Any medical professional or marketing director of a private practice who writes their own marketing copy knows how challenging it can be. Writing copy is a vital part of your marketing strategy as a whole, and a huge aspect of anything you put on your website. You need it to be effective and demonstrate your expertise in your area of practice. However, many medical professionals and their marketing directors fall into the same trap when they write: sacrificing clarity to “sound professional.”
It’s important to convey professionalism through your website and everywhere you present yourself. You want your patients and potential patients to trust that you really do know what you’re talking about. You need them to understand that you are able to fix their problems.
The issue is that doctors are not writers. That is not why you went to school. Marketing directors often know more about writing, but that doesn’t mean they know how to do so for a medical practice. The result is a common problem in the copy you put on your website—writing with big medical words, using extremely technical language, or just employing dull explanations to describe what you do.
Here’s the truth: this is dry, boring, and confusing.
The vast majority of your patients don’t understand what you’re talking about when you list the proper names of the treatment modalities used to manage the intrinsic complexities of a comminuted fracture. Your patients’ eyes will glaze over as they read that, and they will leave your website, never to check it for answers again. Instead they will go looking for a doctor who can explain their pain and treatments in clear, interesting language they can easily understand.
Your patients are just too busy. They don’t have time to labor through boring and confusing webpages or blogs. They have far more pressing things to worry about. They will easily forget about you if you don’t capture their attention and speak clearly to them through your content. That is why clear, compelling marketing copy that speaks to the concerns already on patients’ minds in a language they can easily understand is what your web content really needs. Not lists of the specs on your newest laser. Not a detailed description of a procedure you might find in a medical journal.
If you want your marketing copy to be effective, you need to make it clear.
There are other equally important steps for writing excellent marketing copy, of course. Writing with clear, simple language doesn’t automatically make your blogs or FAQs compelling. However, writing well is a skill you can certainly learn, which is why Rem Jackson has his own Copywriting Workshop available to our members. Copy is one of your most valuable marketing tools and a vital part of a well-rounded strategy. Don’t lose potential patients over something you can easily fix. Contact us at [email protected] for more information! You can also call us at (717) 725-2679.