depending on how often you publish, you can even motivate the troops with small internal contests: why not offer a prize to the team or writer of the most popular or most shared post on social media at the end of a given month or theme?

It may be easier to give writers the support and references they need if they work in-house at your healthcare business, especially if they need access to confidential or privileged information. In addition, other employees have the knowledge needed to help those who are less comfortable with certain aspects of writing or of integrating content into your blog.

Disadvantages:

Your employees may not all have the same level of writing skill. To avoid a Frankenstein blog made up of texts that match neither in style, vocabulary nor approach, you can set up text templates or add the task of standardizing the texts to one employee’s list of duties.

However, you can also choose to keep the differences by highlighting each post’s author as a way of showing that your employees are involved in your healthcare business.

Hiring an external writer

Advantages:

You and your team can focus on your usual tasks, in which you specialize, rather than developing your writing skills and your knowledge of CMS platforms.

Some writers even offer complementary services that can help raise your profile, such as social media management if your marketing agency doesn’t offer that service; make sure, however, to create your marketing campaign with the help of specialists.
Disadvantages:

A language professional’s fees are higher than the costs associated with training your employees.

Ask about their previous work and areas of specialization. Look at their portfolio. This information is usually listed on the web agency’s website. Ideally, you should have at least some knowledge of web marketing so you can make sure the texts submitted are effective in terms of SEO.

Whether you appoint an in-house or an external writer, it is essential for your healthcare business to check that the information is accurate and that the style represents your business. Make sure your writer complies with the ethical rules of your professional field. At the start of the mandate, this verification is imperative. You should therefore allow time to revise posts without slowing down the publishing schedule you’ve set.

The solution best suited to your business

Your healthcare business and each of your employees are unique. Unfortunately, a blog post can’t tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt which of the solutions above you should choose. Only after a discussion with your team, and some reflection afterward, will you be able to decide whether your healthcare business will showcase the talent already on your staff or hire a professional writer.

Whatever your level of computer knowledge, there are signs that can help you judge whether you made a mistake when choosing your web design company: if your website isn’t responsive or signed, has an address that’s hard to remember, or if you’re not sure what your service provider is talking about, you may want to look elsewhere.

Visually spotting a bad choice of web design company

It’s no secret: the internet is no longer limited to computers. The proliferation of smartphones, tablets and phablets is bringing many changes to web marketing and website presentation. For example, a website laid out in two vertical columns doesn’t lend itself well to viewing on a smartphone, even if the format may be appropriate for a computer screen. If yours displays a single version regardless of the type of device used, the company that built the website didn’t bother to do “responsive web design,” that is, optimizing the display according to the specific criteria of each viewing device.

Another easy-to-spot sign can be found on your home page: the company that built your website didn’t “sign” its work by putting its logo or name at the bottom of the page as an anchor to its own website. Far from being just a way to advertise at your expense, this boosts their positions on Google, their “ranking.” Google likes links to credible external sites, and this gives your healthcare business a little boost in visibility.

Here’s a third sign, even more obvious than the previous one: the website address. If it’s long, broken up, unreadable, or doesn’t mention your location for a local business, it’s a sign that there was no SEO strategy behind it.

If in doubt, ask yourself whether you could remember your healthcare business’s website address if you had nothing to write it down with. Even if you can’t memorize it, it should seem obvious.

Professionally spotting a bad choice of web design company

If you were involved in choosing the company that designed your website, here are a few other signs that can help you judge whether the choice was a wise one.

Search engines don’t deliver results to queries completely at random: the order in which results appear in Google depends on your famous “page rank.” Google’s algorithms seem complex, but web specialists know them and know how to take advantage of them.

If no one took the trouble to sit down with you and explain what SEO and SEM are, you’re unlikely to know how to optimize your website and your content to increase your chances of appearing on the first page, which is a priority in web marketing. If the text used is the same as in your printed brochures, it’s more than likely poorly suited to the web.

Hello, is anybody there?

One last sign, but not the least, since it’s a very bad one: the company that built your website is no longer in business. If that’s the case, see this bad luck as an opportunity to get off on the right foot now that you know more about it.

Don’t forget that you always have the right to ask questions. Without becoming an expert, you can have a general understanding of the subject: even if detailed knowledge of hematopoiesis is limited to health students and professionals, Quebecers know that red blood cells are renewed. It’s your money and your healthcare company’s image, after all.

You may already have a blog. However, content marketing isn’t limited to blogging: social media, videos and infographics are all ways to make your healthcare business known. Like your blog, your editorial strategy lets you show a different side of yourself and attract prospects if you know how to make the most of it. It doesn’t focus on selling your products and services, even if that’s the ultimate goal: it makes you visible and appealing.

The art of distributing your content marketing?

The possibilities go far beyond the few examples we’ve selected below. But here are some of the most effective.

0— The business blog.

You know about it from our post on business blogs, and you know how relevant it is for your healthcare business. Don’t neglect it.

1— Social media

Whatever your healthcare business’s area of specialization, it’s important to claim your name on social media. This lets you control your image. When it comes to content marketing, by creating original content or sharing relevant content, you have a chance to demonstrate your knowledge of the field, the quality of your customer service and your company’s personality. What’s more, if an unpleasant surprise comes up at the last minute, it’s an excellent way to let your clientele know.

Some networks even let you schedule your posts and publish them at a time of your choosing. Others help people find you through keywords.

2— Videos

Videos are popular with part of the population, and you may be tempted to give them a try. Don’t forget to consider the challenges of this medium: not only must it deliver information likely to interest your client, but it must also present it in a visually appealing way to hold their attention. Videos also require specific equipment and software.

There’s no point in shooting the most informative video if it bores the prospect or client: they won’t finish watching it.

3— Press infographics (or simply infographics)

Infographics are digital images that use diagrams to make various short pieces of information on a given topic accessible to readers. They catch the eye and are readily shared on social media.

Don’t forget to put your logo or name on them, since they provide lasting visibility. Who knows whether a prospect might come across your infographic two years from now and come to you because of it?

Writer’s block?

If you don’t know what to write about, ask yourself: What questions do your clients ask you regularly? What are their uncertainties or fears? What interests them about your service? Has your business just invested in a new technology? Take the opportunity to present it and explain how it’s useful in your area of expertise.

Target questions you know how to answer and that matter to your target clientele. You have the chance to provide new, value-added information. Don’t let your competitor seize the opportunity!

If you’re still unsure, Virus Communication will be happy to help you build your own content marketing on your favourite platforms.

To achieve this, we have offered many seminars and given courses and lectures. We know how busy your schedules are. For most of you, attending our seminars would be mission impossible. That’s why we created this blog aimed directly at you: medical clinic owners and health professionals.

The purpose of this blog is not to promote our services, but rather to share marketing knowledge with you. Unfortunately, this knowledge transfer is often missing from the academic curriculum of most health professionals.

Your peers from another era, especially the ’80s and ’90s, knew a completely different kind of “marketing.” The days when a nice sign on a busy street corner was enough, or a small ad in the Yellow Pages or the local newspaper, are over. These strategies are practically obsolete. Granted, many clinics and health professionals still work with these same techniques and manage to make a good living.

After all, the farmer who kept working his land with horses when others adopted the gasoline tractor didn’t starve. However, those who adopted the tractor began to prosper and to work less and less hard, delegating more and more.

Let’s be honest for a moment: marketing in the healthcare sector is lagging far behind. We hope this blog will be the spark that helps you make informed choices, fine-tune your own strategies, manage your own branding, become an innovator and make your life easier.

This is the small contribution we hope to make to this world, which you tirelessly make healthier every day.

Keeping a business blog is an excellent way to start your own content marketing for your healthcare business. While it requires constant commitment, the return on investment is considerable: by positioning yourself as an expert on the subject, you’ll inspire confidence in your clientele, who will come to you or your blog for answers to their questions, which will also improve your organic search rankings.

The expert blogs their way to page one

A business blog improves your search engine rankings. By producing content on more specialized topics, you increase the number of inbound links to your website and the number of keywords leading to it. Don’t forget that even if your post was written three years ago, the issue it addresses may still answer the questions of a reader consulting it today. So think of your posts as traces of timeless marketing that you can leave as they are or adapt as technology or discoveries on the subject evolve, by linking to a more recent article.

By updating the information available on an issue, you further present yourself as an expert who is always on the lookout for new discoveries in your field.

A no-commitment introduction

Unlike building one, keeping a blog requires little technical knowledge. If you know how to type in a word processor or send an email, you already have a large part of the knowledge you need. A blog is therefore an excellent way to promote your healthcare business, and it works hand in hand with your website.

Think of your website as a storefront and your blog as a preview of your service. Your blog should reflect your healthcare business’s values and showcase your branding. A business blog humanizes your company by presenting a side of your service that’s unknown if you only look at it from the outside: the tone is generally freer, because your main goal isn’t to sell, but to demonstrate your competence and expertise.

By enabling comments, you open the door to a dialogue with your clientele that’s less of a commitment than a phone call or an in-person conversation. Responding to comments shows that you’re interested in the issues in your field and in your clients themselves. That said, nothing beats an in-person consultation: make your clientele want to visit you.

Before you can build client loyalty, you have to attract clients and make them want to convert, that is, to use your services. Unlike your website, a blog isn’t static: constantly updated information can be appealing to your clientele, who will find reasons to visit your website regularly to read your blog if they like it.

Keeping a business blog improves your organic search rankings and lets you establish yourself as an expert in your field, while showcasing your healthcare business. While people rarely share business websites, remember that a well-written post is easily shared on social media: isn’t that an excellent way to promote yourself?

Think of the smartphone as your client’s best friend, the one your client trusts completely, and become Google’s best friend. It will mention you far more readily!

The smartphone follows your client like a shadow

The smartphone is sometimes seen as an intrusion in our lives. Take a look around and you’ll realize it’s everywhere. At restaurants, we “Instagram” our food. On public transit or in cafés, we browse our favourite sites or read the news. Even at home, the device is rarely far from its owner. Who doesn’t use a bathroom break to check Facebook? Like it or not, mobile phone use is firmly rooted in our daily habits.

Think of mobile devices as your clientele’s best friends: people who don’t own a smartphone or tablet are a dying breed. In Quebec, the shift to mobile is no myth: 66% of adults aged 18 to 54 own one of these devices, and that percentage keeps rising among younger generations. Take just 10 years off the age range studied, to 18 to 44, and 80% of the population owns a smartphone, a tablet or both!

Google will become your best friend if you get to know it

A responsive website is an excellent way to boost your “PageRank” effortlessly, since Google favours responsive websites on two counts. First, because responsive websites have been ranked higher than non-responsive sites since 2012, and second, because your SEO benefits from centralizing incoming visitors on a single page. More visitors mean better rankings; better rankings, more visitors.

Your clients no longer look in specialized directories when they need a service: they ask the people around them for advice on social media or use search engines. Don’t miss out on potential clients: according to one study, 88% of consumers who search for a type of local business on their mobile device call or visit the business directly within 24 hours of their search.

Don’t forget that phone numbers are usually clickable if the device used is a smartphone or a tablet with an app that lets you make phone calls. Contacting your business with a single click — by phone or by email — makes your calls to action more appealing, and all the more engaging for your clients because they require little effort on their part.

Nothing is perfect, but…

If your healthcare company already has a website as a virtual storefront, the cost of a redesign may hold you back. However, once the system is in place, the costs are lower than if you choose to build two versions of your website: one optimized for mobile devices and the other for computers.

Responsive web design does have a few minor drawbacks: since your web platform exists in a single version, you may be tempted to optimize it for display on a computer screen. However, don’t forget that even on computers, you need to account for the variety of screen sizes and the differences between web browsers to ensure optimal display. By taking this into account when designing your website, your web design company can avoid elements that are hard to adapt and offer your clientele a quality user experience.

Modern web design, another word for “almost perfect”

By choosing a responsive website for your healthcare company, you opt for a modern image and make it easier for your online presence to rank in organic search, while getting the most out of your investment by concentrating it on a single version of your website. Hard to beat!

When a stack of directories is dropped off in the entrance of my building, the pile goes down by maybe two or three copies. The rest just sits there, abandoned, until someone gets fed up and throws them in the recycling. Of the copies that do get taken, one of my neighbours uses the pages to keep her worktable clean when she paints.

Personally, the last time I needed one was to complain that my internet wasn’t working.

Invisibility at a steep price

There’s a digital version of the directory in the form of an app. However, even this adaptation to the reality of 2015 is no cure-all. Unlike strategic marketing advisors, who take the time to understand your brand image and your needs and adapt their service accordingly, directories offer generic package deals that are often hard to understand. These preformatted ads, with no regard for your business’s style, are sold by high-pressure salespeople pushing ready-made marketing solutions.

Is that really what you want for your healthcare business? Generic marketing that doesn’t let your business stand out from the others, placed in a section filled with ads identical to your competitors’? Marketing that, to top it all off, costs you as much as, if not more than, the advice of a custom marketing professional, and locks you into contracts you can’t break?

These are techniques from the ’90s. Not from today.

Your healthcare business deserves better.

Visibility comes through Google

A website that ranks well on Google is still more effective. Everyone looks for information that’s quickly available on their smartphone, but who bothers downloading a directory-style app for that? Ask around and decide for yourself whether your marketing budget couldn’t get a better return on investment.

Digital and print directories show that you don’t know how to promote yourself, and they may suggest that you prefer the comfort of habit to modernizing your techniques. From there, it’s only a short step to saying your business probably isn’t modern either… a step easily taken if you’ve opted for an easy-to-remember phone number.

In short, print directories have been outdated for more than ten years, and digital directories are poorly adapted, little used and expensive to boot. Instead, call on a strategic marketing advisor who can guide you while respecting your business’s individuality and your budget!

Relics of 1980s marketing

Some companies still promote them nonetheless. These numbers are becoming increasingly rare. The last gasps of this tactic, dating back to the Soviet era of marketing, are found mostly in the restaurant industry.

But when I’m craving pizza, do you know where I call?

Stratos Pizzéria. Phone number?
No idea. I googled it on my smartphone!

Welcome to 2015: information just a click away

How many of your clients actually remember your phone number? Will they call you more than someone else if your number is 514-747-dent, 514-63-chiro or 418-343-ergo?

The answer is simply no. Since the advent of smartphones, people who know their close friends’ phone numbers by heart — or even their own spouse’s! — are increasingly rare. We just save the numbers we may need or find useful in the short term.

So one may well question the point of having an easy-to-remember phone number. After all, even if your health services are essential, believing that people will remember your number belongs in the miracles department. Easy to remember or not, it isn’t an effective way to get people to contact you.

What matters is that it’s easy to find.

In an emergency, people won’t think too hard and will call the first place that seems to meet their immediate need, as long as it’s nearby and open at the time of the call. If it isn’t an emergency, the phone number isn’t a deciding factor either. They’ll take the time to look at the website, look for answers to their questions and check the place’s reputation, as well as the factors that matter to them.

However, we use it and understand it in everyday life. Is it accepted? If not, it can be replaced with: “did a Google search.” Either way, a quick Google search will tell you that what matters is good search engine rankings. Since Google is optimized to meet users’ needs, it looks for an answer suited to what is being searched for. Surprised? The phone number isn’t one of the criteria considered in rankings.

In short, don’t put too much effort into getting an easy-to-remember phone number for your business. It’s an outdated practice in the health sector, just like advertising in the paper phone book.