VNG Marketing Strategies

Best Methods for Promoting Your VNG Videonystagmography Practice

Marketing your VNG practice is a crucial factor to attracting and retaining vestibular patients. I've compiled a basic overview of what I consider to be the best methods for promoting clinics who conduct VNG testing and vestibular rehabilitation. Please keep in mind, this is a general guideline of where to start or where you should consider increasing your existing marketing strategies.

Putting off starting or updating your marketing strategies, hiring inexpensive, inexperienced web developers and others is not likely to get the results you truly need. Look for a professional who has years of experience with not only marketing, but especially promoting medical professionals and can provide references and examples of the work they have done for other clients similar to your practice.

Ensure you are compliant with all copyright laws regarding your images, content and intellectual property. Every word and image must be your own original work or you may purchase stock photography and line art illustrations from a trusted and reputable company that sells royalty-free images.

Set-up systems to know where your new patients are originating. Inquire whether they found you from an ad, online search engine, referral, health fair or somewhere else. It is important to measure your marketing efforts so you can continue programs that are especially productive.

Web Site Online Presence

Most important and the very first place to start is your web site. Not only is it your silent salesperson 24/7, it must provide current and thorough information that is easy to navigate. If your web site is non-existent, doesn't rank well with organic search engines, is incomplete, difficult to navigate or doesn't provide easily understood information, your existing or future vestibular patients will look elsewhere.

Example of semi custom brochure from Secure Health, Inc. Copyright 2015 to 2020. All rights reserved

Investing in your web site is investing in the health of your practice. It is extremely important to get it right. Web sites are complex, living entities, so that means they need ongoing attention, consistent care and upkeep to do their best work. Visual appeal, good design, well-written content and quality, supporting images most certainly make a difference. If your web site isn't appealing or performing well, then it's time to take a look at your competition near and far, evaluate what is and isn't working for them and seek a qualified third party to assist with your web site goals and online presence.

Marketing Collateral

Presenting a concise, coordinated, consistent message throughout your web site and on your marketing collateral is essential for promoting your practice. Your marketing program shouldn't look pieced together because everything was created over the course of several years during different phases and looks of your practice's identity.

Your medical entity is a brand and needs to have pleasing colors, fonts, a logo and message that all explain your practice's purpose. The objective is for zero confusion about who you are, what you do, where and when to find you and how you can help your vestibular patients. Your marketing collateral projects your image to the community and the quality of the pieces should reflect the quality of your health care services.

Your logo, web site, phone number and other contact information must be easily visible on anything that goes into print. I recommend a combination of all of the items below:

Business and referral cards: Print on both sides with bullet point highlights of your services, including your vestibular program.

Postcards: Mail postcards featuring the benefits of your vestibular services to existing and prospective patients, plus display them in a rack card holder within easy reach as a take-away from your clinic and community outreach efforts.

Posters: Framed posters within your clinic get attention and can effectively promote your vestibular services with clean design and simple messages about balance disorders and falls prevention.

Brochures: Tri-fold brochures have three panels which provides more space to explain in greater detail your balance-related services. Brochures are helpful when sending letters of introduction to physicians and organizations from whom you are seeking referrals.

Banners: Eye-catching banners highlighting a simple message such as, "Worried abut falling? We offer balance evaluations" if you have space to put them on full display in a highly visible exterior area of your clinic.

Letters of Introduction: If you don't already have a letter of introduction of yourself and vestibular services, now is the time to create one or review the one you have. Keep it to one page with hard-working copy that gets right to the point. Send your letters on a regular basis to potential referring physicians and related medical entities, in addition to other community leaders who may find your services of benefit. This includes skilled nursing facility (SNF) directors and administrators, groups who work with the elderly and persons at risk of falling as well as sports teams/organizations with potential for baseline TBI screenings and treatment.

Social Media

Social media includes free content on platforms such as Linked In, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, as well as paid ads on the same types of platforms. 

Recognize your limitations when considering creating "free" content on social media. If you don't have the staff, time or resources to invest in creating a quality blog, social media page or email newsletter, then don't do it. Presenting content that isn't well thought out or is produced inconsistently is not going to make a good impression. Free isn't really free when it takes away valuable time that could be better invested into improving core programs such as your web site and printed collateral.

When buying ads on social media platforms, take the time to personally learn about the various types of ads, pricing and options. By investigating what is available, you can make a better informed buying decision. This isn't the time to delegate to someone else because no one will spend your money as wisely as you do.

Paid social media may be a great option for practices that need the social media platforms to do the work for them. By that, I mean the social media platform will match your online ad with the targeted search words that you designate. You will want to choose search term words and phrases that you believe your future patients will use to find you. As an example, you'll set up specific terms such as "help with vertigo," "dizziness," "treatment for balance problems," and so forth, as well as geographic parameters to keep the ads refined to your local area.

Your ad should appear when someone types one of the search terms. The objective is that visitors click on the ad to visit your website and your account will be charged for the service based on the click-throughs. You establish a daily budget and once the budget is exhausted, your ad won't appear again until the following day.

A starting daily budget could be as low as $5 to test the social media platform for a few weeks. If you get good results, increase your budget to $10 or more per day, but always measure where your new leads are coming from and compare with where your money was spent. There is no point in running paid ads of any kind unless you have a solid method in place to know if the ads are producing results.

lf you don't know where to begin with paid social media ads, Google is a solid choice. Google is by far the most popular search engine and they are well established with assisting new clients to create successful ad campaigns.

Advertising: Print, Radio, Television

Media advertising campaigns are wonderful for practices with larger budgets. Certainly consider investing under the proper circumstances, but not until you have your core basics properly set up: web site and printed collateral.

Consult with the advertising vendors to create the best advertising mix for your budget. They are the experts and will help you maximize your dollar spend. Some may even be willing to create your print or radio ad for you when you schedule a decent campaign with them. Their goal is your success so that you can continue to successfully work together with a long term relationship.

Printed advertising includes local newspapers, magazines, grocery cart ads, "money" magazines that are entirely ads and other options. Don't overlook advertising in local or regional programs of sports and entertainment productions. 

Radio and television are more expensive than print and are typically major four and five figure investments. When considering print, radio and television, you will need to invest in an entire campaign for a period of time to achieve market awareness.

Remember, repetition is key. If you aren't planning to run an ongoing media campaign, it would be wiser to scale back to a level that works for your budget, which may be your core web and printed materials, plus some paid social media. From there at some point your practice may grow to the point of including additional media, but you'll want to work up to that in due time. 

Semi-Custom Printed Collateral from Secure Health, Inc.

Secure Health, Inc. offers assistance with semi-custom printed marketing materials that are specifically geared to attracting vestibular patients. Because we have invested years of expertise developing the proprietary marketing collateral, we ask that potential clients agree not to infringe our copyrighted materials.

If you have questions or just want to talk about this post or you have any other questions, please contact Secure Health, Inc.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Lana Scherer
Marketing Director, Secure Health, Inc.
260-418-6835 / [email protected]