Every provider should have a Web site by now, and those who do should be sure it is making their business better.
Those who don't should accept the facts: They are doing business in the 21st century, the seniors of the 21st century developed the Internet and will always be users, and health care professionals have integrated the Web into their practices and their lives.
The Web sites of the distant past (be sure that your company has moved beyond the distant past) were essentially an electronic brochure. Businesses made a graphic representation of what their company did, who they did it for, what a great team made it possible and how to contact them. Some then added e-commerce to allow customers to make purchases from the convenience of their own locations.
Now this technology, which once threatened to disconnect people from one another, has become a central part of relationship-building. This is one of the realities that offer the great opportunity for your Web site to make your business better.
Your Web site should accomplish all three stages of selling. These include getting found, converting visitors into leads and nurturing leads to convert them to customers.
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Getting found. In smaller markets, your company may already be known to the referral sources and customers, so getting found may have been accomplished. As markets get larger or more itinerant, the value of being found via the Web grows.
The common method for getting found on the Web is called “search engine optimization,” or SEO. It is a complex strategy, but the short version is that your Web site must have content that is easily found by Google, Yahoo, Bing or other search engines, and links from other Web sites to indicate the content is important. The more those factors are satisfied, the higher in the search results a Web site is listed.
This is akin to retail business choices where a merchant can spend a lot to be in the high-traffic mall or a little to be hidden between the lowest-priced used car dealers. The big difference with SEO is that the currency doesn't have to be cash, it can be time and effort.
In thinking about SEO for home care companies, I recall what HME provider Charlie Barnes said to me several years ago during a consultation. Looking over his glasses, he said, “So in essence you're telling me that we need to cut footsteps, keystrokes and miles.” Getting found through SEO is a way to cut footsteps and miles.
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Converting visitors into leads. For many providers, traditional marketing programs have likely produced a list of referral sources who know your company is there but have no interest. But add these sources to potential customers who will find your company via the Web, and you have the opportunity to create interest.
Include content on your Web site that goes well beyond the electronic brochure. The content has to be useful or helpful to the visitor. That doesn't mean helping them to find your company's phone number. The content has to make their life easier — and that may cost less than buying them pizza for lunch. Give them information, and don't limit it to information about the diseases that are treated with your products. Think much broader and set your company apart from its rivals in the market.
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Nurturing leads to convert them to customers requires keeping in mind that business is built on personal relationships. Our industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year on relationship-building activities. Most of that expense is related to sales reps driving from location to location to have personal meetings with referral sources. Your Web site offers the opportunity to reduce that cost (not eliminate it). How? By making your Web site like a helpful person to referral sources and customers.
Web sites can be connected to social media, provide limited-access areas for “special customers” to take advantage of time-saving features and incorporate a host of other features that only you can think of. The thing to remember is to make your company more valuable than all others because of your unique Web site.
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Wallace Weeks is founder and president of Weeks Group Inc., a Melbourne, Fla.-based strategy consulting firm. You can reach him at 321/752-4514 or wweeks@weeksgroup.com.
