1. Survey: Why Do Consumers Leave Reviews?
Mike Blumenthal said it best: Survey: Why Do Consumers Leave Reviews?
Have you ever wondered what motivates your patients to leave reviews? In a recent survey conducted by Mike Blumenthal and Get Five Stars, they found that, in general, consumers leave reviews to reward excellent service.
Interestingly, a majority of respondents (33%) said that they leave reviews only when the experience was “really good” or “really bad.” In other words, unless you offered either the best or the worst patient experience, don’t expect a review from a majority of your patients.
Why This Matters
I encourage you to take all survey results with a grain of salt- this one included. Since the survey wasn’t multiple-choice (respondents were asked to answer: When and why do you typically leave a review for a local business?), we can assume that there was some subjectivism in both the responses from the consumers and the categorizing of responses by Mike’s team. Ultimately, they had to categorize responses on their own; the participates didn’t do it themselves.
But, nonetheless, the evidence brought forth by Mike and his team is pretty compelling.
Over half (58%) of respondents said that they left reviews when the service was “really good,” which emphasizes the importance of providing a superior patient experience.
More importantly, only 5% of respondents said they left a review to inform the business. Wow! And if they’re not leaving them to inform you of a good or bad experience, they’re leaving them to inform your patients.
As Mike suggests, this is just another reason you need to implement a process for improving your patients’ experience. That 5% cohort emphasizes the importance of initiating dialogue with your patients because, as the results show, they won’t.
2. FB Launches Lead Ads for Businesses
Facebook said it best: Lead Ads: Connecting Business with People in Just Two Taps
Facebook recently added Lead Ads to its advertising options for businesses. Now you can gain subscribers for your email list, promote downloads without landing pages, give price quotes, and sign up patients for events, directly from a Facebookform built into the ad.
You can customize Lead Ad forms to your liking, and the ad itself can target custom audiences.
Why This Matters
The biggest opportunity Lead Ads present for your medical practice is the ability to build your email subscriber list without ever leaving the FB ecosystem. When patients come to Facebook, they intend on socializing, not leaving FB to enter your lead generation funnel. Now you can initiate your lead generation funnel directly from FB.
Also, most practices don’t staff web developers or designers to create custom landing pages for downloadable assets or email newsletters, so promoting either proved difficult on FB without a web page to send them traffic. Now, you don’t need a landing page. Just fire up a Lead Ad and viola.
3. Twitter No Longer Allowing Public Access to Share Counts
King Content said it best: Twitter Freaks Everyone Out
Twitter announced that beginning on November 20th, 2015 they will no longer allow public API access to their share counts. Yep, say goodbye to tweet counts.
The fodder from the marketing community coalesces into one consensus: that Twitter wants businesses and users to log in to their actual Twitter account more often as opposed to posting through third-party software or viewing tweets from third-party apps like Flipboard.
Why?
If you can get the Twitter experience without ever logging into Twitter, then why would you ever log in to Twitter (ahem, and click on ads)? Owning the data also means Twitter can drip you, the business owner, with incentives and nudges to pay for advertising. The more we log in, the higher chance they have of convincing us to purchase ads. And the more users visit Twitter, the more they’ll click on those ads.
They are a publically held company, after all- one whose stock has plummeted as of late.
Why This Matters
Twitter did confirm that your social share widget won’t show a “0” after November 20th if you have Twitter shares, but it won’t show the Tweet count either. So depending on which social share widget you use for your site, results could vary from not having the Twitter section at all to some form of error message in its stead.
The marketing community splits into two schools of thought on how this change will affect your website: one school of thought says that the lack of social proof will lead to less engagement and less trust while the other school of thought claims that social proof is overrated.
Social proof is not overrated (and there’s no shortage of psychological research to back that claim). So will a lack of social proof mean that you get fewer shares? Likely. Will fewer shares hurt your bottom line? Unlikely.
Where you’ll feel the most pinch is when researching trending topics on Twitter based on shares. Since you will no longer have access to this data, you will no longer be able to find out which articles got the most shares.
4. MOZ Publishes Their Annual Local Search Ranking Factors for 2015
David Mihm said it best: Announcing the 2015 Local Search Ranking Factors
MOZ published their annual Local Search Ranking Factors, a comprehensive survey that asked 48 participates from the United States, U.K. and Canada to rank the influence ofspecific search engine factors on website rankings in both local organic results and Local Pack results.
The results? Not much has changed since last year.
Google continues to value quality, the influence Google+ continues to dissipateresults has disappeared (if it ever existed to begin with), citations still matter, and behavior signals have increased in importance.
Why This Matters
Welp, Google+ has officially bitten the dust… hard. You never know what Google will do with the fledgling social network, but if I were a betting man, I would wager that we’ve already seen the Golden Years of Google Plus.
Quality links still hold the most value, followed by on-page signals, Google My Business signals, and NAP consistency/citation quality and volume.
Overall, the rules of the game haven’t changed since last year; they’ve only become harder to game. As Google’s search algorithms mature, they’re better able to discern true quality from the different local search ranking factors.
If you haven’t at least cleaned up your local citations (you can scan your citations using our free tool here) and made sure your Google My Business page adheres to Google’s guidelines for doctors, you’re missing out on the low-hanging fruit of SEO.
5. Content Marketing Institute Released Short Film: The Story of Content
Content Marketing Institute said it best: The Story of Content
Content Marketing Institute releases the first documentary focused on content marketing as a discipline. In the 45-minute short, the world’s most reputable content marketers discuss the evolution of storytelling as a form of connecting with consumers.
“The Story of Content: Rise of the New Marketing, a new documentary by the Content Marketing Institute, is the first comprehensive film of its kind for the industry. It explores the evolution of content marketing through the eyes of the world’s biggest leading brands such as Red Bull, Kraft and Marriott; and marketing influencers, including Joe Pulizzi, Ann Handley, Scott Stratten, Jay Baer and more. Featuring case studies from early pioneers to today’s marketing innovators, you’ll learn how content marketing has been–and will continue– to change business and media forever.” -CMI
Why This Matters
Though most think of content marketing as something that began in recent years with the onset of the Internet, The Story of Content proves that it dates back to the beginning of commerce- since man first decided to sell something to someone else, he used stories to communicate his value proposition.
Content marketing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and for good reason: stories are the building blocks of humanity. So stop thinking of content marketing as the latest marketing trend or shiny new toy, and start embracing a culture of content in your medical practice. Today, you can’t afford not to.
Did we miss anything? If we did, then you’re up, Newshound (share in the comments)
Erving
Incredible Marketing
