Chits UK are one of UK’s leading digital marketing agencies for those in the professional healthcare sector.
Established in 2004, we provide professional healthcare websites and marketing solutions for private hospitals and clinics, as well as individual specialists such as private general practitioners, surgeons and consultants.
If you’re in the professional healthcare sector and you want to attract new clients and keep them, you can trust the expert knowledge and experience of Chits UK.
Chits UK have been working with professional healthcare consultants for over 12 years and understand your work. We understand the pressure of running a practice and keeping in touch with all your clients.
Chits UK have been working with professional healthcare organisations for over 12 years and we understand what you do. We understand the pressure of running a successful clinic or hospital whilst still keeping in touch with your clients.
Healthcare marketing is the implementation of effective marketing strategies for healthcare professionals such as general practitioners, consultants and surgeons.
It is utilised by hospitals and clinics both within the NHS and the private sector to advance public health campaigns and to attract more patients to a particular healthcare setting.
Having an effective medical marketing plan can increase referrals and appointments, build stronger doctor-patient relationships, increase uptake of treatments and improve patient retention rates.
Healthcare marketing campaigns are usually multi-faceted to deliver a greater impact.
The online profile for your clinic or hospital will show the profiles of all your specialists and details of the treatments you offer and the conditions you treat. However, we will also ensure that your website is found online.
Patients will search the web for their particular condition and the treatments available. Having your website visible in these searches will ensure that you get the client, and not your competitor.
Your online profile from Chits will show both your experience and expertise. However, having the perfect website is no use at all if nobody can find it.
People will search online for their particular condition and the treatments available.
Having your website appear in these searches will mean that you get the new client, and not your competitor.
We have established a leading position within UK health and care markets and have a strong reputation for healthcare design, patient lead generation, building a large and growing gallery of top clinics, consultant, GP and dentistry businesses who have come to appreciate the power in the Chits service.
Chits’ consultants are officially certified and trained. With regular exams and training online with key Internet companies such as Google we make it our business to know your business.
In today’s demanding world of business communications, it is no longer enough to think in terms of individual communication products, operating on their own. No single website can carry the entire load, nor can a leaflet or a brochure or a webinar.
Why is this so?
Simply: old models of broadcasting single messages to vastly dispersed, large audiences are no longer sufficient. Not just because this approach cannot be relied upon to get the message through, but more important: a business can no longer engage with its key audiences – customers, prospects, suppliers, allies – with a one-size fits all approach.
This is where the experience and expertise of CHITS comes sharply into focus.
Not only do we understand how to create and deliver a wide variety of products in both online offline worlds. Even better, we know how to work with our clients in developing an integrated strategy to ensure that the communication mix has the maximum impact.
Of course this means that we create the right message via the most appropriate product that is best-of-breed. We deliver that message via the most efficient distribution channel, and the impact will be measured to ensure the optimal effect.
The CHITS approach to all its clients, both new and long established, is to work tirelessly to understand their businesses and objectives. Of course we understand the general mix of communication products and how they work, but we do not start from a desire to sell a website, or develop a presence on facebook. Before having that discussion, we set out to hear about you:
What are your desires and dreams for your business and, critically, how you will measure your success in the work that you do?
What do we do?
At an initial consultation, we find out about you and your objectives for your business.
We don’t propose specific solutions and products until we understand what you need.
We work with you in creating solutions where the impact can be measured.
Your strategy for effective business communications will, in the final reckoning, be as much about how you communicate as it is about what you say. The CHITS commitment is to bring profit to your enterprise, and to enhance your brand in everything we do.
Your "kick-off" meeting with a CHITS project manager features an equally strong focus on the three distinct foundations of a successful partnership:
You benefit from CHITS’ experience: Our long experience of the healthcare market has taught us what works best, and what works not so well. When it comes to learning from our experience, we have a wardrobe full of tee shirts.
As we get to know our clients, we keep the tee shirts but share the experience and, as we set about conceiving of the Internet strategy that will work best for you, we will review the strategies that have worked best for your competitors.
We get to understand your objectives: However we define “design”, it cannot be good if it does not contribute to the achievement of your ambitions for your business – in the work that you do, and in satisfying your customers.
This is equally true for the graphic design we apply in presenting your business to the world; and in designing the communication strategy for getting your messages out to the people who need to hear them.
We learn together about your customers: None of the above will matter without a clear sense of who your customers are. Learning from our experience and sharing your aims for your business will get you only halfway.
Going full circle together consists in knowing how to attract and retain the people who need to know about your business. How do they find you, and why do they stay with you? If they are to find you on the Internet, what search terms will they employ? And can we craft a strategy for retaining and developing relationships with the people who have troubled to find you in the first place?
One of the oldest and least true myths about any website is that, if you build it, they will come. Of course we aim to create websites that are attractive to look at, easy to navigate, useful in the information they supply and good ambassadors for the businesses they promote. But they must do more, and they will not succeed just by being there.
A good website is designed:
Long gone are the days when reading websites and locating useful information was an activity restricted to desktop devices, while mobile phones were just for phoning while you yourself were mobile. In fact, not only is it true that mobile phones are now as likely to be used to access information as are desktops, it is much more likely now that users will communicate with product and service providers – sending enquiries, ordering supplies and making bookings, etc. – via their tablets and mobile phones.
This year will see mobiles overtake desktops for accessing the Internet, with more than a billion people now using their mobiles in this way. No businesses – whether the biggest hospitals, smaller clinics, or the single consultants and doctors -- can afford to be promoting themselves without being “platform agnostic”. That is, masters of all media.
The engineers and coders at work within the CHITS web design teams are old hands at so-called “responsive design” – ensuring the correct display of client messages across all platforms. What our project managers aim to do in their work with clients is to focus on content that makes such responsiveness as easy and natural-looking as possible.
As with all the work we do, it is important but not sufficient to have it just looking good on any and all devices. Our aim is to have it working smoothly and reliably at all times, and encouraging users to engage with their health providers through whichever device they choose to use.
This is about more than meticulous planning for the sake of our clients’ convenience, important though this certainly is. There is a purely practical consideration in play here too. Google have made it clear that they will be paying more attention to the “mobile friendliness” of websites and, put simply, websites that do not work reliably and comfortably on mobile devices will not be ranked as highly.
The bottom line
Whether you are a sole consultant or a group of doctors, a growing clinic or the biggest hospital, your website needs to be:
Get this right and keep getting it right, and your customers will keep coming back.
Build trust with your clients by projecting your brand all over the Internet
The first objective in advertising is making sure that people recognise your brand and the message that it imparts. Consumers will have identified with a brand before they decide to buy, so getting the design right and –more importantly – out there where people will notice it - is crucial for building a successful customer base.
Brand symbols and the messages associated with them are conveyed to the public through various different mediums such as
Using advertisements with specific keywords to draw in interested clients is a way to ensure you get an audience that wants to know about the kind of work you do. This is a proven way to increase referrals and appointments and bring healthy profits for the professional healthcare provider.
Make Sure You Employ Search Engine Optimisation
Having a website is only part of the story. The Internet is a huge network of websites and if the public haven’t been able to find your site or see your logo, then they haven’t discovered the health care options that your clinic offers. Search engine optimisation is vital to make sure that Google and other search engines pick up keywords from your site and give you a high ranking. High ranking websites are placed at the top of search engine lists and will receive more visitors than other sites.
Encourage Word of Mouth Referrals
The power of personal recommendation is still one of the most effective marketing tools and in this technological age you can combine IT with chat to help you obtain more patients. You can set up Facebook and Twitter accounts for your clinic or service to encourage both brand recognition and provide a forum for patients to discuss their experience with your practice. Satisfied customers are likely to recommend you to their family and friends.
Advertise Your Brand
Newspapers and magazines may be old fashioned but they still work as a method of advertising. You can promote your clinic and new website through specialised medical magazines or even charity newsletters for people with conditions that you treat.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
“Your website is unlikely to get found without search engine optimisation”
You’ve developed a beautifully designed website that brings your medical practice to life but, now that it’s online, how will potential customers find it? That’s where search engine optimisation can help you and your clients to find each other.
Search engine optimisation is important because it gets your website to the top of the search page where it will get noticed by people looking for your particular area of expertise.
Search engine optimisation is more than just identifying keywords. Successful SEO is figuring out how your target audience perceives your business and how this perception manifests in their search engine queries. Having a good idea what potential clients will type into search engines will give you a better idea of effective keywords to use for your website.
It’s not an exact science and involves carrying out market research and making an informed guess on the type of searches that interested parties will make.
If you’re not sure where to start and need help to promote your consultant website, leave it to the experts. Chits UK are a top professional healthcare marketing company who make it our business to promote pharmacists, clinics, consultants, dental practices and surgeries, and more. We can create a professional healthcare SEO campaign.
We can do all the research for you, find relevant keywords and phrases that your potential patients are using in their web searches to find your services and we can apply location and geography to search times to assist you in being found.
Our SEO team will begin an in-depth on and off page optimisation campaign which they will manage for you. Chits SEO solutions include keyword research, content audits, competitor analysis and on page optimisation to attract and drive new patients to your surgery.
By choosing Chits you will receive monthly reports on our successes in raising your ranking and how close you are to your goal of achieving page one status on search engines.
Other promotional work that Chits can do on behalf of your medical practice includes creating an online presence for you through social media and blogging, online advertising including pay per click adverts, affiliate advertising on other websites and work on conceptualising your brand of medicine so that clients will know what you stand for.
Social media takes ‘word of mouth’ recommendations online!
Social media usage has become one of the major social activities of this decade. People enjoy chatting, posting and sharing content that interests them and will often make recommendations on it.
There are four principal social media platforms that businesses typically use to engage with people. They are:
Facebook (Meta)
This network enables family and friends to keep in touch with each other and share photographs and videos of their daily lives. It also connects businesses. Doctors, surgeons, pharmacists and other medics are able to construct Facebook pages for their establishments and post content that people might find interesting.
There is also the opportunity for patients to leave reviews of the treatment they have received and what they think of the practice they attended. These informal recommendations can be passed on to friends and this may increase referrals and the number of appointment bookings.
Twitter (Now X)
This social media micro-blogging site allows the user to send short messages of up to 140 characters. Health care professionals can use twitter to ‘tweet’ details of new treatments, surgeries, diseases or medical journal studies to heighten interest in their speciality of medicine and in their practice.
YouTube
This is a video sharing platform that is the 2nd most used search engine in the world. Doctors can make videos about their practice or about the treatments they offer. For instance,
There are lots of ways in which medical videos can be utilised to increase interest from the public. YouTube videos can also be embedded into a professional healthcare website.
This is a platform in which professionals can get in touch with each other. Healthcare personnel can use it to recruit new staff for their clinic or hospital or even get to know the competition.
Email marketing is an excellent way to create brand loyalty.
Email marketing is direct marketing to a targeted audience via email, usually to clients or previous enquirers. Groups of people are sent messages via email to educate them about conditions and treatments, encourage them to visit a clinic, or to increase brand awareness.
Email marketing is done with the intent of encouraging customer loyalty, persuade existing customers to repeat order or arrange subsequent appointments and with the purpose of acquiring new customers.
The targeted audience can come from a current customer database, or businesses can buy lists of email addresses that fit their target audience.
Advantages of Email Marketing
There are lots of advantages of email marketing. It is cheaper than traditional 'snail mail' promotions. The sender doesn't have printing and mailing costs and doesn't have to wait as long for a response.
If consumers have joined a specific subscriber list, then it also provides a means of communicating with a large group of people who are interested in the sender's services. This creates a higher uptake rate for those services than is seen with printed marketing.
Senders can see the exact return they are getting from their email campaign as responses can be tracked, eg by monitoring email opens and clicking on embedded links. Email is environmentally friendly and less wasteful than 'snail mail', where huge amounts of paper are discarded every year and contribute to deforestation. Sending communications electronically is ethically responsible.
What Can Go Wrong?
We have all received unwanted emails. They can be highly irritating if not appropriate to our needs.
Sending the wrong kind of message, or by presenting it in the wrong way, can turn an opportunity to turn a prospect into the customer into a prospect that will never become a customer.
In certain circumstances, you can even be flagged as a 'spammer'. If this happens, you won't be able to get any further emails to your clients and prospects. The opportunity has been lost.
To avoid all these scenarios, Chits use their many years of experience to deliver an email marketing campaign that will both inform, and generate new opportunities from your clients and prospects.
Email marketing can be used to reach a wide range of people with your message. According to Ofcom Adults' Media Use and Attitudes Report, over eight in 10 adults now go online using any type of device. Six in 10 adults use a smart phone and access mobile websites and even the over 65’s are twice as likely to use a smart phone as they were in 2012, so the vast majority of the UK adult population use the Internet and have access to emails, making email an ideal commercial opportunity for businesses in all sectors.
Need Help with your Campaign?
If you want to see how email marketing could benefit your medical practice, let Chits UK take charge.
Chits are a professional healthcare digital marketing company that has been helping professional healthcare providers increase their clients since 2004. We can design an email campaign that fits with your clinic practice and ethos and we will distribute them as frequently as you need. Our graphics team will create an enticing design to encourage your potential customers to take action, whether that be downloading a brochure or making an appointment.
