Do you remember what life was like before social media?

Neither do I.

It’s only been 10 years, but sites like Facebook and Twitter have transformed our society at its core. Social media deeply influences the way we communicate, gather information, make decisions, and interpret the world.

Though social media will inevitably play a critical role in your marketing efforts as a doctor, don’t go diving in head-first just yet. Social media marketing has the potential to generate lasting momentum for your virtual practice, but only if it’s structured properly. Attempting to leverage social media without a well-planned marketing approach will only waste your time, money, and effort.

You can trust me on this; I’ve spent more than 11 years helping doctors from all backgrounds carefully cultivate their social media marketing methods. Our Health Experts Alliance team has worked tirelessly to refine our training systems so that our doctors achieve and surpass their social media marketing goals.

More than anything, social media takes time to get it right. You can’t build social media marketing overnight and expect to see transformative results by the end of the week. It’s more about playing the long game to earn lasting results.

So before you even dip your toe in the wild social media waters, make sure you learn more about social media marketing for doctors.

Advantages of Social Media Marketing in Healthcare

When it comes to weighing the pros and cons of social media in healthcare, you can make a case for the benefits and the drawbacks alike. 

This is why it’s so critical to methodically structure your social media tactics; when done properly, your practice reaps far more pros than cons. In my years of experience leveraging social media marketing to build virtual practices, these are the most valuable advantages I’ve observed:

• Promote your practice at a low cost
• Keep patients informed of new initiatives and events
• Connect with patients on a personal level
• Build your know-like-trust factor
• Generate feedback and engagement
• Find and secure new leads

All of these benefits- and so many more- will dramatically transform the trajectory of your virtual practice as long as you follow the right path. 

You Can’t Use Social Media in a Vacuum

A word of warning: you can’t just use social media to build your practice. Social media in a vacuum is like a bridge to nowhere. Without corresponding landing pages and opt-in forms, you’ll waste thousands of dollars earning viewer engagement that fails to produce any tangible results. 

Avoid this social media trap by completing the following three stages of preparation before launching your social media marketing campaigns. 

Social Media Marketing for Doctors: 3 Steps of Preparation

I’m all about imperfect action, but I also believe in smart preparation. When it comes to social media, you need these three components established before you begin. 

Doing so allows you to launch confidently into the social media world with unstoppable momentum. This is what we’ve seen with so many of our HEA clients who have built millions and millions of followers and robust social media reputations. 

The Funnel

If your virtual practice is a vehicle, then your sales funnel is the gas pedal. It’s what drives revenue forward and enables your practice to spring full steam ahead.

Funnels come in all shapes and sizes, so there’s no one right answer. A few common funnels include emails, opt-in pages, and calls to action. Make sure you know how to build your website and social media sites around your funnels for maximum impact on your lead generation. 

The Strategy

As hard as your funnels work to drive revenue, they can’t get very far without the pieces and parts that hold the structure of your practice together.

These systems and strategies define your virtual practice, so it’s important to continually refine and enhance them over time. 

I recently had a conversation about social media marketing for doctors with Ethan, the Chief Marketing Officer for Dr. Axe. I asked him what he would do differently if he could go back in time to the early days of Dr. Axe’s practice. He answered that he wouldn’t have made content just for content’s sake. Instead, he would have developed a cohesive, long-term strategy to craft content that held a larger purpose and worked in tandem with other initiatives to attract new patients. 

Ethan calls it the jab-jab-punch technique. You continually “jab” your readers with engaging, relevant, informative content to gain traction, then “hook” them into your practice with a well-placed sales funnel. 

The Sales Process

As a virtual practice entrepreneur, you don’t need to touch slimy, sleazy sales techniques with a 10-foot pole! When structured correctly, your services and products speak for themselves and attract the right patients to your door. 

Here at HEA, we train all of our doctors to achieve sales by asking powerful questions and co-creating a future of health and improvement with each health participant. This Socratic method achieves 70, 80, even 90% conversion rates with a fraction of the effort involved in standard sales methods.

If you want to enjoy the advantages of social media marketing for doctors and cultivate a thriving practice, Health Experts Alliance is ready to help you reach those goals! We partner with doctors across the country- and the globe!- with the mission of helping them achieve momentum, growth, and scalability.