If you’ve ever worked with a marketing agency, then you know that with the territory comes a myriad of terms that you’re familiar with, but may not completely understand. You’ve heard that SEO is important for your website, but what is it, exactly? That’s why it’s important to familiarize yourself with these terms so that you can make the best informed decisions for your practice.
5 Marketing Terms You Need to Know
1. Marketing
Marketing is the process of identifying, developing, delivering, and satisfying customer’s wants or needs in a profitable way. There are several different types of marketing tools that healthcare practices can utilize. Most organizations use marketing to build brand awareness, increase lead generation, or to fuel business growth. Sometimes, multiple marketing strategies are used, but the goal is always the same — to generate revenue for your practice while improving the patient experience.
2. Digital Marketing
In today’s day and age, one of the most popular marketing strategies is digital marketing. Digital marketing is typically the term used to describe all marketing efforts that use the Internet or an electronic device — such as your computer or smartphone. There are a number of digital marketing strategies that businesses can utilize. Many of them vary depending on the goal of your practice. Do you want to expand? Rebrand? Or do you simply want to improve the experience for the patients you have? The right digital marketing plan can help with all of these goals.
3. Search Engine Optimization
One of the most important tools a business can utilize for their marketing efforts is search engine optimization — often referred to as SEO. SEO is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine. SEO elements include keywords, titles, image tags, link building, and more. SEO is important because while marketing objectives like paid advertising can generate traffic to websites, the majority of online traffic is driven organically by search engines. When set up correctly, your clients can reap the benefits far longer than the average paid campaign.
4. Paid Advertising
Another marketing tactic utilized by businesses and organizations alike is paid advertising. Paid advertising is any type of advertising that you pay for. Marketers pay the owner of an ad space — like Facebook or Google Ads — in exchange for use of that space. Based on your client’s business goals and objectives, you’ll want to determine the best paid advertising strategies to utilize. This typically includes pay-per-click or PPC.
With PPC, an organization or business will pay for every click their ad receives. Usually, a set budget is determined prior to the launch of a PPC campaign. Once that budget has been used, your ad will no longer appear for the month. Other forms of ads include display, search, and video — all of which require a set budget and a continually managed campaign. Paid advertising is the quickest way to see results and can be less expensive than other forms of advertising (with a higher return on investment).
5. Content Marketing
While paid advertising and SEO are great tools for quality lead generation, content marketing will ensure that those leads (or potential customers) stick around for years to come. Content marketing is focused on creating and distributing relevant and consistent content to attract and retain your audience — while encouraging profitable customer actions.
Content marketing includes keyword and content research as well as content writing. There are several different ways businesses can use content marketing. The most common include blog writing, white papers, podcasts, emails, newsletters, infographics, social media posts, webinars, and more.
