Most of the time we focus on what we should be doing for online marketing and how those things might benefit your practice. At the same time, there are tons of things that you should not be doing that can potentially hurt your practice. Now’s the time to take a step back, assess your overall online marketing plan, and start to do some clean up if you’re making any of these disastrous mistakes!
Never Set It and Forget It
This tip should already be a no brainer, but you should never get yourself into a situation where you’re just letting your online marketing campaigns coast. Some marketers will say that they’re going to front-load your SEO and do everything at one time so you’re set for the future, but that’s completely impossible. Google makes frequent algorithm updates and people change the way they search. Because of this, you need to have someone consistently making adjustments to your site to match any of those changes. For example, if Google rolls out an algorithm today, you have a small window of time to make sure that you’ve adjusted your site accordingly. If you let it go on for too long, you risk losing any of the benefits from that successfully front-loaded work.
Although SEO is one of the more common areas where this issue occurs, it’s not limited to it by any means. In fact, your content, design, and more can all negatively impact your online presence if left alone for too long. Just like a house, your site requires some curb appeal to your audience and the search engines, so don’t neglect it for too long!
Never Leave Gaps in Time
If your favorite restaurant in town hasn’t had their lights on or people in the building for a few weeks, you probably assume they’re closed, right? Well, your online presence (namely social media) is no different. If you have gaps in time where you’re not posting or writing, people might assume that your practice is either slowing down or phasing out, and that’s not what you want. Even for new potential patients that may be searching for you, a gap may indicate your inability to be consistent, and that’s not a good characteristic to have.
You should be posting on a normal basis and blogging continuously. If you aren’t doing this now, you should start. If you have been doing this and then decided to take a little break, you should jump back in as quickly as possible. It’s almost more of a detriment for a practice to stop in the middle of a consistent campaign rather than to never have started at all. If you’re unable to make the time at your practice to keep this consistency, reach out to Practis to help!
Never Keyword Stuff
If you’d asked a marketer 10 years ago how to get on the first page of Google, they probably would’ve said “it’s all about the keywords!” and then stuffed your site with phrases and location tags in the most obvious spots. While that statement may still be (semi) true, the times have changed and there are better ways of going about placing keywords in your site. You should still be doing your research and finding solid phrases and words, but you should be thinking about the proper flow of content on your site. Google is smart and will understand what you’re trying to rank for without it sounding robotic. In fact, if you do stuff your page with dozens of repetitive words, you’ll probably lose placement on the results pages and end up hurting yourself in the long run.
If you read a page of content and find yourself even briefly thinking that there is too much repetition, it should be rewritten. Always put yourself in the patient’s shoes when it comes to your content. If it doesn’t read well to you, it probably won’t to them either!
Never Forget Your Analytics
Remember that agency or marketer that told you that front-loading was okay? They probably also told you that your analytics didn’t need to be checked frequently, and that’s just beyond wrong. When we say analytics, we mean everything. Form submissions, calls, clicks on the site, sessions, users, impressions, and more. They’re all equally important and can tell you a strong story about your site’s performance. If you’re not checking them, you’re probably either thinking your site is performing better than it is, or you’re not using it to its full advantage.
You should be checking all of your sources connected to your site at least once a month, if not far more. In fact, for things related to conversions, you should be checking them daily. The more you get to know the ebbs and flows of your site, the more you’ll understand your patients’ activity. This can give you valuable insight and let you create stronger marketing campaigns to attract more new patients!
Never Go Cheap
In some cases you can buy the cheap option and be okay. In fact, in a lot of cases it’s more reliable. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for online marketing. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go with the most expensive option either. The important thing is to understand what will be done and how it will be gauged. If you get a lot of insight and are able to see how and where results are coming from, you should be in good hands. However, if you’re dealing with a situation in which you’re doing all of the things we just said not to do, you might want to get out of that fast.
If you’re interested in learning more about the absolute NOs of online marketing, contact Practis today! We’ll help you get your practice on the right track and give you some important tips on how to keep everything running smoothly.