It is not always practical to engage a professional marketing agency to promote your business in the online and offline marketing realms, especially for newly formed businesses where budgets are often tight. Therefore, we have compiled our top do-it-yourself online marketing suggestions.
The following ideas are perfect for most small businesses with a geographically localised, targeted or specific niche markets. In this post we have tailored our suggestions specifically to the medical and therapy industry, such as doctors surgeries, GP’s, physiotherapists, councillors, dentists, psychologists and various other medical practitioners.
While they are not full instructional guides (which we may provide in a future article), the aim is to provide an introduction to the options available. Providers themselves often make available instructional videos, step by step setup guides or varying levels of support.
1. Setup a Google business listing
A Google business listings is a must for any business looking to develop a great online presence for a location specific business.
Through Google business listings you are able to control how your business appears in local search results such as ‘Doctors Sydney’ and manage things like images of your location, address, phone numbers, opening hours and more.
It is certainly an important step in letting the internet's most popular search engine know who and where you are, what exactly you do and ensure all the information is 100% accurate.
Visit Google’s information page to find out more and set up a business listing.
www.google.com/business/
2. Ask for Reviews on Google
Once you have a Google business listing setup, there is now a method for your customers to review your service directly from within the Google search results. While some see this as a negative feature, being proactive and prompting your happy customers to review your business will always outway any negative comments that may crop up in the future.
Having your Google review and the star rating appear in search results is an important piece of information potential customers will use to evaluate your brand against others, providing an instant level of trust before they even visit your website.
Reviews are sometimes difficult to obtain from your customers. You can ask nicely but people often forget to complete the review after they leave your premises. One idea would be to create a flyer with instructions on how they can review your business, with some type of offer such as free movie tickets or a discount off their next appointment, once they have completed a review online.
Once you start to gain customer reviews, adding them to your website on the most relevant service page, a rotating testimonial area or a dedicated testimonial page is a must. Having these present can be the difference between a potential customer choosing your business over a competitor.
In the rare event you do receive a negative comment, the Google business listings console allows you to engage with the user either publically in the way of a return comment, or privately to resolve the issue and hopefully provide a revised review and higher star rating.
3. Submit to Online Directories
While most users find local businesses directly from search results on Google, popular online directories still play a role in creating a good base of links to your website, which Google can use as a gauge to how popular your website is, some very popular and trusted directories may even start to generate direct traffic as well.
Popular online directories specific to your industry usually yield the best results from both a direct traffic and popularity point of view, so, depending on the price tag, they may be worthwhile trialing for a couple of months.
Here are some health industry specific examples:
Other general directories, which cover almost all possible types of industries can be worthwhile too, again if anything, to show Google that you have some high quality directories linking through to your site.
Here is a list of some of the most popular business directories available in Australia, some offer free listings, while others are paid, or have premium options available.
Not every directory will suit your needs, but we definitely recommend submitting your details and website to at least a couple of the above to build a good foundation of links.
4. Join Industry Specific Associations
Like the above mentioned industry specific directories, becoming a member of prominent and well recognised industry associations can be of great benefit to your business.
Displaying some of the most popular and recognised association logos on your website helps to show your visitors an instant professionalism and authority within your industry, which all helps in the trust building process.
Generally assoiations will also list you as a member on their website, which usually includes a further high quality and industry specific link back to your website, which Google loves.
5. Facebook Company Page
Another staple of the online business presence is the Facebook company page. The setup is quite similar to the Google business listing page and you can even use the same information and images across both profiles to streamline the setup.
www.facebook.com/pages/create/
Once you have setup your Facebook page don’t forget to share it with all your friends and ask them to review your company page with a star rating, which works in a similar fashion to the Google reviews mentioned previously.
Facebook offers a number of paid advertising solutions to help promote your business outside your circle of friends. From as little as $50, you can promote either posts or your company page itself with some very powerful targeting options including age, location, language, job title and much, much more.
www.facebook.com/about/ads
www.facebook.com/business/
6. Google Adwords Express
Gaining a top Google listing can be a complicated, time consuming and expensive process to undertake, which may take many months before you start to see good rankings and significant traffic coming through to your website. It is often a process best completed by an internet marketing company which specialises in the process, to gain the best results.
To take advantage of the large volume of daily searches Google processes for services just like yours, there is a solution available immediately, and it is called Google Adwords Express.
In short, Adwords allows you to bid on particular keywords, say ‘Dentist Parramatta’ for example and have your ad appear on the search results page for that keyword.
You can set a budget, let’s say $5 per day. You are only charged by Google when a user actually clicks on your ad and visits your website.
Google have tried to make the setup process as easy as possible with Adwords Express and offer phone support to help with your first ad campaign.
www.google.com.au/adwords/express/
7. Other Social Networks
Other than Facebook, there are a number of other social networks that you may wish to setup and maintain, based on your specific business structure or marketing habits. You don’t need to be on every platform, just for the sake of being on them, but choose platforms where your potential customers frequent and you are comfortable posting to regularly.
Here are some ideas for the more popular platforms:
Instagram, Pinterest & Flickr
As these are all image based, they may be more useful for the posting of lifestyle type images. For example a physiotherapist posting fitness images or visual tips for exercise, a dietitian posting images of health food choices or recipes, or a councillor posting inspiring images or motivational quotes.
Twitter
With a limit of 140 characters, Twitter is useful to express short and to the point facts your target audience may be interested in. The platform can also be useful to promote links to more detailed articles you host on your website, for example fact sheets or information on specific procedures.
Youtube & Vimeo
These video platforms are great if you are interested in producing video content for your target market, such as informational videos. Youtube in particular can be very powerful, due to the fact it is owned by Google, to build popularity of your website.
4th October 2016 
Shamus 
