Brand Optimization
Tracking Your Brand's Sentiment Is Crucial To Successful Marketing
1. Use social media monitoring tools: There are various social media monitoring tools available that can help you track your brand's sentiment analysis. These tools use algorithms to analyze social media posts and comments related to your brand and provide you with insights on the sentiment of these posts.
2. Monitor mentions and hashtags: Keep an eye on mentions of your brand on social media platforms and track relevant hashtags. This will give you a better understanding of how people are talking about your brand and what sentiment they are expressing.
3. Set up Google Alerts: Set up Google Alerts for your brand name and related keywords. This will notify you whenever your brand is mentioned online, allowing you to track sentiment in real-time.
4. Analyze customer reviews: Customer reviews are a valuable source of sentiment analysis. Keep track of reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and Amazon to understand how customers feel about your brand.
5. Conduct surveys and polls: Surveys and polls are a great way to directly gather feedback from your audience. You can use tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to create and distribute surveys to your customers.
6. Monitor sentiment on review sites: In addition to customer reviews, review sites like Trustpilot and Glassdoor can also provide insights into the sentiment surrounding your brand. Keep track of reviews and ratings on these sites to understand how your brand is perceived.
7. Use sentiment analysis tools: There are various sentiment analysis tools available that can help you track and analyze sentiment surrounding your brand. These tools use natural language processing and machine learning to analyze text and determine sentiment.
8. Monitor competitor sentiment: Keep an eye on the sentiment surrounding your competitors to understand how your brand is perceived in comparison. This can help you identify areas for improvement and stay ahead of the competition.
9. Engage with your audience: Engaging with your audience on social media and other platforms can give you a better understanding of their sentiment towards your brand. Respond to comments and messages to show that you value their feedback.
10. Regularly review and analyze data: It's important to regularly review and analyze the data you gather from various sources. This will help you identify trends and patterns in sentiment and make informed decisions for your brand.
Contact us to implement an effective marketing plan for your medical practice.
blog, Brand Optimization, Reputation Management
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Check out our recent Facebook Live Event where Neil talked about the importance of trust for medical providers.
With increased access to information on the internet, patient expectations are higher than they’ve ever been, and competition is fierce. Patient trust has always been important for medical practice growth and success, but this new environment makes it absolutely vital.
In addition to nurturing lifelong patients that will consistently choose your office over another, patient trust also gives your medical practice a little leeway if problems arise in the future. No matter what may happen, earning the trust of your patients ensures your company’s brand can survive.
So, what is patient trust and how is it earned? This isn’t a new concept, but it’s an area in which many medical practices fail. The transparency that leads to trust is about more than including the standard copy about why your office is better than the rest — you have to truly care about your patients and their problems.
What Is Patient Trust and Why Is It Important?
Generally, patient trust happens when you have a deep understanding of your patients’ needs and have a valid solution to their problems. You provide them with relevant information and products or services that cater to their unique needs, rather than touting the benefits of choosing your medical practice.
Ultimately, this trust is about putting the patient first in your content and your products or services.
The reason trust is more important now than it’s ever been is a direct result of the bombardment of information and options available today.
Consumers no longer need to choose between only a few brands. They have virtually limitless options and access to reviews, testimonials and marketing tricks that can give them an idea of what you have to offer. Because of this, marketers need to look beyond the competitive pricing, features, and benefits, and direct their attention more toward the history and legacy. Patients have become empowered and skeptical, so they’re looking for the whole package — one that will not only give them a product or service that’s reliable, but also a medical office and customer service that they can count on now and in the future. Ideally, your product or service will address their needs at the time, but in the event that it doesn’t, they want to know you’ll be there to make it right.
How Is Patient Trust Created?
As we know, the idea of building patient trust isn’t new, but it can be difficult to achieve. Just making promises about your medical practice is no longer enough, since consumers are looking for actions that back up your claims. This has a big influence on loyalty as well, since patients are more likely to return to the doctor that gave them the experience they wanted the first time around.
Authenticity is key. Authenticity is the one thing that transcends industries, generations and cultures, since it’s the universal thing that all patients are looking for. It’s about being transparent and giving the patients what they expect, whether in products or service, and delivering the values of the brand.
Of course, authenticity and transparency are useless for the pure sake of it. You need to be providing content that demonstrates an in-depth understanding of your patients’
needs and expectations, so you can provide them with relevant, valuable solutions. Superlatives, false claims, half-truths and other marketing hype that can’t be verified instantly reads as false, so focus on positive information of substance and value to your patient.
Also, if you’re falling below expectations in some way, it’s vital to learn from it and find a way to improve. While it may be difficult to accurately measure the value and performance in terms of patient trust, you can set standards for your medical practice to ensure that each and every aspect of your business is accountable and staying on track. This not only makes your trust tangible for your audience, but it also keeps your practice living up to the image you’re putting out into the world.
Why Is Patient Trust Hard to Earn?
There are many reasons trust can be hard to earn, especially for certain brands, but skeptical and savvy patients are the main reason. More and more data breaches and misuse of data are dominating the headlines, so it’s becoming more difficult for consumers to immediately trust a brand and be open to new or unproven brands.
Fortunately, this issue is easy to combat if you’re truly putting the patient first. A brand must be clear about its purpose and values, as well as being transparent with policy and procedures. Perception is everything, and a company that offers the truth is more likely to have good impressions with potential patients.
There’s been a shift in power between the business and the consumer. In the past, the brand had the power and patients had to accept what was given. Now, consumers have a broad outlook and understand more about what a company should and should not be, so they’re less forgiving of missteps. Patients want a brand that shows its customer loyalty and demonstrates shared values, so an effective strategy would be to align your practice’s values with the information you’d gladly offer to the public.
In addition, transparency is often forced upon brands, since patients can find dirt if they look hard enough. In all likelihood, questionable ethics and practices will leak in other media and be found by patients, leaving a medical practice looking disingenuous and sleazy, which is worse than having no trust at all.
While patient trust may sound like a swift strategy or “silver bullet” for new leads and business growth, it’s anything but. That trust is difficult to earn and keep and is far more than just a marketing strategy.
The authenticity and transparency necessary to garner real patient trust comes from honest communications, solid company culture and treating the patient as you would want to be treated, rather than just lip service.
Though it’s clear that consumers want trustworthy brands, their general trust isn’t high. This can be an area of opportunity for new or developing medical practices, or offices looking to revamp their image and surge ahead of competitors. Whether we like it or not, the power is with the patient, so it’s more important than ever to put their needs first for business success.
Atlanta Local SEO, Brand Optimization, Local SEO, Local SEO Marketing, Medical Clinic Website, Medical Marketing, Reputation Marketing, Sales, Search Engine Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media
What Is The Pigeon Update?
Somewhere around the last week of July, Google rolled out a brand new search algorithm update that rocked the world for local SEO and local business marketing.
According to Google, this new search engine update was designed to “improve” the search results for local businesses by leveraging hundreds of ranking signals as well as it’s own internal search features like spelling correction, synonyms, and the Google Knowledge Graph.
What Are The Experts Saying About The Pigeon Update?
Many of the top SEO experts across the industry have weighed in to share their research and findings from the impact on their clients.
Search Engine Land made the following analysis:
“It looks like Yelp and other local directory-style sites are benefiting with higher visibility after the Pigeon update, at least in some verticals. And that seems logical since, as Google said, this update ties local results more closely to standard web ranking signals. That should benefit big directory sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor — sites that have stronger SEO signals than small, individual restaurants and hotels are likely to have.”
Moz’s David Mihm (Director of Local Search Strategy) had the following comments:
“Directories with strong brands (like Yelp, as Matt McGee already pointed out) often show up multiple times for the same search, especially on recovery searches for specific small businesses – many of which occur when the searcher clicks a Carousel result. But they’re even prevalent on far less-specific discovery searches, and on searches performed on mobile devices (in my own limited testing).”
“A number of folks have commented in places like Max Minzer’s Local Search community, and Casey Meraz highlighted it as well, that there seem to be many more two and three-packs than there were before, which takes even more real estate away from small businesses and increases the relative opportunity for directories.”
“I’m at a bit of a loss as to any economic benefit this boost to directories (with easier-to-reach, larger Adwords budgets) might provide Google, but I’m looking forward to hearing what other commenters have to say.”
It’s important to note the consistent message across all of the SEO industry’s top experts – local directories with recognizable brands such as Yelp, YellowPages.com, Kudzu, etc. are now getting even higher and stronger positioning across local searches. This has the direct effect of pushing the local business listings farther down the results pages and onto the 2nd page in many cases.
Another SEO expert, Greg Gifford (Director of Search and Social at Autorevo) made the following analysis:
“In the past, “used cars CITY” always brought up a map pack. We’ve seen a few isolated cities where the map pack has disappeared for that query… Before Pigeon, those would have all resulted in seven-packs.”
Nicole Hess, Senior SEO Strategist at Delphic Digital made the following observations:
“There were a few locations that are not appearing in the local pack of results, though at some previous point did appear there. The average drop in traffic for a location that is no longer in the local pack is 16% less traffic month over month (and this is in a good season where overall organic traffic is increasing)… Being out of the local pack correlates with a loss of organic traffic for a few locations. A loss of organic traffic is also occurring where listings are competing against paid ads that have star ratings.”
Here again, we note the drop in rankings for individual local businesses. Many local businesses have fallen out of the “7 Pack” listings, resulting in a drop of approximately 16% of organic traffic for some businesses. We also see that businesses are continuing to lose traffic to some of the paid ads (PPC) that have star ratings. So it’s becoming increasingly important that we continue to increase the star ratings for our clients to remain competitive in local SEO searches.
Another SEO expert, Andrew Shotland, a Local Search Engine Optimization Consultant at LocalSEOGuide.com commented:
“We are really interested in how this update moved Google more in the direction of hyperlocal search. Something that has been flying under the radar on this update is the neighborhood specific location settings that previously seemed to be just a test are now live everywhere as far as I can tell.
“I am also seeing a number of the local directory type sites I work with have almost all seen five to ten percent increases in organic traffic since the update. This lines up with the contraction and elimination of many of the local pack results that others are reporting. Directories would be one of the benefactors of this.”
One of the early observations concerning the Pigeon update is that many of the “7 Pack” (map) listings for local businesses have completely disappeared for as much as 50% – 60% of the searches for local businesses – leaving just the “regular” 10 listings per search results page. Andrew’s comments here suggest that because so many of the 7 Packs have disappeared the major directory companies’ listings are now showing up more often in the top 10 results – pushing the local businesses farther down the results.
Mike Blumenthal of Blumenthals.com observed the following:
“The update does appear to have reduced duplication between the organic and local results. After the October 2013 update that ended blended results, a number of sites were seeing both organic and local pack results. Those seem to have been reduced to one or the other… The directories, at least anecdotally, appear to have benefited from the change.”
Mike’s comments continue to support the other SEO experts’ observations that the major local directories (Yelp, YP.com, kudzu, etc.) have benefitted from this Pigeon update with higher rankings – resulting in pushing local business listings farther down. But he also makes another interesting observation that where a local business might have had a listing in the 7 Pack (maps) section and also in the other listings outside of the 7 Pack, many of those businesses have lost one or the other listing, resulting in only one listing on the first page where they formerly had 2.
Mary Bowling, Co-founder at Ignitor Digital had this to say about the Pigeon update:
“Google has made several moves lately for the purpose of better aligning desktop and mobile results. Google’s interpretation of the searcher’s location may now be playing more into which results they see on their desktop, just the way it has been playing into which results they see on smartphones.
“Some of the things people are reporting are a reduction in the number of local packs seen in the SERPs and a widespread reduction from 7 results in the local packs to 3 results. This may also be an attempt to better mirror on the desktop what mobile searchers see.”
This is another interesting observation that both Andrew (above) and Mary are observing, specifically that Google is now more consistently observing the location of the person doing the search on a desktop and providing results specific to that location.
“This suggests that the part of the search results page composition algorithm that handles determining when to serve local pack results has undergone a revision rather than elimination for many of these effected terms. The dial has been turned back some, if you will, and other qualifying elements have been introduced in how it functions.
“Specificity of the query is an additional element. When Google first began displaying the local pack, they inferred locality intent associated with queries like “house rentals” or “pizza”, etc. For whatever reason, the assumption of local intent has now been dialed back in a number of cases, most likely based upon some sort of usability testing, or out of desire to further reduce “clutter” in search results.
“Overall, the news that this update bumps up web search ranking signals more so than some of the local factors doesn’t necessarily pose a huge fear factor for local businesses. On the other hand, local companies that were enjoying good local pack rankings, despite having an SEO-weak website presence, will now have to step up their game in order to recover.
“Finally, some directory sites appear to have benefited. To me, the recent shift has heavily benefitted Yelp (I think they likely need to Shut-The-Front-Door on whining about Google mistreatment). Yellowpages.com also appears quite prominently in my sampling, as well as some vertical directories.
“Some of the more marginal, less-popular online yellow pages and business directories are not all that visible or prominent these days. In some business category and market combinations, the organic search results are more populated by these directory sites than by the websites of local businesses – which will necessitate a bit of a shift in local companies’ online strategies.
“If these ranking changes for local-intent queries were intentional upon Google’s part, it seems clear that they feel that there are many cases where searchers desire to perform comparative research to decide upon businesses prior to selecting listings. Businesses will have to adjust their strategic approaches accordingly.”
What Does Pigeon Mean For Local SEO For Businesses?
So the messages from the SEO experts seems rather clear…
- The major online directories like Yelp and YellowPages.com are seeing higher rankings and more frequent rankings – pushing the local business websites farther down the search results.
- Many searches for local businesses that used to show 7 Pack (map) listings no longer show those 7 Packs at all.
- In many searches, the 7 Pack of local listings has been reduced to a 3 Pack instead.
- Google seems to be placing more emphasis on using the exact location of the person doing the search by delivering results that are “hyper-local” – very specific to the immediate geographic area.
- Star ratings that are shown on the search results definitely have an impact on the number of clicks that a listing will get.
So for those of us who do Local SEO, Local Marketing and Reputation Marketing, this update sends a clear signal that it is increasingly important to have our clients local citations and local directory listings complete, accurate and optimized to give them the best chance of showing up in those directories that are now gaining higher prominence in the search results.
We have also noted that star ratings continue to have an impact on the organic traffic for four clients’ websites. So we must continue to work hard to get those online reviews posted to the major review sites (especially Google+). In this regard, our industry leading Reputation Marketing packages should give our clients a considerable advantage over their competition.
Finally, as fewer 7 Pack listings show up in the search results, it becomes even more important to implement effective local SEO strategies that get our clients ranked higher in the results, to compete with the increased rankings of the local directories.
On that note, I would like to share a little of our own anecdotal evidence that when done effectively, a good SEO program can still beat out the major online directory sites in the search results. At Grow Smart Marketing we have a good number of clients that are still ranking at the top of their local search results and consistently beating Yelp, YellowPages, and the others even after the Pigeon update.
If you’d like to speak with one of our Grow Smart Marketing consultants about implementing an effective local marketing program for your business please contact us today for a free, no-hassle step-by-step strategy session.
