All I Want for the Holidays is Digital Marketing Success

While this wish list is a little out of fantasyland — in the real world, an outstanding Digital strategy requires incredible skill and hard work — there are five rock-solid Digital Marketing “wishes” that are achievable (only with Ceatus of course), which will make your 2019 Very Merry and Bright!!

A Stellar Responsive Website

The first element of a successful digital strategy is a responsive website that adapts to the device on which the website is being viewed. There are a few key factors to understand when you are obtaining a new responsive website, but the No. 1 priority is a website with Google-friendly code that facilitates ranking and has both a well-thought-out layout and content that converts.

While asking Santa to leave this under your tree is certainly appealing, a website that performs for your practice or business requires experience, skill, time and talent to develop. Of course, as with all major purchases, quality features that matter have a cost associated with them. So be wary of cheap websites, particularly those that cost less than $5,000 or a few hundred dollars a month. Invariably these sites have a number of not-so-great things in common. The sites’ content and design are frequently not unique, i.e., other practices or businesses in your market may have exactly the same website. They are typically built to make them easy for the digital marketing agency to deliver to the client rather than to be the best ranking and converting tools for your specific practice or business. And sadly, with many of these low-cost sites, you don’t own the site, which means that you can’t take it with you if you want to change companies.

So how do you determine what is a good value? It all depends on the size, quality and features. You can think of a new website like a new car; if someone offers you a Mercedes website at a Prius price – beware! The good news is that higher-quality websites provide much better conversion and higher ROI for your investment.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

To paraphrase a very famous quote, SEO doesn’t happen by itself. Google will not naturally recognize your quality and rank you on top accordingly. Your website has to be set up and maintained properly for successful SEO. And, because of the new Google algorithm changes, the website and online footprint MUST communicate Expertise, Authority and Trust (E-A-T).  Ranking well on Google at the North Pole is easy as there’s no competition. So when you ask Santa for great rankings on Google, ask him to show you results from other clients in the same (or even more) competitive markets.

Reviews

If you wait around for Santa to bring you good reviews, without taking any initiative yourself, you are 7 times more likely to receive a 2-star or lower review. An effective and active reviews strategy can flip the switch from a Naughty online reputation to one that’s Nice.

The system that Santa should bring you must have three basic components: automated notifications when a new review goes online, an easy and streamlined review solicitation tool that is adaptable to target at least 10 of the top review sites, and an automated feed to post positive reviews on your website and social media. Enough said.

Social Media

Santa is a very engaging fellow, so he looooves social media. When you ask him for a social media package, it should include posts that your followers want to read and share with others. Your goal is to have your 300 followers (for example) share your posts with their 300 followers, resulting in 90,000 sets of eyes on information from your practice or business. Don’t let Santa bring you a sub-par social media package that only provides promotional or selling posts. When posts are not engaging, you end up with a bag of coal instead of a steady stream of new patients or customers.

Facetime (and we don’t mean on your phone)

If Santa is really good to you this year, he can bring you a package that presents your face many places around the Internet, outside of your website. Santa knows about the CareCredit Survey from a few years ago that showed that more than 60% of patients visited third-party medical advice websites when researching procedures and selecting a doctor.

Santa’s gift will be to refer you to Ceatus, the only company that offers a complete suite of the digital services needed to take your practice or business to the next level in 2019. Santa always prefers the nice list so don’t be naughty with your digital marketing strategies.