If you run a medical practice or work in healthcare, marketing can feel overwhelming. There are so many channels and strategies out there that it's hard to know where to start.
The good news is that there are a handful of core strategies that will make a real difference for your practice. When you execute these five things well, you will start generating more leads, ranking higher in search engines, and turning new patients into long-term loyal ones.
You can find our healthcare marketing tutorial below or directly on YouTube. If you continue scrolling, you will find the full breakdown of each strategy in this article.
My 5 Doctor Marketing Strategies and Best Practices
If you follow the strategies below and stay consistent, your medical practice will start attracting more patients and building a stronger presence in your local market.
The key is to start with your foundation first. Your website, your Google Business Profile, and your paid advertising are going to do the heavy lifting. Once those are in place, your content and reviews will compound everything on top of them.
1. Build a Robust Website
Your website is the foundation of everything. Before you run ads, before you post on social media, before you do anything else, you need a website that clearly communicates who you are, what you do, and why patients should choose you.
A strong medical practice website should include an About page, a full team page, a complete list of your specialties and services, your locations, and your contact information. If you can include pricing or general cost expectations, even better. The more information you give visitors, the more trust you build before they ever pick up the phone.
One of the most important things you can do is create individual pages for each of your services. Do not lump everything together on one generic page. If you treat knee pain, ankle pain, foot pain, and elbow pain, each of those should have its own dedicated page on your website.
Here is why that matters from an SEO standpoint. When someone searches "foot orthopedic care near me" or "ankle pain treatment near me," Google is looking for the most relevant page it can find. If you have a dedicated page for that specific service, you have a much better chance of ranking for that search term than if everything is buried on a general services page.
The same logic applies to your locations. If your practice has multiple locations, create individual location pages for each one. You can even go a step further and create pages that combine a service with a location. For example, a page titled "Ankle Pain Treatment in Myrtle Beach" or "Knee Pain Treatment in Murrells Inlet" can rank for hyper-local searches and drive patients who are searching specifically in that area.
Make it easy for patients to contact you. Your phone number, your contact form, and your appointment booking option should all be easy to find on every page.
Question to Answer: Does your website have individual pages for each of your services and locations so that patients can easily find you?
2. Set Up and Optimize Your Google Business Profiles
Once your website is in place, the next thing you need to focus on is your Google Business Profile. This is what shows up when someone searches for your practice on Google Maps or in the local pack at the top of search results.
Fill out every single field in your profile. Add your business name, address, phone number, hours, services, photos, and a description of your practice. The more complete your profile is, the better it will perform in local search results.
If your practice has multiple locations, create a separate Google Business Profile for each location. Each profile should be fully built out and should reflect the specific services available at that location. When you have multiple locations in the same area, you have the opportunity to dominate the local map pack and appear in front of patients no matter where they are searching from.
One thing that many practices overlook is creating individual Google Business Profiles for the doctors at the practice. Even if they share the same address as the main practice, individual doctors can create their own profiles. This puts a face behind your brand and gives you another opportunity to rank in local search results. When a doctor has hundreds of strong reviews under their individual profile, that shows up prominently and builds a lot of trust with potential patients.
Reviews are critical. A strong review score sets you apart from competitors and plays a major role in where you rank in the local map pack. Make sure you are responding to your reviews as well. Whether a review is positive or negative, responding to it shows patients that you are engaged and that you care.
Question to Answer: Do you have fully built out Google Business Profiles for each of your locations and individual doctors at your practice?
3. Run Paid Advertising with Google Ads
Organic search results are valuable, but Google has continuously pushed them further down the page. Today, when someone searches for orthopedic care or medical services near them, the top half of the results page is often filled with paid ads and AI overviews before you ever reach an organic result.
That means even if you are doing great with SEO, you still need to be running Google Ads to stay competitive. If you are not running ads and your competitors are, they are showing up at the very top of the page while you are buried further down.
Google Ads allows you to target patients who are actively searching for the services you offer. Someone searching "orthopedic surgeon near me" or "knee pain treatment" is already looking for help. Your ad puts you in front of them at exactly the right moment.
For a medical practice, I recommend starting with search campaigns targeting your core services and locations. You want your ads to match closely with the searches your potential patients are making. From there, make sure your landing pages are relevant and make it as easy as possible for someone to call your office or book an appointment.
One important thing to keep in mind is that even if you already rank well organically, you should still be running ads. Organic rankings can fluctuate, and paid ads give you consistent, reliable visibility at the top of the page. For a medical practice where a single new patient can turn into years of ongoing care, the return on ad spend is very strong.
You can also run Meta Ads on Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube Ads as part of your overall paid strategy. Video ads that speak directly to a patient's problem, such as a doctor talking about knee pain treatment options, can be very effective for building awareness and driving new patients.
Question to Answer: Are you running Google Ads to reach patients who are actively searching for your services?
4. Create Consistent Content on Social Media
Once your foundation is in place, content is one of the best ways to build trust and expand your reach. Consistent content on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube helps you stay top of mind with your audience and positions your practice as an authority in your area.
You do not need to overthink this. Simple videos of a doctor talking directly to the camera about a common problem can be incredibly effective. Think about the questions your patients ask you every day. Those questions are content ideas.
A short video that starts with "Are you struggling with knee pain in Myrtle Beach?" and goes on to explain what options are available is the kind of content that can reach a potential patient right when they need you. It does not need to be highly produced. Authentic, informative, and local content performs well.
You should also consider posting images from your practice, your team, and your community. When people see the faces behind your brand, they feel more comfortable reaching out. For a medical practice, trust is everything. Content is one of the best ways to build it.
From an SEO standpoint, Google rewards websites and brands that are consistently active. Content on social media channels, especially when it drives traffic back to your website, contributes to your overall search engine presence.
Another benefit of creating video content is that it can be repurposed. A video you create for YouTube can be turned into a short clip for Instagram, a Facebook post, or even used as a video ad in a future Google or Meta Ads campaign.
Question to Answer: Are you publishing consistent content on social media that speaks directly to the problems your patients are dealing with?
5. Automate Your Review Generation
Reviews are one of the most important factors in local search rankings and one of the most powerful trust signals you can have as a medical practice. Patients read reviews before they make a decision. A practice with 500 reviews and a 4.8 star rating is going to win over a practice with 50 reviews almost every time.
The problem is that most patients do not leave reviews on their own, even when they had a great experience. You need a system that automatically follows up with patients after their visit and makes it as easy as possible for them to leave a review.
There are platforms built specifically for this. BirdEye is one of the most well-known options and offers HIPAA-compliant plans, which is important for a medical practice. Liftify is another option that works well for automating the follow-up process. With a platform like this in place, a patient visits your office, and a few hours or days later they receive a text message or email thanking them for their visit and asking them to leave a review. Most people are willing to do it when it is quick and easy.
The goal is to make your patients your best marketers. Every positive review you generate not only improves your rankings, it helps the next potential patient feel confident enough to choose your practice. When you combine a strong review strategy with a great website, optimized business profiles, paid ads, and consistent content, you build a presence in your local market that is very difficult for competitors to match.
Question to Answer: Do you have a system in place to automatically follow up with patients and generate new reviews after each visit?
In Summary
The five doctor marketing strategies above work together to build a comprehensive online presence for your medical practice. Start with your website and make sure it covers every service and location in detail. Build out your Google Business Profiles for each location and each doctor at your practice. Run Google Ads so you are showing up at the top of search results where patients are actively looking. Create consistent content to build trust and expand your reach. And put a review generation system in place so that your patients become your most powerful marketing tool.
If you stay consistent with all five of these strategies, you will start to see your rankings improve, your lead volume increase, and your practice grow over time.
If you need help with your Google Ads campaigns or your overall healthcare marketing strategy, feel free to reach out to us at Surfside PPC.