Orthopedic Marketing & Orthopedic Advertising Ideas for 2023
Orthopedic marketing and orthopedic advertising have evolved and changed tremendously over the last 3-5 years.
Going from a traditionally 90%+ referral-based patient workflow to the rise of direct-to-patient marketing to generate new orthopedic and walk-in clinic patients.
Check out a recent podcast episode on the top orthopedic marketing strategies in 2023 by our CEO.
Listen to a recent podcast episode our CEO did with one of the largest orthopedic practices in the US on orthopedic marketing strategies.
This has allowed orthopedic practices to change the way they approach marketing and advertising to better target the patient in their home, on mobile devices, or when they are searching for specific treatments and conditions.
If you’re here, then you’re wondering which techniques and orthopedic marketing strategies are working the best to drive new patient appointments and surgical growth. If so, then you’ve come to the right place.
This is one of the most robust orthopedic marketing and orthopedic advertising posts you will find and each of these strategies has been tested and proven to be effective in reaching new patients.
We know because we specialize in working with mid-to-large-size orthopedic practices to do just that, so you know these are vetted for effectiveness.
Table of Contents:
- Website SEO to Increase Organic Traffic for Treatments
- Make Google Ads a Primary Focus of Orthopedic Advertising
- Focus on Location Pages and Google Business Optimization
- Start an Orthopedic Walk-In Clinic at a Main Location
- Make Programmatic Ads Part of Your Orthopedic Advertising
- Video Marketing for Orthopedic Surgeons is Critical
- Introduce Self-Patient Appointment Scheduling ASAP
- Grow Social Media Engagement and Content
- Backlink Building Will Increase Organic Traffic
- Leverage Data to Know which Orthopedic Marketing Strategies are Working
- Wrapping up Orthopedic Marketing Ideas
Website SEO to Increase Organic Traffic for Treatments
SEO for orthopedics leads the way as one of the top orthopedic marketing strategies every orthopedic practice should focus on to win the local search battle for patients looking for the treatment, conditions, and specialists you offer on Google search.
There are three major buckets orthopedic marketing SEO needs to focus content on for a practice website:
- Treatment and conditions pages
- Individual location pages
- Physician profile pages
In this section, we are going to specifically address treatment and conditions pages and why growing a content library is critical to SEO growth and generating new patients in search.
Check out this video for more tips on SEO strategies for your website’s pages.
Why? Because, as I tell people on practice assessment calls, “if you want to rank for it, you need a page for it.”
This statement is simple, yet so profound when it comes to breaking down what is most important in orthopedic SEO and orthopedic marketing in general.
This means, if you have treatments, conditions, and surgeries you want to reach the top of local Google searches for, you have to start by developing very focused and well-thought-out content exclusively focused on that topic.
Many, even large orthopedic groups, that I evaluate have stopped at the top-level buckets of hip surgery, knee surgery, shoulder surgery, etc., and have not taken the next critical step to creating individual sub-treatments and conditions pages.
Take a look at the client website below. You will see we have created specific keyword-focused pages on each of those hip related topics.
- Hip Surgery
- Hip Arthritis
- Anterior Hip Replacement
- Total Hip Replacement
- Hip Pain
- Hip Preservation
As a result of this strategy, the website drives traffic for these specific hip-related search terms over the local competitors and their orthopedic hip surgeons are seeing more patients.
Make Google Ads a Primary Focus of Orthopedic Advertising
Besides website SEO, I would put Google ads (hence its placement in this article) near the top of the list of most effective orthopedic surgeon marketing strategies.
The advantage Google Ads has over other orthopedic digital marketing ideas is the natural “appointment readiness” of a searcher you are advertising to on Google.
In other words, a person going on Google search and looking for a “knee pain specialist near me” or “herniated disc treatment near me” is actively trying to educate themselves and solve a medical problem that is ailing them.
These patients are naturally further down the sales funnel and more likely to book an appointment and require less nurturing or remarketing than ads on platforms like Facebook.
As a result of this patient targeting advantage and the fact you can hone in bidding for the conditions and treatments you want to produce more patients for, means you can generate low cost patient appointments.
Take a look at this screenshot example of a client’s monthly Google Ads campaigns where we are focusing on orthopedic urgent care, sports medicine, and joint replacement.
You will see high appointment volumes for as low as $1.84.
Leveraging Google ads as a primary focus of your orthopedic ads strategy will allow you to do the same thing over time.
Focus on Location Pages and Google Business Optimization
As a multi-location practice, you need to think of your local SEO strategy on your website just like a franchise company would.
That means that individual location pages and their corresponding Google Business profiles are the leading way that you will win those “near me” searches on Google around each of your orthopedic practice locations.
I call this implementing a franchise SEO model as part of your orthopedic marketing strategy.
Without this, it will be very difficult to optimize each of those new treatment and conditions pages for each of the geographical locations you want them to rank for.
That is done via the location page SEO optimization process along with the strength of your Google Business Profiles.
Do not forget to invest in reputation management growth as this will lead the way in helping get your Google Business profile to the top of local search results when coupled with a great orthopedic content marketing program.
Start an Orthopedic Walk-In Clinic at a Main Location
If you are not yet in the orthopedic walk-in clinic game, as an admin team, it is high time to work with your surgeons to introduce this model to one or several of your practice locations.
Orthopedic urgent care clinics are a gold mine for leveraging traditional direct-to-consumer marketing strategies to get in front of the right patients in real time.
The two most important things in the urgent care space are staying top of mind and being there right when the need arises.
By harnessing SEO and orthopedic advertising you can do both of those things to amazing effectiveness.
This is why we have spent so much time and effort developing orthopedic urgent care-specific marketing strategies because they are so powerful in scaling general patient volumes and ultimately more surgeries.
I would encourage you to introduce this model as a part of your orthopedic marketing strategies as it will unlock more doors to market directly to patients in your local area.
Check out this case study on how we generate 100s of new urgent care patients monthly for a large orthopedic practice.
Make Programmatic Ads Part of Your Orthopedic Advertising
Geofencing or location-based ads in orthopedic advertising is the process of using a virtual boundary around a specific area to deploy targeted ads (or build audiences) inside of that geographical area to devices.
What this means is you can start to send ads to potential patients that visit places like CrossFit gyms, rec fields, trampoline houses, etc.
That way when an orthopedic need arises through injury or wear and tear you can be there at the top of search or via video marketing as the orthopedic solution to their needs.
Powerful and effective especially when you couple this with OTT/C-TV advertising so you can showcase video-based ads across devices.
This created an omni-channel orthopedic advertising approach that will take your ROI to the next level.
Check out this case study where we are utilizing geofencing ads to bring in new urgent care patients for $10 per visit.
Video Marketing for Orthopedic Surgeons is Critical
Video marketing has become extremely popular in recent years. Rightfully so, it’s an extraordinary way to reach unique audiences, build credibility, and naturally refine leads.
One of our top tips for marketing an orthopedic surgeon is getting them to focus on creating educational videos.
There are numerous terrific benefits to video marketing and you can leverage the activity to convert more leads for your orthopedic practice.
In the field of healthcare, it can be difficult for people to trust physicians. After all, there is a rigid degree of trust that must be maintained before someone entrusts a doctor with their health.
By getting your orthopedic surgeons on video, you can help build trust in your orthopedic practice.
Looking for a great tool to get you started creating healthcare video content? Check out CaptureMD…
Videos that introduce your providers, provide important information to prospective patients, and answer frequently asked questions, can lead to increased brand trust.
Having prospects see the human side of your providers can make your practice more likely to retain quality leads.
Do not forget that YouTube is owned by Google and is the second-largest search engine.
That can yield big benefits in search visibility if you follow the right process for YouTube SEO when uploading your videos.
Check out these simple tips to get the most reach out of each video.
If you are struggling to get started with topics just write down common questions that patients ask you week in and week out.
That will help you come up with dozens of content topics that you know patients are looking for the answers to.
Introduce Self-Patient Appointment Scheduling ASAP
Scheduling is one of the biggest pain points for potential patients and can make or break the success of an orthopedic marketing program.
Yet, so many orthopedic practices still lag behind in terms of offering self-scheduling solutions for their potential and existing patients.
By introducing self-scheduling on your website you will see an increase in patient satisfaction, staff onboarding times, and (for the case of this) most importantly, marketing outcomes.
No more chasing potential patient leads for requests to try and get them to book an appointment. Grab them in real-time in the booking process to get them on the schedule.
Here is the self-scheduler set up for one of our large orthopedic clients, OSMC.
As a result, we can point orthopedic advertising directly to the scheduler and track campaign results via Google tag manager.
While we do not provide self-scheduling software in-house, we recommend a partner and leader in the orthopedic space, Dash Schedule.
Grow Social Media Engagement and Content
Social media is an effective way for an orthopedic practice to engage with potential and existing patients to educate and develop thought leadership for their surgeons.
It starts with a dedication to content development, specifically at the provider level, and video being the number 1 priority.
As an admin or surgeon, you might say, “easier said than done” and yes that is generally the case.
However, social media as an orthopedic marketing tool is only as good as the content, and the consistency of that content published on your practice profiles.
As discussed above in the video section, you need to get your providers involved in creating video content to find true value and success through this strategy. Otherwise, it will be stock photos and little value.
The biggest feedback we have here is to PLAN ahead.
In the given month, you should only be focused on engagement and follower growth, not creating the content. Plan 1-3 months ahead, especially if you want your surgeons to be able to create content with you.
Make it a starting goal to get one video for each treatment and condition page on the website (as mentioned in the strategy above).
Backlink Building Will Increase Organic Traffic
Even with it being slightly out of date, you can see by the graphic below the importance of “Off-site” links, or backlinks as they are referred to.
This has grown even further in 2022 and 2023.
Backlinks are one of the top-ranking factors for Google’s algorithm.
When coupled with the on-site content we spoke about earlier in this article, it makes sure close to 40% or more of what we know influences website SEO and rankings.
That means it is a critical component, in time, to a great orthopedic marketing program.
However, a few things to consider before jumping both feet into backlink building.
You need QUALITY content that is worth backlinking to before you start this process.
That means focusing on the top of this article first before focusing on this part.
Second, and just as important, it is quality over quantity when it comes to backlinks.
Focus on high-domain authority websites that have a relevant niche like medical and orthopedic topical websites.
Leverage Data to Know which Orthopedic Marketing Strategies are Working
Marketing is a numbers game. You won’t win if you make premature judgments about your orthopedic marketing strategy without the numbers to back it up.
Investing in an analytics dashboard will put all of the important metrics of your website right in front of you.
This way, it’s much easier to track the ROI of your orthopedic marketing campaigns and get more money from your marketing spend.
That is why all our clients get access to real-time data and reporting tools.
We have also developed an analytics tool designed to be able to report not only leads that were generated but who became patients in your practice EHR.
Wrapping up Orthopedic Marketing Ideas
There are several you can implement for orthopedic digital marketing, as evidenced above. To put a proven orthopedic marketing agency in your corner, connect to learn more about how we can help and check out our orthopedic case studies.
