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Are You Up to Speed? Mary Kay Miller

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by Mary Kay Miller

The landscape on the Internet is changing at lightning speed and it's important orthodontists and their marketing teams understand what is happening in order to maintain and advance their competitive edge with an integrated marketing plan that reaches all targeted consumers.

Most practices still promote themselves with offline marketing promotions such as newspapers, Yellow Pages, direct mail and printed marketing materials to get the word out and brand their business. In order to be visible today, it is critical to be easily found online as well to promote all your internal and external marketing strategies under one umbrella.

The Internet affords you the opportunity to promote all your internal and external marketing strategies – better known as your personal PR marketing message – quickly, inexpensively and with the least amount of effort, 24/7. While each marketing strategy might work as a standalone program, it is a lot more effective when integrated. This is no different than integrating an effective practice-management software package to streamline the day-to-day operations of your practice and treatment delivery.

Now, due to the explosion of mobile technology, information gathering on cell phones and the introduction of the new iPad using 3G technology, we must consider all factors and determine its affect on your current marketing programs. Historians are already predicting the Apple iPad will revolutionize how consumers use the Internet in the future and it's only just beginning.

The Internet is still in its infancy and the learning curve is overwhelming to most. Advances in digital technology are moving at warp speed and the updates are continuous. To make it even more challenging, most business owners are unfamiliar with how all the pieces of an integrated marketing puzzle work together to correctly promote their business online, offline and now to include mobile marketing.

You are in for a treat as you explore this new world of marketing. The Internet is the rocket fuel that will set your business on fire, but it's you who must strike the first match.

The Foundation of Any Marketing Program
If you keep up with marketing technology, then you know it can be done many different ways and depending upon your demographic, you can pick and choose what you want to incorporate. I want to preface this article by saying, good customer service and treatment delivery has been and always will be the foundation of any successful marketing program, not only in the past but for the future as well. If your foundation is weak, all the latest and greatest marketing tools in any medium are not going to make up for the lack of these key elements.

Your marketing plan is a collection of mediums designed to get the word out in your local area. How you choose to spread the word is critical to the long-term success of your practice in a highly competitive orthodontic marketplace. PR no longer means "public relations." It stands for "perception and reality." In today's environment, "It's not the big that eat the small, it's the fast that eat the slow," according to Jason Jennings, author of Think Big, Act Small and Less is More. If you don't promote yourself, no one else is going to do it for you.

Connecting the Dots
There is a continuing debate today on which type of marketing medium is king among today's tech savvy consumers. As an Internet marketing consultant, I do not preach that online marketing is better than any one marketing media type. My concern is the different marketing mediums are not connecting for maximum results. There is a gap between them, which, if bridged, would optimize how they flow and work together as one.

It is an inconvenient truth that marketing via multiple media types is a far better strategy for any business than to rely too heavily on just one. Unfortunately, many practices experienced this too late, especially in the current economic climate. So many practices are either online or offline and they rarely venture across the gap in an intelligent way that takes advantage of all mediums correctly.

Think about it. Your prospective new patients are often required to travel across many marketing mediums to connect with your practice; say from a newspaper ad or direct mail campaign, to a link to your Web site for more information, then by phone to schedule an appointment. Or, perhaps they hear about your services through word of mouth and search for more info on Google or Yahoo. They then read a review on the maps, find your Web site or blog post, or discover a YouTube video that connects them to your Web site where they locate a phone number to pick up the phone and call you for a free consultation. With both scenarios, your prospects are expected to jump through hoops to find you and in the process, they also find your competitors.

Are Your New Patients Acrobats?
This multimedia circus is forcing new prospects to become acrobats as they try to follow your sales path toward the goal you have in mind and the outcome they seek. The bad news is most business owners and marketers are not making this any easier for the prospective new patient. In fact, many new patients are lost in the gap if programs are not set up and integrated correctly to promote your business (I haven't even mentioned how to keep in contact with your current patient base with social networking such as Facebook and Twitter, e-mail blasts, and e-newsletters as an internal marking tool. This is a discussion for another day).

What Does All This Mean?
Put simply, to expose your business to all opportunities available today, you should have marketing campaigns in the offline, the online and the mobile worlds, all working in sync to cast out your marketing message and reel in as many new patients as you can in a highly competitive orthodontic market. Quality new patients want to follow the yellow brick road to your front door, not navigate through hoops to find you. Nothing I am saying is actually new; we are just looking at all the marketing options a little closer to try to better connect the dots. The solution requires a new mindset, plus tools and strategies to create the shortest line from A to B and so on.

Latest Updates and Statistics – How It Affects You
As I look back over just the last few months and consider all the changes and updates on Facebook and Google, along with Apple's iPad/iAd introductions, I must say the first half of this year has been nothing short of astounding.

Google announced recently on its blog it is including a new signal in its search-ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a Web site responds to online requests. Google is now considering the speed of a Web site when determining page ranking, which means you should consider it too if you want to remain competitive in local search.

Site speed was always an important consideration for consumers who don't like to wait to view information, but now it appears it is even more important to maintain your rankings. The explosion of the use of mobile devices in the past few years heavily influenced this new update. In today's mobile age, you must speed up your Web site properties and setup or you won't be able to compete with orthodontic sites that do. If you are thinking about or currently redesigning a new Web site, make sure it is set up correctly for mobile users.
  • In 2008, the total number of mobile Internet users (1.05 billion) surpassed the total number of PC web users (one billion) for the first time (WapReview, MWC09, Feb 2009). Can you imagine what it is like now in 2010?
  • According to a Marketing Fox Shares Study in 2009, 1.15 billion new cell phone handsets are sold per year and 15 percent are "smartphones" with Internet access
Numbers reveal mobile phone Internet usage trumps PC Web users where speed is not a critical issue. Is your Web site and Internet marketing program moving in a direction to capitalize on this massive mobile usage?

A 2009 Local Mobile Study shares data on iPhone Internet usage and reports that 40 percent of iPhone users go online via mobile rather than PC. Have you viewed your Web site on a mobile phone or iPad to determine if your site loads quickly, your marketing information is readily visible and your video works on a cell phone and iPad?

Flash websites, most flash headers, and video in most video formats are not visible on mobile technology. Therefore, if your contact information is listed in your flash header or your practice video is not formatted correctly, visitors can't connect the dots with your marketing information. Steve Jobs of Apple has already announced he has no intention of incorporating flash technology into his new iPad. Where does this leave you with mobile marketing?

What to Look For When Mobilizing Your Web Site
Offer mobile users a search engine optimized (SEO) Web site that loads quickly and is easily found online. Does this mean you have to redesign you Web site? Absolutely not. However, it does mean you may need to make some modifications to your current site to meet new SEO guidelines regarding speed and formatting issues to increase visibility in mobile markets.

HTML5 is the next major revision of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the core markup language of the World Wide Web. It's an exciting, relatively new, yet-to-be-ratified Web development language, with far more capabilities than any other HTML standard and will provide flashing headers that can be viewed by mobile users. However, most Web designers are not familiar with the new technology as of yet, but should be in the next year or so.

Seven tips to consider when optimizing your Web site for SEO page ranking and mobile users:
  1. Eliminate flash intros and headers with multiple photos flashing. Pick one photo in the flash header that is a true representation of your practice and use it as a stand alone optimized photo that can be seen on mobile handsets and the iPad, as well as PC's. If you are not sure if your flash header is viewing correctly, test it on a smartphone or visit an Apple store and view it on the new iPad.
  2. Make sure your name, address and phone number is easily found in the header for contact info. This is a design change worth incorporating on any site. The font size must be large enough for viewing on mobile phones.
  3. All photos on your website should be Web-optimized to load quickly.
  4. Eliminate all unnecessary white space to increase speed. Also, spend a little time eliminating all unnecessary content on each page or delete pages that are not commonly viewed by consumers. Consolidate similar pages whenever possible.
  5. Bullet-point written content for easy reading whenever possible. Keep it short, simple and to the point; eliminate fluff and unnecessary adjectives and adverbs.
  6. Convert your practice video to MPEG4 format or 3GPP if hosted on your website server. Better yet, upload your practice video and link it through YouTube rather than hosting on your site to increase your Web site download speed.
  7. Split the storage – If you have multiple videos and testimonials or a large amount of photos on your site, ask your webmaster to store your video and photos on a separate server if they aren't already. This allows for parallel downloads and your page to fully load in the browser much faster.
Additional Statistics Worth Mentioning
  • Two-thirds of mobile phone users are "active users of text messaging." This means 1.8 billion people are actively texting today. Globally, there are twice as many active users of text than there are active users of e-mail.
  • Text messages are read within an average of 15 minutes of receipt with a response in 60 minutes. While 65 percent of e-mail is spam, less than 10 percent of texting is spam.
  • Text messaging research reveals U.S. women ages 12 to 24 spend twice as much time with their cell phones as women 40 and older. MarketingCharts ("Women and Digital Life" study) reveals more than 80 percent of U.S. women now use a wireless device and 17 percent are using a "smartphone," such as an iPhone or Blackberry. In the near future, these women will be the mothers of your patients and your prime target audience.
Do you offer patient login services and implement marketing tools which include text messaging for those that choose to participate? If you do, do you actively promote these services even though you don't feel your patients are interested because you personally don't see the need?

Internet marketing is here to stay and will continue to explode as a major marketing contender to build your practice. Who knows what the future will bring as new technology advances both online and offline. Proactively integrating new trends as they develop into your current marketing programs, along with connecting the dots for prospective new patients, will only help you expedite and improve promotion of your business for the future.
Author’s Bio
Mary Kay Miller is an Internet marketing coach specializing in Internet marketing solutions, SEO and social networking for orthodontic practices. With more than 30 years experience in orthodontic practice management and 10 years experience in Internet marketing, Miller has developed the attitude, skills and knowledge necessary to guide doctors and their staff on how to market their practice to consumers in today's tech savvy society. For more information visit her blog at www.orthopreneur.com or call toll free 877-295-5611 to schedule a free half-hour consultation, via online Webinar, to review your current Internet marketing efforts.
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