If you are a dentist, a lawyer, an accountant or a
therapist, you will want to know how you should go about getting
leads on the Internet. For a number of years, I have been
actively involved in helping thousands of professionals get new
clients leads via the Internet, and I have found that those
professionals who are great marketers all tend to do somewhat the
same thing.
From observing these great
marketers, I've come up with some Do's and Don'ts that may help you
save money and increase the number of quality leads you get from the
Internet. And let's first agree that we are all marketing
something. We are all in the business of selling our services. Even
though we are professionals, we still need to get new clients and
that means marketing. If you weren't interested in building up your
practice, you wouldn't have read this far.
Internal marketing is a constant process
Internal marketing means what you do with your
existing patients or clients to get more business. The most
successful dentists I have worked with (out of thousands of
dentists) are always marketing their practice internally. They are
doing good work for their patients, so their existing patients want
to come back. And they are politely asking patients for referrals.
This is the gist of internal
marketing:
* Make your client experience as good as you can.
* Ask for referrals. Since I can't
comment on the client experience (although **you** can), I'll
address getting more referrals. The simplest thing you can do is
have a good website, and tell your clients about it.
How to use your website to get more
referrals
The ingredients to getting referrals
through your website are simple:
* Set up a good website about your
practice.
* Put the website address on your
business cards, letterhead and all marketing material and all client
communication. Mention your website to your existing
clients.
When a client has a friend who could
use your services, they will think of you and they will mention your
name. Since you have a website, the friend will be able to go to
your website and learn about you. Your website will solidify a
client referral and result in more business.
A website is indispensable for your
internal marketing efforts -- getting more referrals. What a
website won't do is make it easy for new clients who are not
referrals to find you on Google, Yahoo or MSN. Doing that requires a
more sophisticated Internet strategy.
How to get more Internet leads
Once you have your website set up, the
next step is to set up and run a complete Internet strategy.
Implement a search engine marketing strategy. This means you must be
easy for people to find you where they are looking.
People don't look for you on websites
such as directories. They go to Google, Yahoo or MSN and they search
there. You must have a way to be found on those search engines. This
requires sophisticated technology, and you are better off finding a
firm who can make this happen for you rather than try to do it
yourself. * Make sure people who find you on the search
engines click through to a website that persuades them to contact
you.
This website is different from your
practice website. This website must persuade, while your practice
website is lower-key. It's so easy for a visitor coming from Google
to click in and then click out.
You need to employ very advanced
marketing strategies to get visitors to raise their hand online and
say "I want an appointment." Again, this isn't something you can do
yourself -- it's something you want to get someone else to do for
you, an expert in the process of Internet marketing.
We've talked about how professionals are always doing
internal marketing to their existing clients and to referrals, and
we've realized how important a practice website is to the process of
getting more referrals.
We've also seen how having an Internet
marketing strategy goes well beyond a website, and how we need to
find an expert who can help us be easy to find on the search
engines, and who can convert those "clicks" into new clients.
Copyright(c) 2005 Sponsera, LLC.
http://www.sponsera.com Sponsera provides high quality
Internet leads to local businesses like yours. For information
please contact Richard Geller at rg@sponsera.com or call
703.407.1089. This paper may be reprinted on a website provided
you do so in its entirety including this section.
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