The short answer is yes, but the expertise you’d need to be able to maximize your efficiency with all the relevant digital marketing tactics would make it financially impractical. Let’s start by evaluating all the necessary tactics for a comprehensive digital marketing strategy:
- Monthly, or weekly, blogging
- Backlinking, content syndication, press releases & more
- Advertising management
- Email marketing management
- Social media management
- Video production, editing, posting
We’ve worked with practices that handle some digital marketing in-house, and typically the tactics that make the most sense for this approach are social media posting and email marketing, particularly the former.
So why can social media be handled in-house? We’ve found that the most effective posts for engagement are photos or videos of the doctor or staff, either interacting with each other, interacting with patients, speaking at an event, or enjoying their time away from the office. Birth announcements, weddings, anniversaries, and featured staff members also make for posts that patients seem to engage with.
No agency can produce these photos and videos of the practice unless they’re physically in the office take them. Therefore, even if you are paying someone to help with your social media postings, you need to proactively supply them with photos and videos to compliment their efforts. That’s how you maximize your reach on social media (if you’re not running ads).
Keep in mind that social media marketing, specifically posting to social networks, is an internal marketing strategy. This means your reach is limited to people who already know you. Your goal should be engagement and ultimately, patient retention. Posting without advertising is not a lead generation strategy.
Like social media posting, email marketing is also an internal marketing tactic that is all about patient retention. Could you “in source” this tactic, like social posting? Yes, however, this is where it gets trickier. You need to have someone managing the emails with some marketing savvy in order to come up with quality subject lines, engaging copy, strong calls to action, and a balance of news and promotions. You need an experienced digital marketer handling this for you.
The remaining tactics mentioned above should not, for the most part, be outsourced. Yes, you could write your own blog articles. Assuming you have a solid writer on the staff, that’s step 1. You’ll need to strategically select topics based on keyword research; work in a marketing angle within the article to emphasize a call to action; thoroughly optimize the article; and visually enhance it with video, infographics and before & afters. Then you’ll want to syndicate it. After listing all these tasks out it’s much more than copywriting, isn’t it?!
Similarly, there are many folks who are great with video. Whether its ‘Final Cut’ or another software, having video production and editing experience is great. However, like copywriting, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. The optimization and syndication is crucial to your video marketing success.
Lastly, I’ve seen clients “try” to manage their own AdWords, and in some rare cases the campaigns are actually semi-decent. However, they’re always missing a few of the key components we look for in a campaign. That’s likely because what’s required to set up and run a quality AdWords campaign takes both technical, creative and marketing knowledge. If you’re lacking in any one area your campaigns will suffer.
Ultimately, you could hire a Marketing Director, with 10 years of experience to manage your practice’s digital marketing. This person wouldn’t come cheap; anywhere from $75k to $100k, or maybe more like $150k! That’s well over $6k/month, assuming they handle ALL of these tasks, and that doesn’t even include ad spend. Your other option is to hire a proven aesthetic agency with 10 years experience, for half the cost! It’s a no-brainer!
If you’d like to learn more about what you can do in-house to support your marketing efforts check out this article. You can also see what TRBO offers by check out our pricing page here. You can also leave us a note here or call directly at 877-673-7096 x2.
