Kickstart Your Social Media Marketing for 2020

• Goals force accountability for healthcare social media marketers. When you set goals, you are more easily able to list the specific steps you plan to take and explain the rationale you plan for each campaign. They also inform your budget for boosted posts and PPC keyword campaigns.

This goal setting step is where I observe the greatest failures in medical tourism marketing. Most professionals and facilities jump straight to “lead generation” without a product or any international or out-of-area brand awareness. What’s worse is that the providers expect revenue and lead sourcing to happen without investment. They decide to deploy a strategy that involves marketing through medical tourism referral agents who market a variety of providers in destinations all around the world. Exactly how do they expect increased brand awareness to occur amidst a cacophony of providers whose names aren’t revealed upfront out of fear that they’ll lose a commission? 

There isn’t any brand engagement for the provider or facility because they aren’t the one marketing. If the referral agent doesn’t set these goals and respond to engagement opportunities, it isn’t going to happen. And any growth of brand audience will be with the referral agent not the physician, dentist or facility.  And finally, if the provider identity is kept under a veil of secrecy until the prospect signs a contract with the referral agent, there won’t be increased traffic to the provider’s website. The whole business of medical tourism lead generation through “facilitators” or referral sources is a failure strategy if the goals are misaligned (or never set in the first place), not to mention illegal in several countries including the USA, Canada, Germany, UK and elsewhere.  The worst part of this anecdotal example is that this month, I will probably get 40 or so requests from surgeons and other lead generators in foreign countries asking me to “send them patients”. They offer me illegal contracts for as much as 30% of their fees on closed sales of medical tourism cases. I don’t refer cases. I don’t break U.S. laws, and I train my clients not to use referral agents and to do their own marketing. Is this lost in translation or are they hoping against hope? Or don’t they care? 

My social media marketing project proposal for healthcare clients

If after having read this article, you decide you’d like my help to kickstart your social media presence for 2020, set a time and claim your free 15 minute introductory chat. There’s no obligation to go past that 15 minutes, but to set your expectations, you’ll be doing most of the talking, not me. In that time, be prepared to share your concerns, and a brief history of what you’ve tried and how it worked (or didn’t). Also have in mind specific goals and duties you want to hire and what, if any responsibilities you’ll retain on your side of our collaboration. 

Be prepared to articulate your goals like the 5 above-listed or some other goals you want to achieve and by when.  That leads us to talk about your timeline. I don’t have time to fully manage your social media, but I may be willing to direct the work of others as the project manager. I am also willing to source other freelancers for you at my hourly fee and direct and check their work and advise them. Once the timeline is scoped out, we can talk fees and budget. I cannot quote fees until I know what the work will be and can estimate how long it will take. I cannot estimate budget without the diagnostics of what’s needed and who will create content, images, and other assets needed to have things to post. If you push me, my only option is to ballpark worst case scenario which may be a buffered high estimate which could frighten you away. I’d rather not.

The scope of work will include a posting schedule and content creation investments. Other work performed may be brand keyword and hashtag monitoring and then creating the recommendations about what to do with the findings. Analytics and reporting are another component to the scope of work. One doesn’t simply start analyzing. The tools must first be put on your website and APIs installed to trigger the analytic counts so they can be measured. Typically, reports are created monthly, however at first, you may feel more comfortable with more frequent reports to watch the progress happen more closely.  Other details we must discuss in our 15 minute chat include your expectations about project milestones and deadlines you’d like to set. This is how success is measured in social media marketing.  

For example, some of the milestones could include:

• 5% Web-driven caseload increase for a certain surgical procedure by End of Q3 2020 

How will we measure? By using a unique telephone number of URL. Otherwise, the efforts aren’t trackable. 

• A percentage boost in Facebook or Instagram engagement ratios by a certain deadline without using purchased engagement.

Google Analytics must be set up and tied to triggering events on your website and social channels in order to measure engagement ratios to ensure you’re reaching and interacting with more customers per month and have the data the back up your milestones. While Google Analytics is free, the time required to set up the triggers, monitor, and create formatted reports must be paid for with any firm. 

• Launch A New Campaign by March 31, 2020 

Launching a new campaign isn’t a quick request and fulfillment. In reality, it requires time to complete various campaign stages such as kickoff, creative development, asset approval, launch, monitor and review and report generation, decision and continuation.

We’ll also need to discuss the terms of engagement and payment schedules, and who will be my go-to point person with the authority to spend money, provide a credit card, make decisions and receive reports and recommendations.

That’s a lot to cover in 15 minutes, but I do this all the time. What I want you to glean from this is how that 15 minutes leaves no time for blind consulting and recommendations from thin air or from past projects. Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. First you decide if you want to work with me, then I decide if I can help you. If that’s a match, the time I spend with you starts with researching and making and executing on my recommendations. Then we test with campaigns and evaluate outcomes.  We start small and expand as we get to know one another.  

Please keep in mind that a written proposal for a small solo surgeon looks very different than the proposal for a hospital or ambulatory surgery center or DME supplier. I don’t bake cookies and I don’t use cookie cutter proposals and pricing. You’ll need the above information at hand whether you work with me or another similarly experienced healthcare marketing expert with the regulatory compliance knowledge and clinical background to provide healthcare marketing services using social media.