Your competition is online. Are you?

More and more doctors are realizing they need to be where their patients are … online. As of February 2012, 66% of adults online are using social networking sites. The key to a successful marketing strategy is to reach your patients and respond to their needs. Patients are using social media platforms as their primary source to collect data, seek and give referrals, and as a main source of communication. Doctors have realized that in order to be visible and stay connected with patients they must embrace these technologies. On the other hand, now with all your patients online, so are your competitors.

Your patients: At the end of December 2011, Facebook had 845 million active users.
Your competition: According to a survey done by Chicago Dental Society more than 67% of the dentists say their practice has a Facebook page, this is a 50% increase from last year.

Your patients: Twitter has 100 million log-ins at least once a month.
Your competition: About 24% of Dentists say their practice uses Twitter, an 18% increase from last year.

Your patients: 4 billion videos are viewed each day on YouTube.
Your competition: 14% percent of Dentists are now using YouTube, a 10% increase.

Many practices continue to reach and connect to their patients via social networking, and have seen the success. Nearly 71% of enterprises use social technology to acquire new customers. Social media offers a much different form of marketing as it allows for a dialogue between dentist and patient, in return building a relationship.

The trend toward using social media as a marketing strategy continues to grow simply because it works.

Sources:
Chicago Dental Society, McKinsey Quarterly
Pring, Cara. “100 social media statistics for 2012.” The Social Skinny. January 2012.