Maximize Your Digital Footprint

Remember in "Jurassic Park," when the T-rex's water-filled footprint shook due to the impending force of the impact tremors? At that moment, I think I could have made the Flash look like a three-toed sloth using dial-up AOL.

How big of a digital impact tremor does your clinic have on your surrounding area? Having a simple templated website, landing page or Facebook clinic page you post to two times a month is no longer what I would call making a digital footprint – let alone creating an impact tremor the competition will shutter over.

Getting in front of your ideal patient and being seen virtually everywhere is now easier and budget friendlier than ever! Using digital "strategery" (no, not a real word, but I like it), you can now accomplish two unique phases of marketing.

Get Yourself and Your Services in Front of Active Searchers

Yes, it is a great feeling to have people come into your office who are actively seeking you and what you offer, instead of having to hound them with offers and specials. Using the power of Google Analytics and other SEO formulas, you can position yourself in a perfect position for when someone in your area talks into their phone and says, "Siri, find me XYZ in my area" for literally pennies! Never before have we had this type of opportunity.

Put Your Ads in Front of Your Ideal Patients

We literally have the power of what I call "sniper marketing" in the palm of our hands. You can now target, within 25 miles of your practice, a 35-year-old, married female with three open lines of credit, an American Express credit card, a two-year degree; and oh yeah, she also purchases vitamins and works out. You also can use job title targeting, which is an impressive tool if you want to reach out to decision-makers.

3 Great Ways to Connect With Relevant Audiences

1. Carousel advertising on social media has also opened up a new genre of ads. Why show one selling point when you can show more in one swoop? Customizing these ads to your audience is an impressive way of getting creative with them and delivering various messages that sell a scenario.

For example, let's say you want to explode your auto-accident cases; you could use the carousel to dictate a series of scenarios:

• Hurt in an accident?
• Fender bender?
• Whiplash?

Each of the ads would speak to different daily scenarios and capture the interest of those viewing. You could even use local government stats to find the most common demographic prone to certain accidents and target your ads towards them.

Let them run for a few days for pennies (social tends to be cheaper, depending on the audience you are going for) and monitor which ones are making the phone ring or getting website conversions. Once you've drilled down into the winning ad, scale it up and reap the rewards. Keep your ad running as long as it's producing.

2. Pixels is another way you can capture relevant audiences. By placing a tracking pixel on your landing page or ad, you will get a digital profile of whoever lands on it. You can later track all the people who landed on your page and create a custom look-alike audience in Facebook.

Let's say someone who purchased a product of became a patient. With a tracking pixel, you can get a digital profile of those persons. Facebook will then search for other people (look-alike audience) who have the same digital profiles in your area and send your ads directly to them.

3. Retargeting is another method you can use if a person landed on your page, but did not call or fill out the form, you can capture their digital print and send them retargeting ads with different calls to action or offers. Retargeting campaigns have shown to increase conversions by up to 33 percent or more in some cases.

4. Similar to this specific targeting, geo-fencing is a popular way to target customers in a certain zip code. Want to target people who are visiting a certain mall, or higher-end shopping district? Geo-fencing allows you to target customers in a given radius.

You see this type of targeting on mobile apps. Any mobile app you use for free likely has advertisements that are being geo-fenced. Snap (Snapchat) also offers geo-fencing; you can customize your own Snap for your own office, so people can only use that certain graphic when inside your practice.

Make Digital Work for You

All of the above can be a big boost when it comes to engaging patients with your office digitally. You also can use these methods to advertise things like "Patient Appreciation Night," "Friends Helping Friends," "People Helping People," food drives, and other special events you choose to host.

Never in the history of marketing have we had this capability. So, if you are not using the power or digital marketing or are not making a big digital footprint (think T-rex), I urge you to give this some attention – because I guarantee your competition is.

The world of digital has changed. Data segmentation and targeting have become ever more popular and are leading the way in serving relevant ads to relevant people. What are you waiting for?

Dr. Bryan Hawley has been in health care for more than two decades, and owned and operated several high-end clinics. He is an international speaker, author and coach. He is also the CEO of SocialMediaDigimark, an online ad and marketing agency that specializes in helping doctors fill their practices and reach their goals. For questions or consultations, contact Dr. Hawley at .