Some time ago, I launched my Physicians Website Secrets Program. Some of you took a brief look at it (or maybe even spent a moment or two thinking about it), but for many of you, either it didn’t register at the time, or you had no need for it.

As with anything on the Internet, there is a learning curve and a certain amount of experimentation to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

I discovered that asking you to fork over $5.00 for a CD containing secrets to creating an effective medical practice or physician business website wasn’t worth it to many of you. It meant you had to go to your wallet, haul out your credit card, and fill in all those  fields, all for a lousy $5 payment. I suspect it wasn’t the cost as much as the EFFORT involved in exchange for something that you didn’t know yet might (or might not) be worth your time.

Because I was asking you to trust me with your credit card information BEFORE you’d had an opportunity to evaluate what the program could do for you, the program didn’t do as well as I hoped it would.

Mistake.

This time round, I want to do something different. I still want to share my Number One Secret about websites with you, because I passionately believe in this, and I really want you to avoid the errors made by so many early physician entrepreneurs or even seasoned medical practice owners (and that I made when I was getting going with my physician coaching business). So I AM asking you to enter your name and e-mail address, just this once, to get access to that secret.

But once you’ve gotten my Number One Secret (you may find this one surprising, as it’s not what most of you DO!!), you’ll hopefully discover that I’ve made you more valuable offer. One that will not cost you a penny, and that will give you the chance to test drive the Physicians Website Secrets Program by accessing the first Module in its entirety!

And I’m adding some bonuses, so that even if you decide that this program isn’t for you, you’ll walk away with some really solid information to help you prop up an ailing website, or start afresh with one that’s truly healthy and vibrant

If you’re curious, if the time feels right, go to Physicians Website Secrets, enter your name and e-mail, and you’ll be given immediate access to the link that will permit you to sample this treasure trove of insights and learning I’ve distilled down into the Physicians Website Secrets Program.

I look forward to being as helpful as I possibly can – I really want you to enjoy some of the “Internet success” that I have in my business!

During the planning stage of your copywriting for your medical practice website or your physician business website, you need to understand exactly what it is you hope your website to accomplish.

• Do you want the visitor to contact you to learn about becoming a patient, or a client?
• Do you want to sell something?
• Or invite your visitors to become members of something?
• Or download something of value to them so that they begin to perceive your medical practice or physician business as their solution?

Perhaps you have already determined that you need to build a subscriber base, circulate information, increase practice revenues by growing your numbers of patients.  But in order to accomplish these differing (and not mutually exclusive!) goals, you must make sure that your web copy will support your efforts.

1. Decide who your ideal customers are and what they really want.  Then find and craft the words that will most effectively bring these people to your site.  Include your best keywords and keyword phrases.

2. Create a plan. Without a detailed plan, it will become impossible to know whom you are targeting.  Without a target, you are likely to miss out on those people who are willing and eager to pay for your help and expertise.

3. Realize that your target audience is typically smarter and more knowledgeable than the average visitor to a website. Now that you have started planning, you need to start looking at whom to target.

Targeting is used to figure out what group of customers will have the problems that can be solved by using your particular service or product.  It is therefore vital that you become an expert in not only your target market, but also in knowing every single benefit that your service or product offers.

Once you determine whom you need to target, you can begin to search them out.  Build a profile of those people who will benefit from your help the most.  Once you know who they are and what problems they want solved or desires they need satisfied, then address your writing directly to them, using the most magnetic of the benefits your service or product can offer as “bait”. To discover what these Benefits are, ask your current happy patients or clients. They’ll tell you!

What do you value most/love best about our medical practice?
What made you choose me/us as your XYZ person?
What keeps you coming back?

At last, you have found your target audience, and now you must develop a strategy for writing your copy.  In order to do this, the best way is to do the following:

1.    Write about what the customer wants to hear – answer their – use  WIIFM question (What’s In It For Me?).
2.    Create the tone that is inviting to those you’re targeting, using their language.
3.    Present your idea(s) simply and concisely.

Get writing!

Related articles

• 5 ways to improve your medical practice in 2011 (kevinmd.com)
• Is Web Copy Ruining Your Design? (sixrevisions.com)

Many a medical practice website should be retired to website heaven.

Why?

Because they are completely ineffective at doing what you, the physician business owner are paying for your website to do — invite more business to your medical practice! And thereby boost your bottom line.

And one of the biggest culprits is lousy copy. (That’s the fancy term for all that writing on your website).

It is vitally important to know that people do not read a website in the same way that they would read printed material.  In fact, there are three characteristics which affect how a web user will react to the online content of a site.

1. Immediately obvious benefit. It is important to remember that web users are active, not passive.  If they can’t find a compelling reason for staying on a site (the answer to their search query!), then they will leave it.  Sometimes a person will leave in less than 3 seconds after they have arrived on the page.

2. Concise evocative language. If your paragraphs are too long, or your words are too dense, the visitor is less likely to read it.

3. Believability. So much of the web visitor’s experience is characterized by overstated claims and “hype”. If you want a web user to believe what you have to say, you must be able to back up your claims, with testimonials, case studies and anecdotes.

One of the most important reasons why copywriting for the web is different is the different mindset of the web page visitor.

Internet Copywriting vs. Traditional Copywriting

More often than not, web pages will be found via a search engine.  This is very significant, as it means that the person landing on your website has been looking either for you or for someone like you.  That puts the visitor in control – they are focused on finding a particular product, service or piece of information.

Anyone visiting your site for the first time, who has found it via a search engine, will have a few questions in mind.
“Have I come to the right place?”
“Will I find what I’m looking for at this page or site?”
“Can I can complete my task at this point?”

You need to answer these questions in both your headline or title, and any sub-headlines or sub-titles on the page.  You need to be able to secure a response from this first time visitor immediately.

Your writing must provide reassurance that the visitor is going to find exactly what they are looking for. Your web copy should encourage your visitors that they are have come to the right place, and that they should continue to read on.

In order for any web copy to be effective, it must take into account the three characteristics mentioned above.

Now, go back to your website and take a long, hard look!

Will yours pass the 3-second blink test??

Related articles

• Online Business Promotion That Works: SEO, Copywriting and Social Media (searchenginejournal.com)
• A few Quick Tips in SEO Copywriting (mt-soft.com.ar)
• Scott Meis: SEO 101: Choosing good keywords (websitehelpers.com)

Is your medical practice website or physician business website performing well?

How would you know?

Until a few years ago, my response to this question would have been “huh?” I had no idea what a website should and could do, other than that it should have some information about my business, so that anyone who wanted to surreptitiously check me out could do so. And my website was supposed to make my visitor want to sign up right away as a client. “Yay – this is just what I was looking for!”

Somewhere along the way, as I was trying to learn more about marketing my entrepreneurial physician business (that’s another story – what a whole new set of “aha’s” that opened up for me!), I became aware of what websites are supposed to do for businesses.

Bring in MORE BUSINESS!

Mine wasn’t there just to reassure folks who already knew about me, that I was a physician coach and could lay claim to some training. It was to allow me to be discovered by someone who didn’t have a clue that I or my physician coaching business existed and who happened to be in front of a computer at 2 AM looking for something. A solution to a pressing problem. The chance to scratch an itch that had been plaguing them. Some needed information on a topic of interest.

My physician business website needed to provide the inviting “Open Door” to a relationship that my business could create with that curious “Seeker” of information and solutions. I shouldn’t imagine selling my wares immediately. Instead, I should become a useful resource and “friend” to my prospective clients, by using the Internet and the power of automation to cultivate and nurture relationships that could eventually pay off.

This huge insight led me to redesign not only my website but my whole approach to the business and and marketing of my physician coaching practice.

And if I dare to imagine life as a family physician had I remained in practice and used what I now know about medical practice websites, I picture a very different experience as a physician business owner. I picture myself with a website that speaks clearly to my intended patients, revealing who I am in a video, making my philosophy clear, articulating my Unique Selling Proposition (a fancy marketing term for answering the question  – “Why should I be itnersted in your practice or business?”), using the website as a teaching tool, and leveraging the Internet to perform some of my practice’s essential operations, thereby freeing up employee time, or even cutting labor costs!

It’s what lots of other savvy businesses do. Why shouldn’t your medical practice or physician business be creative and do the same?

Which brings up my question for you:

What is your number one question about getting your medical practice website or physician business website to perform better (i.e. bring in more business and/or generate more revenue)?

If you’ll answer this in the comments section below, I promise to provide as many answers as I can!

When I had my first coaching business website built for me (my medical practice days predated the use of the Internet for marketing a practice!), I had no idea that a website could have different functionalities and that I should elect to create the kind of website that best matched my business’s strategic and marketing needs.

I thought a website was a website was a website. And I grossly overpaid for what I really needed.

Now I know better!

This brief video above provides a glimpse into what kind of websites you need to consider as you plan the upgrade of your existing physician practice or business website, or you begin the planning process from scratch.

For more details and a greater understanding of this topic, go now to Physician Website Secrets for a free “Biggest Secret to Creating a Revenue-Generating Website” and a free CD with a whole lot more Key Secrets to success.

What does Web 2.0 mean to us non-techie physician practice and business owners?

Simply put, a Web 2.0 website is one that, instead of merely spooning content to the visitor in a passive one-way “dump” as the earliest websites did, engages the visitor (also called an end-user) in one or more of the following ways:

• invites comments, as in a blog (this is the highly valued “user-generated content” that adds so much richness to a website)
• fosters community with discussion boards or forums
• facilitates interactions between medical business or practice owners and their patients or clients, such as webcam conversations, webinars. emails, instant messages etc.
• delivers highly targeted messages or information to patients and clients based on actions that they take on the website or in emails
• and the list goes on …

In essence, Web 2.0 creates two-way, iterative, value-added interactivity and dialogue!

Here then is a slide show with one person’s take on how Web 2.0 medicine could operate (Hint: See if you can spot opportunities for your physician business or medical practice, and decide how you might build or adapt your website to take advantage of these opportunities):

(thanks to Bertalan Mesko MD)

[View more presentations from Bertalan Mesko, MD.]

I’d love to hear what you think!

boring web copy for physician website

In the Physicians Website Secrets 12-week program, I have taken some pains to emphasize the role that dynamic customer-oriented website copy plays in helping you connect via your physician business website to your ideal patients or customers.

It was cool to see Entrepreneur magazine’s article from November 2009 on 10 Reasons Your Marketing Messages Stink.

As harsh as it sounds, it is possible for a marketing message to stink — and never attract interest or arouse the desire to learn more. Just look around you at some of your competitor websites. I’m frankly amazed at how many bad websites there are, costing practices and businesses thousands of dollars to have built.

In summary, the ten reasons from Entrepreneur magazine are:

1. You’re arrogant.
2. You’re pushy.
3. You’re rambling.
4. You’re boring.
5. You’re not believable.
6. You’re not saying what people want to hear.
7. You’re marketing in the wrong place.
8. You’re putting the cart before the horse.
9. You’re a one trick pony.
10. You’re not making sense.

Hopefully that isn’t you!

Read the whole article on how to improve your physician website writing here.

As a core part of your physician Internet marketing plan, for your medical practice or physician business, it’s vital that you understand how search engines function to help your website get found!

This 5 minute video highlights the three keys to understanding how search engines function, so that you can take advantage of the enormous power of the Internet in helping you capture more business (and hopefully more revenue!) for your medical practice or physician business.

Get access right now to the biggest secret to a successful medical practice website — and be sure to ask for a free secret-laden CD to be sent to your mail box as well.

One of the most frustrating aspects of having a fancy website built for you for several thousands of dollars occurs when you want to make a change to your copy, or add a photo or video, and you have to wait your turn for your webmaster’s time!

This happened to me several times with my first (expensive) website. If I wanted to add a newsletter, or change something that didn’t sound quite right in my text, my email to my webmaster would often go unanswered for a couple of days.

And when I did have the changes made (finally!), I’d have to fork over yet another payment.

As soon as I became aware of alternatives that set me free, I promised myself – never again!

The secret is to have your webmaster build you a site that includes a content management system (aka CMS).

What does this mean?

A CMS gives you access and the ability to go into your website from the “back end” and make whatever changes you want to your content, whenever you want. At noon, 6 PM or 2 AM when you can’t sleep!! Any time.

For the technophobes amongst us, there is good news!

Making these changes, or adding fresh content such as an article you wrote or a new phone number, is as simple as typing an email or a Word (or Macintosh equivalent) document – with the options to bold, italicize, add bullets or numbers, and better yet, liven up your site with graphics and even videos. All with a few clicks and a small amount of basic training!

To give you an idea, I’ve created this post (which in turn generates a whole new web page) on this WordPress platform (a CMS platform) merely by clicking on a couple of buttons and then typing into a box. And then pushing Save!

Take back control. Never be held hostage to your webmaster again. Just be sure to request that your web designer or web master build you a website on a platform that includes a CMS. Just think – you’ll even know how to use the lingo!

This short 3-minute video highlights three hugely important tips for making sure your medical practice or physician business website does what it is supposed to — bring in more business!

For more physician website secrets, get your free video right away. And your comments and questions are always welcome.