Optimizing Your Health Care Practice YouTube Channel
One of the most challenging things about marketing a health care or medical spa practice is establishing a real connection between the providers and their patients. Medicine is a highly technical and complex discipline, requiring years of specialized study. This gap of understanding creates a distance between doctor and patient, so that even a patient who likes their doctor’s personality does not necessarily understand why that doctor’s service is superior to any of the other health care providers vying for their business. It is possible to bridge that distance, to some extent, through content marketing. Informative blogs promoted on social media can go a long way towards educating patients and making them feel as though they are personally involved in their health care decisions. However, perhaps the most popular and effective way to engage a real doctor-patient connection is through your business YouTube channel.
Although there are many video sharing platforms out there, like Vimeo or Twitch, and each individual user has his or her own personal preference, none have the broad reach and instant name recognition of YouTube. More than 1.8 billion people actively use YouTube every month and approximately one hundred hours of video content are uploaded to the site every minute. It is actually the second largest search engine on the web, processing more than 3 billion searches a month, and it is estimated that nearly 70% of YouTube viewers use the service to inform purchasing decisions. By making YouTube an integral part of a video marketing strategy, health care providers can explain complex information in an easily understandable forum, allow patients exclusive “behind the scenes” access, and give patients a sense of personal, comfortable familiarity with the doctor and his or her staff. Establishing a YouTube channel for your business is easy, but there are a few tricks that you need to keep in mind if you want it to perform its best.
Brand Your Channel with Metadata
If you have ever worked towards improving your website’s ranking on search engine result pages, you know that sometimes the metadata you write about your content is just as important as the content itself. YouTube offers a number of options for customizing your channel and you can use those options to effectively promote your brand. Putting a searchable keyword in your channel name or in the first 48 characters of your “about us” description can significantly improve your on-page search visibility. You can also encourage interaction by customizing your video thumbnails or by embedding “share” and “like” buttons. Don’t forget to make your descriptions engaging and relevant by using vivid descriptive language and including the year it was filmed as well.
Don’t Skimp on Production Values
The world of digital marketing is incredibly fast-paced and competitive, and with all the web content out there you need to do a little extra to get your work noticed. YouTube’s top ranking factor is watch time, so you can improve your ranking by getting people to watch longer. Analytics show that most viewers decide within the first fifteen seconds whether to watch a video or not, so make sure that your opening both catches attention and arouses interest. The average length of page one YouTube videos is 14 minutes and 50 seconds, so don’t be afraid to go into a little bit of depth. A medical professional who can explain complicated information in a fun and interesting way, preferably with demonstrations and visual aids, is exactly the sort of thing that YouTube watchers like to see. However, our own experience has also shown that quick, personal videos, with doctors providing simple answers to frequently asked questions or brief demonstrations, prove to be extremely popular as well. In general, it is good to keep things simple, as amateur videos often get more attention than videos that are professionally produced. However, even simple, low-cost additions like video cards and end screens can provide helpful context for your viewers or encourage further interaction. A simple call to action or a request for viewer comments can work well with any social media marketing campaign.
YouTube reaches more eighteen to forty-nine year olds than any broadcast or cable television network, so it is an important element of any marketing strategy. However, for a health care provider, it has the added benefit of bridging the gap between doctor and patient and enriching a genuine long-term relationship. If you are interested in learning how a team of dedicated marketing professionals can help you develop your health care or medical spa practice, don’t hesitate to contact McCauley Marketing Services today. Be sure to also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to keep informed on all the latest marketing news.