Social Media Success with Our 4-Step YouTube Marketing Strategy

The goal of a doctor or a clinic is to improve the healthcare and wellness of their patients. However, there is one truth you can not ignore. A practice is a business. And for a business to be successful, you will have to employ the latest and the best strategies to get your clinic in the limelight. And this includes using social media platforms.

Gone are the days of TV ads and brochures. There are so many platforms and strategies that a clinic can use to scale up its patient intake and improve its customer retention. There are many brands that are harnessing the power of social media platforms to connect with their customers and create a community built on trust and value. Including doctors and hospitals.

Doctor Mike (board-certified family medicine physician) has well over 9.11 million subscribers on YouTube. Dr. Robert Morse (board-certified and accredited Naturopathic physician) has 105K subscribers. Channels a little closer to home would include:

• American Dental Association (50.3K subscribers)
• 3M Oral Care (23.3K subscribers)
• Dr. Teeth (198K subscribers)

1. Create a Brand

As mentioned before, a practice is a business and it should be treated‌. A business requires marketing strategies and a strong social presence to be successful. The more you optimize for current trends, the more relevant you will be.

Why Choose YouTube?

• Second most visited site (Hootsuite)
• 21.2% of the audience is aged between 25 and 34, 17% is between 35 and 44 (HubSpot)
• 80% of Gen Z turn to YouTube for information and knowledge (thinkwithgoogle)

There is a huge demographic that uses YouTube, which makes it an ideal platform for businesses. Moreover, it is relatively easy to use, and it tracks metrics for you.

The first step of launching a business on YouTube is to think about the brand. How do you want to communicate and what tone do you want to use? Are you going for a laid-back approach with wit thrown in? Or is it a casual tone with a bit of humor? What is your niche going to be? Are you focused on general information, touching upon several topics? Or do your videos provide a more in-depth look into a few topics?

This step is not the most crucial, you can switch it up a bit later if you want to. The most important part is to be consistent. You don’t want to be all over the place with your videos. The more uniformity your posts have in terms of look and feel, the better they will perform and it adds a professional look to your YouTube account.

Once you decide on the overall look and feel of the brand, you can go ahead and create a YouTube business account for your practice.

2. Create a Content Strategy

A content strategy is by far the most important part of building a business. A marketing strategy can include many things: business goals, marketing goals, researching, creating a buyer’s persona, creating content calendars, and optimization, to name a few.

YouTube Marketing and Branding

Once you have a brand, you need to work on your propositions. Why should people subscribe to your channel? What value are you adding to your viewers’ lives? For a few ideas, you can make relatable content or informative content. Are your videos geared up to be funny or are they geared up to provide information about a specific topic?

The next step is to create a buyer’s persona or a target audience. What kind of people will like your videos? Who is your content aimed at? What level of health literacy are they on? Where do they live, what do they like, what behaviors are specific to them?

For Example

Consider local dentistry that wants to educate people about daily routines that can be integrated into everyday lives for the upkeep of teeth.

Age: 18-55, Occupation: Students, working professionals, Location: Remote (relevant to large demographic), Education: Highschool, bachelor’s, master’s, Interests: Health & wellness, self-education

To make things more specific, you can also divide your target demographic into several target demographics, filter them by age, location, or occupation. This way you can create content specific to those demographics.

Content Calendar

The next part is to create a content calendar and plan for your posts.

How often are you going to post? Twice a week, or twice a day? Will it be 3-minute videos or 7-minute videos?

A content calendar details what videos/content needs to be uploaded on what dates, on what platforms, and what the video will include.

Also remember to add CTA’s (call to action) to your videos to guide the audience to perform certain tasks you want them to do, like visit your website or book an appointment.

Try to make videos on topics that are trending or are evergreen.

Some Content Ideas:

• What are root canals? (or any other procedure)
• Before and after videos
• Office tours
• Meet the team videos
• Tips and tricks
• Q&A sessions
• Review or Demos

3. Build a Community

Community building is the foundation of a trusted organization. Engaging with your audience is the best way to foster trust and build success.

Community posts can give you a chance to interact with your subscribers and create engagement in your channel. You can use formats such as texts, images, polls, GIFs in the community tab as a means of communication, beyond using videos. This is a great way to keep in touch with your audience in-between uploads.

Another strategy to employ would be to subscribe to channels that are like yours and build relationships with them. Collaborations will help expand your audience and build trust in you as a brand. Commenting on other posts or responding to comments on your posts are also great ways to build a community.

Creating stories and conducting live sessions can boost your awareness metrics and help you interact with your audience in real-time.

4. Optimize for Your Metrics

Like most things in life, this is not a one-and-done. Your job does not end at making and posting a video. There is still so much work to be done after. Once your post is published and your subscribers can view it, you now have to track the videos’ metrics.

Fortunately, YouTube tracks metrics of your posts like reach, engagement, and demographics, among a few. It provides all the data in a graphical method that is easy to understand. These metrics will let you know how your videos are performing.

It takes a bit of number crunching to get an idea of which videos are performing well, but it is relatively easy if a bit time-consuming. Once you know what kind of videos are doing well, it is just a matter of fine-tuning your content calendar and optimizing for the metrics.

You need to keep working on your content strategy, community and optimizing for metrics. There is no one strategy that can work for everyone. Your strategy will depend on your subscribers and your content. Your strategy will be unique to you, and will only work for you.

Once you get the hang of it, it becomes fairly easy to maintain your channel and your community. If you get too busy, you can always hire interns or freelancers to take care of it for you.