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Video Marketing for Doctors, Dentists & Healthcare Practices

Connect and engage with patients using video marketing

The Patient Acquisition Funnel

Doctors and medical practices create websites, use social media, and send email newsletters to let patients know where they are and what they do.

Engaging with patients and marketing to them can be done through those channels. However, video marketing has been found to dramatically increase performance metrics as well as providing ancillary benefits such as enhancing your reputation and improving patient engagement.

Understanding The Patient Acquisition Funnel

Video marketing sounds obvious; marketing with video. In a marketing funnel in relation to a medical practice, patients will generally follow this journey:

Awareness

The patient is introduced to your practice via your website, social media, referral from a family member or friend, or a referral from another doctor.

Education

In this stage patients are considering your practice. A referral is powerful whether it’s from someone they know or from a doctor. However, they are still going to look you up and learn everything that they can about you before they feel comfortable enough to call your office.

Action

The patient based on their online research makes a decision, yea or nay, about your practice. Any information that they find about you and your practice will come from a variety of sources – your website, your videos, doctor review websites, social media, message boards, etc.

Appointment

Once the patient feels confident about what level of service you provide they will then make a “purchase” by coming to see you

Retention

If the doctor, nurses, and staff delight the patient, the patient will return giving you repeat business, they are likely to provide word of mouth referrals to their friends and family, and happy patients are also more likely to go online and write a positive review of you and your practice.

What is Video Marketing?

If you stop and think about what it would take to encourage a potential patient to take the next step in the sales funnel you’ll start to realize what video marketing actually is.

Video marketing is a vehicle that moves someone down the medical sales funnel and helps to convert a lead into a bona fide patient.

You have a website because it’s like hanging an online shingle; it’s a brochure about you and your practice that anyone can access at any time.

Video marketing is your opportunity to impress a patient and convince them to click that “Make An Appointment” button on your website.

In the action stage of the funnel before the patient makes an appointment, video makes it a lot easier for you to educate them and prove that you are capable of handling any problem that they have.

INTERESTED IN USING VIDEO IN YOUR PRACTICE?

Why Video is an Important Component of Practice Marketing

Using video is important for a variety of reasons. On one side of the coin video can boost your website and marketing metrics and on the other side it’s a great way to educate and build trust.

And according to research on video creation for content marketing done by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) here are the top reasons why marketers create video:

Create brand awareness …………………………………… 77%
Social media/community engagement ………………… 63%
Communicate brand story …………………………………. 58%
Lead generation/top of funnel…………………………….. 51%
Customer testimonials/reviews…………………………… 41%
Sales/sales enablement …………………………………… 40%
Recording live events ………………………………………. 37%
Lead nurturing/mid-funnel ………………………………… 36%
External training/support/help …………………………… 30%
Conversion …………………………………………………….. 28%
Internal communication…………………………………….. 23%
Other ………………………………………………………………. 5%

How Video Helps Your Website and Marketing Efforts

To sum it up in a sentence, video helps your website and marketing efforts by increasing engagement.

Videos are a prominent, eye-catching piece of real estate in any format that you use them – website, landing page, email, or social media – which will always encourage more clicks and more interest.

Vimeo, one of the popular video-sharing websites, says that their own “marketing team has found that videos increase our click-through rate (CTR) by an average of 40% when used on Facebook and LinkedIn.

With video you can also expect a boost to your website with:

  • Increased visitors time on page
  • Increased click-through-rates when videos are used in email newsletters
  • Increased traffic – websites with video see more traffic than those that don’t use video
  • Increased patient conversion rate

In this way video becomes an automated patient lead generation tool by helping to convince patients to fill out a form whether it’s a contact us form, make an appointment form, or any gated downloadable resources that you may have a on your site like a medical guide or eBook that you’ve written.

Wistia, a video hosting and analytics company, has the ability to embed forms directly in their videos and they have “noticed that videos with a form within the first 20% of the video received a 43% conversion rate” in their video marketing automation studies.

Consider these numbers below from GoAnimate, a cloud-based, animated video creation platform, who asked other marketers about the success rates of video for their list of video marketing statistics:

Videos in Email

When marketers included a video in an email, the click-through rate increased by 200% – 300% – Forrester

Using the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates 19%, CTRs by 65% and reduces unsubscribes by 26% – Brainshark

Including video in introductory emails reduces subscriber opt-outs by 75% – Eloqua

Videos in email increase click-thru-rate by 55%, resulting in 44% more time spent reading emails and yielding 24% higher conversion rate – Socialmouths

However, according to the survey and Socialmouth, only 23% of marketers are even using this tactic of embedded videos in their email marketing campaigns.

Video Marketing ROI and Conversion Rates

64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. – comScore

52% of marketers name video as the type of content with the best ROI
– Brainshark

70% of marketing professionals report that video converts better than any other medium
– Vidyard

However, according to Kantar Media, “Only 24% of brands are using online video to market to consumers.”

How Video Helps Your Website

Visitors who view videos stay on web sites an average of 2 minutes longer than those who don’t view videos. – comScore

Homepage videos are shown to increase conversion rates by 20% or more. – ReelSEO

Using video on landing pages can increase conversion by 80% – Unbounce

How Video Educates and Builds Trust

There are times when people just want or need to read something to gain an understanding.

Other times video can be the best way to explain and communicate complex concepts and processes like a surgery. They can easily increase patient’s understanding of what action they need to take.

For example even a simple, routine outpatient procedure can seem daunting to a patient if they are confronted with a big page of content on your website when they’re trying to learn about it. A brief two minute video with the doctor explaining the procedure on the other hand, can condense that webpage full of text and quickly convey the concept with images or a demonstration.

Patients may find it daunting if they are presented with a lot of reading material just to learn about you, an injury, or service that they provide. Smartphone users like video as a quick way grasp an overview, for example.

Another very important reason to use video instead of, or in conjunction with, written content is that video helps to build trust. Video is one of the best ways to capture someone’s attention.

The human brain is hardwired to respond to faces and we think that we faces everywhere, even in everyday objects – “Doesn’t that cloud look like Abraham Lincoln?”

We respond to faces so much that there are now what’s known as the “Jennifer Aniston cells.

Back in 2005, Jennifer Aniston was the subject of a seminal piece of research conducted by neuroscientists at UCLA and Caltech.

They showed pictures of Jennifer to patients with epilepsy while they were undergoing surgery. During this surgery (which is done while the patient is awake) neurosurgeons implanted electrodes to measure electrical activity associated with seizures…As they showed the patients pictures of Jennifer, some brain cells in this area went crazy. These cells were coined “Jennifer Aniston cells,” as they responded to her face, and only her face. Pictures of random objects: nothing. Pictures of other people: nothing. Pictures of Jen’s whole body: nothing. These cells were only interested in Jennifer’s face.

Now, we can’t all look like Jennifer Aniston (it’s been reported that her health and beauty regimen can be measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) but main takeaway here is that video will humanize the patient experience, put a face to the name, and build trust and familiarity.

Videos will help patients feel something – video allows you to make an emotional connection with them. Consider these statistics from GoAnimate’s video marketing survey mentioned above:

Video increase people’s understanding of your product or service by 74% – Digital Information World

69% of smartphone users say videos are a perfect solution for smartphone viewing as it offers a quick way for consumers to grasp an overview of a product. – Syndacast

54% of senior executives share work-related videos with colleagues at least weekly. – ReelSEO

Types of Doctor Videos

Now that you why you should use video marketing we’ll explain the different types of videos that you can create.

The Content Marketing Institute breaks down videos for any type of business into three main categories:

  • Corporate
  • Marketing Campaign
  • Content Marketing

This is a great place to start as it will help you align the purpose of your videos with a targeted category.

Corporate videos are branding, meant to create a perception about the practice and generate awareness and can include videos of internal training, company events, speeches and anything that speaks to the culture of the practice.

Marketing campaign videos focus on the products and services that you offer and could resemble more of an advertisement that includes demonstrations and how-to’s that encourage patients to “buy” from you.

Content marketing videos tell a story with educational, entertaining, or thought leadership content that include a call to action that asks patients to subscribe to your content or attend an open house in your office.

Start With the Framework, Then Get Granular

Once you have your basic video framework in place with a targeted approach and some goals in mind, you can then take a deeper dive into the specific videos that you want to create.

Each of those three categories (corporate, marketing, content) could contain topics like:

  • Welcome Videos – Meet the practice, meet the doctor, welcome to our office / office tour
  • Success Videos – Patient testimonials, before and after demonstrations
  • Educational Videos – News and information, medical procedures, patient FAQ’s
  • Live Medical Procedures – The greatest show and tell there is, like Dr. Pimple Popper, for example

With a combination of these various types of videos you’ll be able to showcase your expertise and build trust with your patients as they get a chance to know you and what you provide before they even make an appointment and visit your office.

Sharing what you know and highlighting your office through video reinforces your branding efforts and can set you apart from your competition.

If you know that you provide an exceptional patient experience from the moment they step into your comfortable office, to the welcoming staff interactions, to your expertise and warm bedside manner then why not show that off with a few videos?

Tips to Make Great Doctor Videos

Whether you hire a professional, your aspiring filmmaker nephew, or you decide to shoot the video yourself you’ll want to keep these tips in mind to get a good finished product.

Even the best video content can be killed by poor audio, bad lighting, and sketchy video quality. Even if you hire a pro, don’t settle for something that doesn’t sit right with you know. Maybe you don’t know the particulars of what makes a great video but, you know it when you see it – go with your gut.

Amateur video looks surprisingly polished these days so you don’t have to spend a lot on equipment. In the right hands a few strategically placed lights, a good microphone, and an iPhone might be all that you need.

13 Tips to Make Great Doctor Videos

For a final product that you can be proud of, here’s an overview of what you should be considering when you’re making videos:

  1. Act naturally: You’re a real person, act like one and you’ll be perceived as relatable.
  2. Brevity is the soul of wit: Short videos are best, people have short attention spans.
  3. Get to the point: See brevity above. Be brief and get to the point right away, skip the lenghty intro.
  4. Include a Call to Action:  You’ve got their attention, now keep it. Encourage them to take the next step by visiting your website, making an appointment, or subscribing to more of your content.
  5. Brand your video: This not only informs viewers who is speaking to them, it will give all of your videos a consistent look and feel.
  6. Add music: Depending on the type of content, background music helps to entertain, captivate, and provide flow for the imagery.
  7. Optimize for mobile use: Just like your website, make sure videos are optimized for playback on multiple mobile platforms.
  8. Include captions: This is a good strategy to help optimize your videos for mobile. Captions allow viewers to watch your videos in noisy environments (on the subway) or quiet places when they don’t have headphones (at the library). The visual aspect of captions highlight important points and give people quotes to share on social media.
  9. Don’t use your camera’s built-in microphone: If you’re going to spend money on one thing, make it this – get a good wireless lapel mic or shotgun microphone. Viewers are less forgiving of poor audio than anything else.
  10. Tell a story: If you can evoke an emotional response froma  viewer (laughter, fear, reassurance) you’re more likely to get them to take some kind of action.
  11. Include a transcript: A full transcript of the video copy is good for SEO – it helps search engines index your content. It also helps to reinforce your message to viewers, allowing them to read what they just listened to and watched.
  12. Think of questions that your patients would ask: Know your audience. You’re not presenting a study to a symposium of doctors. Think of the FAQ’s your hear from your patients.
  13. To script or not to script: On one hand you don’t want to sound like a robot, on the other you don’t want to appear unprepared. Even if you’re great at speaking off the cuff, at minimum you have an outline of what you’re presenting and stick to it. Editing is your friend though, anything can be taken out that doesn’t quite fit.
INTERESTED IN USING VIDEO IN YOUR PRACTICE?

Where to Use Video in Your Marketing

You know what video marketing is, why it’s important, what types of videos you can create, and you have some guidelines on how to capture your the attention of your audience and get the most return out of your video content investment.

Now that your video is edited, perfected, and ready to share with the world there are a number of different places and platforms that you can distribute it on.

Your Website Pages

Sure, you website is an obvious location for video placement. However there are variety of pages that videos will work well on including:

  • Homepage:  Welcome to the practice, introductory video
  • Landing Pages:  Specialized landing pages with a video that explains specific offers or treatments that you direct patients to from email newsletters, social media, or other outreach efforts.
  • FAQ Page:  Frequently asked questions are perfect topics to create videos around. A short 1-2 explainer video is easily digestible for patients and can replace long-form text.
  • Treatment and Condition Pages:  Instead of trying to fully convey a procedure through writing, a video with demonstrations, anatomical models, or images can quickly provide a description.
  • Blog Posts:  If you maintain a blog, your videos can be reused again and again to augment the ongoing medical topics that you write about.

Social Media

Social media is one of video’s natural habitats. People love sharing videos. Top surgical videos get  millions of views from social sharing. Even local practices can benefit with views in the thousands from dozens to hundreds of social shares.

The trick is finding the right social networks to focus on – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and on and on. There are too many to list.

Monitor your profiles and see where you get the most engagement from patients. Focus your efforts there if you have limited time. It doesn’t hurt to maintain a presence on several platforms which can be made easier with bulk publishing tools like Buffer.

Social media video flowchart from Wistia:

social media flowchart

Email Marketing and Your Email Signature

Email Signatures

One place that you may have overlooked to include is your email signature. Obviously, doctor to doctor emails don’t need this kind of marketing but, emails to patients from staff (reminders, updates, etc.) can benefit from this.

In this email signature example from Wistia, this user saw good engagement:

With an 80% average engagement rate, 87% play rate, and over 100 plays, it’s pretty phenomenal to see how impactful this video is, and how many people actually take the time to watch the entire video.

Email signature video example:

video-signature

Email Marketing

I’ll refer back to the video marketing statistics curated by GoAnimate for why video works very well in your email marketing campaigns:

Videos in Email

When marketers included a video in an email, the click-through rate increased by 200% – 300% – Forrester

Using the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates 19%, CTRs by 65% and reduces unsubscribes by 26% – Brainshark

Including video in introductory emails reduces subscriber opt-outs by 75% – Eloqua

Videos in email increase click-thru-rate by 55%, resulting in 44% more time spent reading emails and yielding 24% higher conversion rate – Socialmouths

Not every marketer uses embedded video in their email campaigns so this is an opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

YouTube and Video Hosting Platforms

YouTube is technically a social media network now but it is the most well known video hosting platform too. You should absolutely post your videos on YouTube. There are YouTube alternatives too such as:

  • Vimeo
  • Wistia
  • Sprout Video
  • Vzaar
  • Viddler
  • Viewbix
  • Brightcove
  • Vidyard

Depending on your needs and budget, you don’t have to rely on YouTube. Some platforms will you give you an unbranded video player that you can still embed, share, and use wherever you want but you’ll have a monthly fee to use the service.

Some video platforms will give you enhanced analytics to for more detailed engagement and ROI tracking. Other platforms offer enhanced calls to action that are embedded in the video experience.

If you have specific demands, there are many options to choose from.

Doctor Video Examples

“These guys are doing it right.”

Celebrity doctors and internet famous doctors can garner upwards of millions of views for their videos and even millions of subscribers on their YouTube and Instagram accounts.

No one expects you to compete with that. In your local market you can expect to be very successful with thousands of views, hundreds of subscribers, and dozens of shares on social media.

These are some doctors that are doing video right, sharing information about procedures and medical questions while sharing their own personality, giving patients a chance to get to know them, and encourage them to make an appointment.

Dr. Sandra Lee, aka Dr. Pimple Popper – “Welcome To My Channel”

Probably one of the most doctors on the internet today. Notice how Dr. Sandra Lee has branded herself as the unforgettable “Dr. Pimple Popper.” Her videos get millions of views and she has over 2 million subscribers on both YouTube and Instagram.

Her videos are not fancy. I use the word “simple” cautiously because there’s an art to simplicity however, the videos are shot in her exam room and focus on the procedure with a running commentary from Dr. Lee. The video description contains a little bit of background information on the case and links back to her website.

Her videos are so good that people travel from out of state to make appointments with her.

Dr. Ava Shamban of AvaMD – “Dr. Ava Says”

Beverly Hills dermatologist and author of “Heal Your Skin: The Breakthrough Plan for Renewal,” Dr. Ava Shamban provides skin care advice in her “Dr. Ava Says” video series.

You’ll notice in this screenshot that Dr. Ava employs images to make her point about lip injections. If you watch the entire video you’ll see how she uses detailed, up close illustrations of the layers of skin to further demonstrate and explain the procedure.

Dr. Neal Schultz of BeautyRx – DermTV

New York City dermatologist Dr. Neal Schultz runs BeautyRx where he provides professional glycolic facial peels and his own line of skincare and beauty products. In his video example, “Why You Should Remove Cysts,” he explains that one of the most common benign growths that patients show him are cysts. This common problem has given video over 1 million views as of this writing. In the video he simply explains why these growths should be used and as you can see in the screenshot above, he’s just sitting at a desk using a diagram and a pointer. You’re videos really can be this simple and yet be so helpful for people that are looking for information.

You’ll also notice a blue box in the top right corner that says “Subscribe for More Skin Care Tips.” This is something that YouTube allows you to add. Clicking on that popup takes you back to his YouTube homepage so that viewers can subscribe – this is one way to continue marketing to patients advantage of the opportunity you have when they are engaged with your content.

Peak Performance – Get a Better Squat with Ankle Mobility

In this example Dr. Maggio of Peak Performance Sports Therapy does a collaboration video with SPSC Crossfit to “discuss the importance of dorsiflexion and how to improve restrictions in ankle mobility.”

This is a full on live demonstration of how dorsiflexion affects squatting, running, jumping and more. The video shows how to test and how to improve this motion.

Can you imagine sitting down to write about this? Doing a show a tell video like this will save you more time in the end and it is something that you can always point your patients too if they have questions or concerns.

Contrary to what we’ve said about short, quick videos, this one is a little long, clocking in at over six minutes. But if the content is engaging and it solves a problem, it’s likely that many viewers will watch the whole thing. And if they don’t that’s fine, they’ll take what they need from it and because it’s so educational you can expect people to come back for more.

Conclusion

When you invest in videos you own the content that you produce. Not only are you demonstrating your expertise with authoritative content that builds trust but you have free reign to use these videos with every marketing tactic that you can think of.

You can share videos from your peers at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons but, your patients don’t want to just learn about a procedure or simply have a question answered – they want to learn about you too.

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