Dominate your Local Market with Video (Before Your Competition)

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video should be worth twice as much! Written words are still vital to your practice marketing and website, but video content is engaging and helps boost your presence online.

Social media plays a huge part in keeping your practice top of mind with patients, and the thing that stops the scroll is often pictures and video. The combination of an image, music, and spoken words can get your message across without nearly as much effort and keeps your audience's attention for much longer.

Videos also make it much easier for audiences to digest information quickly. This quick information processing is a great way to combat digitally induced attention disorder! According to Nielsen research, even 2 seconds of attention can increase recall, raise brand awareness, and inspire purchase intent. On average, marketers have about 2.5 seconds to grab someone’s attention. Rather than committing a much longer time to read a bulky article, a short and simple video will engage audiences both young and old.

Your medical practice isn't a consulting firm, it's not a law office, it's not a gym, it's not a retailer. You should embrace the difference and market yourself differently than these other fields. Video is a great way to differentiate your practice. Incorporating video into your practice's marketing is going to look different as well!

Here are some great hints and tips to make your video marketing even more effective for your medical practice.

Practice Video Intros and Bios

Knowing just a bit of a doctor’s personality before the patient’s appointment is a great way to make the doctor more approachable. A great way to do this is with a series of video introductions on a bio or about us page. There's no need to put a doctor's whole career and life into a video introduction. A short, one or two-minute video will suffice. Patients should be able to watch this quickly and get a sense of who their provider is and what their personality is like.

Many people suffer from "White Coat Syndrome." They walk into appointments like a bundle of nerves because they're scared of the doctor being mean or judgemental and scared of receiving a bad diagnosis. Then they walk out of their appointments barely remembering anything the doctor said because of anxiety-induced amnesia. An "About Me" video can help your patients and prospective patients build rapport with the doctor before even meeting them. Video humanizes doctors by reminding patients that doctors are people too. They like basketball, chocolate, and dogs just like you!

Office Tours

Doctors' offices are often labyrinths that you can quickly get lost in. Video office tours can help new patients and old patients alike get familiar with the building and offices before they even arrive.

If you’ve recently moved, done renovation, or are trying to build your practice, this is a great way to help patients feel at home and comfortable with your office. They’ll quickly be able to discern where they need to go to fill out paperwork, wait, and even see the doctor before they set foot on the grounds.

These videos should be simple and concise and shouldn’t be much longer than a minute or two at the most. You’ll be able to acclimate people to the surroundings as well as show off any amenities that are meant to help keep their visit safe and secure.

Educational Videos

All of the jargon that comes along with a medical procedure or doctor's visit can be daunting to read and even harder to visualize. Going through some simple educational videos is an excellent way to help familiarize patients, who may be new or nervous, with some of the procedures they'll encounter at the office.

Branch out from the real-life open-heart surgeries and stick to simple explanations of procedures and tools! This can help put people at ease without putting them off their dinner with a look inside another human being. Use props, songs, and simple examples to keep things relevant for everyone watching.

Use this time to share some tips and tricks to help keep people healthy or safe or even help them boost their health at home without heading to the doctor. These quick videos are easy to share and pass around among friends and may even have the chance to become viral for anyone who wants to pursue TikTok marketing!

Share simple tips about how to exercise properly, build a healthy meal, tips for staying healthy after an operation, and even some simple tips on when to schedule doctor's visits and how! All of these things can make patients' visits to your practice more comfortable and less scary.

Tips for Marketing with Videos

Creating a great video goes far beyond just a good idea! There are several things you’ll want to keep in mind as you’re planning out your viral video for your practice!

- Hire a professional, if possible

- Use good lighting 

- You MUST have high-quality audio. Invest in a high-quality mic.  

- Shoot in landscape mode

- Prepare a script before you start

When you bring all these elements together, you’ll boost your practice more than a dense article or even written bios. Get started and keep going! Check out other practice videos on Youtube. You can emulate, but you want your personality and practice personality to shine through.  

If you’re not the on-screen type, don’t discount video marketing altogether. There’s someone in your office that will take on the challenge. Bring up the idea at your next staff meeting and you might be surprised. Offer up some additional incentives like an Amazon gift card. Good videos will pay dividends for years to come.