As a medical marketer, you most likely spend a lot of time and resources on helping your practice stand out.
Part of a successful practice is taking a look at your competition to see areas where you can improve. Competitive research can shed light on where and how other healthcare practices are succeeding, and what strategies and tactics are being used to grow their practice.
Take a minute to pull out your spyglass. By doing so, it just may help you stay ahead of your competition online.
Choose the Right Competitors
Not all practices and healthcare organizations are worth evaluating. Make sure when you are conducting your comparison, choose practices that are pertinent to your market.
To make your list of competitors:
- Analyze direct competitors in your area
- Search for key terms and see which organizations come up in your location
Gather as much information as you can. This can be helpful to get a complete overview as you dive in to compare.
Your Competition Online
As the marketing expert, you spend a great deal of energy focused on your practice, however, that is not the case for prospective patients.
As a web visitor, it is not uncommon for a prospective patient to search a number of websites before making a decision about who to reach out to for their healthcare.
As you conduct your competitor analysis, put yourself in a user’s position.
Is the competitor’s website easy to navigate? Is it engaging? How is it organized? How well do they promote the treatments they offer?
Evaluating how your competitors approach this can help you see areas of improvement and growth for your own website.
SEO and Keywords
One of the biggest battlegrounds online is prominent positioning on search engine result pages or SERPS.
Part of your competitor analysis should include an SEO and keyword overview. These trends are evolving constantly, especially due to changing search engine criteria. A good free tool to check out is Google Trends. Google Trends analyzes the popularity of top search queries so that you can compare the search volume by keyword or keyword phrase.
Also, how does your competition use target keywords in headlines or subtitles? Are there other places you can expand your website to include more searchable terms? Perhaps you’ll discover some keywords that you hadn’t discovered in your own SEO research.
Finally, you can also take a look at their content tree and how they analyze or describe healthcare topics.
Analyze Website Goals
As you take a look at other websites, you can find clues that give insight into your competitor’s goals.
Places to look for goals or points of focus:
- Taglines
- About Us section, including vision and vision
- Language – is it scientific, personal, or emotional?
- Recent events, news, donations, or sponsors
- Blog articles or publications
A dive into goals can help to clarify your role in the market and how you may be able to serve a need of your specific patient population. There may be areas where you overlap, or you may find areas that can help you stand out.
Analyze User Experience
As part of the competitor analysis, you should also analyze the user’s experience. As you visit your website, take on the role of a potential patient.
Are you able to find what you are looking for? Do you feel connected to the providers or services offered? If you reach out to the practice, are you able to speak to someone? What parts of the website make it difficult to get the answers you seek? Do they have engaging multimedia?
Taking a deep dive into the user funnel can give you a sense of what your user will experience.
Prepare a List of Highlights and Takeaways
Lastly, make a list of highlights and takeaways. If you have the resources, it may be wise to have several people assist in the competitor analysis. That way you can brainstorm together. Often, no two people have the same experience, so this will help expand your research.
As you make a list of the highlights, you can better plan marketing and web initiatives moving forward. As you conduct competitive research, it will allow your practice to stay ahead of your competition online.
Start your competitive analysis
Performing a competitive analysis is vital to helping your practice grow. Contact Practis today for help!
