We're so glad that you could be here today to learn powerful insights into how to incorporate personal and human touches into your digital marketing strategy. Your moderators for today are me, Ted Annis, Senior Marketing Specialist. And me, Fran Vincent, Marketing and Membership Manager. Our expert presenter today is Michelle Smith, President of SourceOne Specialty Services. Michelle began her career at Barnett Banks in credit card software before going to work for AT&T. In 2004, Michelle founded SourceOne Specialty Services combining her business and call center expertise to fulfill a need in the hearing services industry. We're very excited to have Michelle as our presenter today. But before we get started, we have just a few housekeeping items. Please note that we are recording today's presentation so that we may offer it on demand through the IHS website in the future. This webinar is available for one continuing education credit through the International Hearing Society. We've uploaded the CE quiz to the handout section of the webinar dashboard and you may download it at any time. You can also find out more about receiving continuing education credit at our website, IHSinfo.org. Click on the webinar banner on the homepage or choose webinars from the navigation menu. You'll find the CE quiz along with information on how to submit your quiz to IHS for credit. If you'd like a copy of the slideshow from today's presentation, you can download it from the handout section of the webinar dashboard or you can access it from the webinar page on the IHS website. Feel free to download the slides now. Tomorrow, you will receive an email with a link to a survey on this webinar. It is brief and your feedback will help us create valuable content for you moving forward. Today we'll be covering the following topics. Maximizing your marketing investment and securing new patients. Developing digital marketing strategies and the human component in each one. Understanding when and how to deploy your social media presence and how your practice ambassador can be an invaluable part of that strategy. How to incorporate personal interaction into your digital marketing plan to dramatically increase your digital marketing results. At the end, we'll move on to a Q&A session. You can send us a question from Michelle at any time by entering your question in the question box on your webinar dashboard, usually located at the top or the right of your webinar dashboard. We'll take as many questions in the time we have available. Now I'm going to turn it over to Michelle who will guide you through today's presentation. Take it away, Michelle. Thank you so much, Ted, and it's just a pleasure to be here today. I appreciate the opportunity to help people understand how they can further market to help find new patients and to do that in ways that are really outside the box of traditional marketing in the past. At First One Specialty Services, we provide call center services, both inbound call acceptance and outbound calling, as well as digital marketing support and consult, as well as website design. But we are very, very focused on helping hearing centers reach everyone that is within that demographic of their hearing center to help them find as many new patients as they possibly can. Our last webinar focused on helping the patient care coordinators contribute more towards helping a practice build and find new business and ultimately find new patients. So today, what we're going to talk about today is more about that process, the next step in how you market and how you market with the human touch, their human touch for the hearing practice owner, and in helping them build their practice. We're going to start, let's go ahead and start with the website. And with the website, this really becomes your online calling card. This is how people find out about you on the internet. It's customizable. It's adjustable. It can be molded and shaped to fit your practice's needs and also your practice's objectives. It really does become a one-stop shop for you where your prospective patients have a way to find out where you are, your phone number, your address, directions, where you are in relationship to them, whatever it is that they need to find you. So just like you're able to find patients and find prospects through direct mail, this is your next opportunity to help find additional people as well. So just like you're able to identify and target markets with your direct mail, you can do exactly the same thing with your digital marketing, which starts with your website. Because again, the ultimate objective is to find new patients. Email marketing is something that you can craft and adjust to fit your immediate situation. You can craft emails that are appealing to your audience, whether they are patients or prospects, and you can promote a wide variety of things, a wide variety of messaging to each of those segments. Emails can be adjusted to fit something that is seasonal, which are holidays, or milestones. It can be topical, which can be anniversaries, new hearing aid technology, or hearing special interest stories. You should absolutely always use email to complement your direct mail efforts, and once you have a substantial email list, you can actually look at how some of the direct mail can be replaced, but you can also segment your mailing list to deliver different messages to different segments. For example, you can send your existing patients a special time to upgrade message, and you can send your test loss no sale files. Here is the latest message. So very, very relevant to who they are, with a message that says, simply from you, we know who you are, and we're delivering you with information that's relevant to you. Messages like constant contact, for example, allow you to track who has opened your emails, who has read them, who has forwarded them, and who has also deleted them, and this is important because you know people that are interested in what you've sent, but also if they are forwarding messages, that is something that you need to be alert about as well, because they may be forwarding to other friends that may have hearing aid needs, or family that's helping them with research. But these services allow your patients and prospects to also self-unsubscribe from your list. These are folks, these are people that you know, they've been in before, and therefore they represent a curated list. A curated list is important to you because they open at a 35 to 45 percent rate. This is very, very powerful. So some examples that would be important for you to know in terms of sending emails to your list. Things like monthly newsletters are important. You don't want to do more than two per month, but newsletters with education information included are interesting to your folks. Curated value information, an example of that would be sending information about how to take care of their equipment. Event messaging, an example of this could be open house events, end of year specials that have very special gifts, or discounts that are very tangible, but with deadlines. Because these are curated lists of people that have been in before, and because they open at a 35 to 45 percent rate, the importance of this type of email marketing to you is that they may have received your letter or your direct mail piece, but because they're getting so much direct mail, especially right now with Christmas, they're getting so many things in the mail right now, they may not have read your letter or your direct mail piece, but they're opening their emails at a 35 percent open rate, 35 to 45 percent open rate, and so they would see your message here instead. Your benefit is they're able to contact you, come in for the event and take advantage of the special discounts or the gifts that you're providing within that specific time frame that you need them to purchase. That is how that type of marketing absolutely complements what you're already doing and pays off in a way that helps you find new business or convert existing business. Okay, Facebook represents a second presence online. The benefits are numerous. It supplements your webpage and can serve as a temporary hub for you if you are building a proper website. Facebook is free, it's easy to set up and maintain. It can link directly to your website and provide another way for your patients and your prospects to contact you directly and schedule an appointment. After all, everything we do with marketing is designed to drive them in, to bring them in and to have you have the opportunity to help them, to let you have your time up at bat. This allows you to interact with your prospects and your patients in Facebook through real time, through posts and also messages. So while they may not be sitting in front of you, you can be interacting with them online which is almost, it's almost as good. Of course, the ultimate objective is to take that interaction and to turn it into an onsite meeting. But you can craft your messages and content that appeals to the demographic that you'd like to target and Facebook interaction actually increases your patient and your prospects and your new prospect engagement by 60 to 70 percent. We'll talk about how that happens shortly. The how to's include, content can be items like reposting something that's already been posted by your manufacturer, for example, articles from organizations, studies from medical organizations like the Hopkins Institute for Information, posts should always have pictures and videos when possible. Videos should always, if you're going to run videos, they should always have subtitles. And another useful tool in the how to for Facebook is that Facebook Live is a tool that actually works from a phone. This is important because more and more today the moms and dads have families that are involved with them and helping them do research with hearing aids. And if you have someone younger helping mom or dad, they may very well access this as opposed to going online. Digital marketing is absolutely fine on its own but it can be amazing with the human touch. It can be broken between two segments of interaction and also maintenance. Now interaction is building rapport and a relationship with your patients and your prospective patients online. So just like you have taken the time to build a relationship with your patient offline, you should also invest the time in developing a relationship with them online. This advances your relationship with your patients and it shows that you are absolutely willing to make the effort that your competitor doesn't. You are saying to your patients that no matter how you choose to interact with me, I'm listening. I'm willing to respond. I'm paying attention. Maintenance is simply making sure that all of your digital marketing avenues are up to date. A website, for example, that is not regularly updated, it becomes stale and it will fall on the Google search results listing. Patients and prospects expect a fresh website and while weekly or even monthly updates are not necessary, you should try to keep your website updated every quarter so that your patients know that you, you're engaged. You're engaged with your practice. You're engaged on social media and you're engaged with them. Researching different articles and posts as well as pictures that catch your eye is a wonderful way to build a good stock of ready-to-go posts. You should also have several email drafts ready to go, especially before a big event so that you can send them off as you get very close to your event. You have them ready to fire off so that you make a big impact. Finally, your email list needs to be regularly maintained so that people that want to be removed from your mailing list are removed so that your emails are not being labeled as spam. Okay, getting the most out of your digital marketing. Enhancing your website is actually essential in making it more user friendly and adding practical functionalities. One example, one practical function is to allow your patients to schedule their appointments directly from your website. Most online appointment systems actually have this integration and most of the time it's already included in your subscription package. So optimizing, so also optimizing your website for mobile devices, allow your patients and prospects to access your website from their mobile device in a way that's easy to read and also navigate. This is important because more and more families, as I mentioned earlier, are doing this together. Our seniors are more sophisticated today in addition to that and so you have really just simply responded to both of those things. It's a simple process if your website is maintained regularly and services like Squarespace, it's an easy way to give your website a fresh new look and add a lot of optimization and easy integration. Services like Cycle, for example, give you the scheduling capabilities that we've talked about. And that's important because again, if it's easy to schedule an appointment, then you have your time up at that because they're sitting with you in your office. Finally, making your website easier to read, even on a stationary computer, is absolutely appreciated by your patients and prospects, so be attentive to that as well. Before we talk about Facebook marketing, let's briefly go over the difference between organic and also boosted social media marketing. Organic social media marketing is the result of people that are looking for you. They are directly interested in your service. They are your patients and people that have been referred directly by your patients. While these people have actively sought you out specifically, this can be a low number depending on the market. They are very real prospects, they are motivated buyers, but it can be a rather low number in terms of the market, which is why you want to be using all of your tools. Boosted social media marketing, this is simply paid advertising, and it is now called ads manager. It is simple, it's user-friendly, but what you're doing is you're paying for the page and the posts to be viewed by a target demographic and in a specific region. The benefit to this is that it can dramatically increase the number of people who become aware of you and also see your posts. This can be a high number of people, and there is a small expense, but you are significantly increasing the number of people that are going to view you. Some examples of this, you can select how much you want to spend, you can select your geographic area, and the interests of your audience that you want to target. This can include things like age, gender, occupation, family status, hobbies, veteran status. You can also target people, and another powerful thing that you need to know about this is that you can also target people that have actually sought out information about hearing aids. You can take your direct mail list, and you can match these prospects to people's emails already in the global Facebook audience, and then boost and add only to them. Again, it's marketing way outside the box. So then, knowing that you can target people in this granular way, by boosting a post, you can target these very specific demographics. For example, you can target someone as specific as a 60 to 70-year-old woman who is a dog lover or as broad as a 30 to 60-year-old adult with senior parents. So no matter how specific or how broad your target is, the cost of boost will stay the same. So it's important to know what your options are so that you have the ability to really make your targets meaningful and relevant and productive. So boosting your page increases its visibility on Facebook. The more people, for example, in your community that see your page, the more they are aware of you, and it increases your reputation in the community and your credibility. It can also attract those family members of prospective patients. A son or daughter that is looking into researching hearing aids for their parents or looking into financially pay for hearing aids will see your page and will consider you over a competitor that they're just not aware of. So you want to build your likes and an unboosted post so that an unboosted post can be seen by even more people. So an example would be spending, for example, $20 a day can get your page seen by more people and add another 15 to 30 likes a day. While this may sound a little sterile and while it doesn't seem like much in the end, it actually results in a significant marketing outreach potential where your posts can be seen by a very large number of people. Likes are actually the foundation of your social media marketing because it promotes new patient referrals. Let me give you an example. We've just completed an open house for a client in the Texas area. The direct mail pulled well enough, however, they added to their open house efforts by asking us to follow up on their Facebook inquiries. In addition to their 20 appointments that they had from their direct mail, they added another eight appointments through Facebook inquiries. Out of those appointments, two of their overall sales came from their Facebook inquiries that were able to be scheduled for the event so that they could see them and talk to these prospects about the latest state-of-the-art technologies that are available for them. Very, very powerful. It's a real live example right now during the Christmas holiday season of how Facebook paid off in a very big way, and this is just one event. All right, so boosting your post allows it to be seen by people who have not liked your page. So organically, if you have 100 people that, for example, like your page, your post will have 100 views. So boosting your page will allow it to be seen by people who have not heard of you before but are potentially interested in your service that you provide. So boosting your post will make sure that these prospects are looking at you and not your competitor. So just like direct mail, the more people that see the post, the more likely they will pick up the phone and call you. You can craft a specific post that will target a specific range if you think your post will resonate deeply with them or if it will broaden your patient base, your customer base. This picture that we've included here is of a real post that targets a demographic outside of the typical age range for this hearing center, and they are looking for the new hearing aid customers that are, again, outside the box of the normal traditional demographics that we all think of. So this post targets a younger demographic, and it's targeted towards that demographic. Other targeted posts can focus on, again, veterans, or there can be theme posts that can target, for example, only men. Targeted posts that can cover a wide variety of topics. Let me give you a powerful example of how you can use the Facebook tools for boosting specific ads. You can actually, through Facebook, select interests within Facebook that allow you to find people that have done some kind of hearing aid search. You can then target those folks with ads that respond to their search, whether their search was by geographic area, age, manufacturer, or yes, even your competitor. You can find those folks, and you can then target your posts and boost your ads to help them direct their inquiries to you. Very, very powerful. So a lot of people have asked, why should I boost posts? And I think we're beginning to answer that question. You can't just ask your patients to like me. So you ask yourself, why should I boost posts? Why can't I just ask my patients to like me and get likes and post views, and so on and so forth? The short answer is yes, but of course you won't get the kind of return that you want for your efforts. First, boosting your page will generate likes, and these likes will result in more views. For example, if you have four page likes and the people that like your page have three friends, you make a post and two of the people that liked your page like or comment on the post. Six additional people just saw that post and interaction. So each time someone likes or interacts, which is leaving a comment or sharing something about your post, all of their friends can now see that activity. Second, by boosting a post, people who have not liked your page will also see your post. The picture that you see is the result of an actual boosted page with a moderate amount of likes. The page administrator paid $20 for this, which netted in 3689 people viewing the post, that's the paid reach, and 178 engagements, which were the page clicks, the likes, the shares. So the difference on the picture between the 6416 that saw this post and the 3689 that were the paid views leaves 27 organic audience impressions that will now see you. These are all people that will now see you. In other words, these are the people that you didn't have to actually pay for. That's how it helps you. So moving to email. While you can have a list of emails in your email service address book and you do your mailings that way, you won't actually be able to see what happens to your email. We mentioned earlier there are services out there. One we find is very effective is Constant Comment. It actually, Constant Contact, actually allows you to do that. You can see that your email was opened, but you can see who opened it. You can see how many people opened it. If you have a link to your website, you can see if people actually clicked on the website, another powerful thing to know. What you see at the top are actual statistics of a modest mailing that my company, Source One, did last year. And having this information even on a very modest mailing readily helped us craft and hone a very tailored message and a refined message. It helped us also modify our mailing list so that our marketing efforts were just more effective. Curated lists are important. Curated lists are people that you know. And an example of this page where we refined it down to the people that are responding, that would represent a curated list, people that you know or people that have interacted in some way. The importance of a curated list is that with your email, you have a 20 to 50% open rate. And that's versus a cold email list, which only has a 1 to 5% open rate. I think we've all pretty much experimented with what has become known as email blasts. And this really does explain why the cold email blasts, they just don't work. So you really want to focus in on a curated list. So now we want to talk more about the human touch. And that would be your social media strategy with your practice ambassador. Starting out, you want to use your most productive times, for example, with Facebook. During the week, there are times where Facebook experiences more traffic than other times. It's Tuesday to Thursday afternoon from 1 to 4, barring holidays and, of course, major events like our last election that we just came through. And on average, Facebook can experience up to four times the traffic from other times during the week during these golden hours. This is absolutely the best time to boost your page and to post and to make sure the maximum amount of people to see you. People are also more apt to comment or interact with you and your post during this time. So make sure if you do boost a post, someone there at your office is ready to take the calls and or respond to comments and messages on Facebook. Again, posts should absolutely include pictures wherever possible and videos whenever possible to enhance a prospect's viewing. By doing this, you result in two to three times more views because people are just simply more interested. So this is a great opportunity or a great place to include testimonials or patient experiences and also articles. The anatomy of a good post entices your prospects and patients to click on a link or to call you. The rest of it can simply be a picture that's eye-catching or an article or news item with a grabbing headline from a trusted and credible source and sometimes even just funny stories. The picture above is a paste from a page from an actual hearing practice. Their teaser line piques the audience's interest and it includes a call to action to call for a free hearing evaluation. And then the link to the Harvard article fills in the gap and lends credibility to your post. But again, something that entices your audience, the person that's looking to get involved. And remember, just because you're linking to a credible source doesn't mean that the link will always work. So always check to make sure that the links lead to the correct website. And if you are including a phone number in your post, that the phone number also works. So test everything that you post to make sure that it connects and it works. During the golden hours, you want to make posts that will result in interactions that will result in people picking up the phone to call you to schedule an appointment or to visit your website or join your mailing list. Something that is a call to action that helps you connect with them more often. Posts made during this time should be related to hearing and the marketing of your practice, of course. So posts such as patient testimonials or major marketing announcements, this is a great opportunity to make those posts during those golden hours. And you should make posts every, say, 30 to 45 minutes during the golden hours, but only selectively boost one or two posts a week. Outside of the golden hours, you should still continue to make posts. But these can be more personal and just lighthearted and fun in nature. These posts should be less frequent and these posts should never be boosted. Now, you can make targeted posts during the golden hours, but only on Tuesday because it's not as active as the other days. Otherwise, you should keep boosted target posts outside of the golden hours. And then the human touch. This is another part where the human interaction really becomes very key for you in your practice. There are some people that still don't trust technology, and this is how you reassure them that they can count on you, that you are the person that is interested in them, you are the person that's going to take good care of them, and that you are the person that they can trust even in the digital world. So whenever your patient care coordinator, your practice ambassador responds to any of this digital marketing, whether it's email inquiries or Facebook comments or likes or messaging or even website inquiries, your responsibility is to have scripting prepared for them so that they know what to say and how to say it. Practice, practice, practice, like they say in Hollywood, practice, practice, practice. Because while it is what you say, it is also how you say it. An example, when they are responding to, for example, an email inquiry, practice with your practice ambassador so that you're hearing exactly what your prospect is going to hear when your practice ambassador calls them. You want that prospect to feel like they've met their newest, best friend, and so you want them to hear, hello, Mrs. Jones, this is Mary Alice from your hearing center in your city, and we were delighted to receive your inquiry from our website, and we're simply calling to make sure that we're able to respond and let you know that we received your message and that we are anxious to answer all of your questions that you possibly have. And then, of course, go on with the scheduling and to learn a little bit more about them. This is also a wonderful opportunity for you to learn more about your prospects, especially since you don't have as much information as you might need for the marketing. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to have your practice ambassador ask them the relevant questions and the pertinent questions that help you market more effectively, like, you know, Mrs. Jones, they can hear Mrs. Jones, have your practice ambassador say to them, you know, let me get a little bit of information from you because we look forward to meeting you and answering all of your questions, and because our specialist does prepare for each evaluation individually, let me get just a little bit of background on you so that they are prepared for your evaluation exclusively. You want this prospect to feel exactly the same way they feel when they visit their primary physician, like there's been good preparation for them, that they're special. And so Mrs. Jones can go on to hear your practice ambassador say, well, Mrs. Jones, now tell me, what kind of things are you experiencing with your hearing? Do you currently wear hearing instruments? When did you purchase your current pair of hearing aids? Wonderful. Now, we know that your family and your friends are an important part of your world, and so we would love to include them in your evaluation. So let's pick a time that's good for you and your husband to come together, because we know that because they're concerned for you, they're also going to have questions, and we want to be conscientious so that we can answer everyone's question, and the way that we do that is by having both of you here. So let's make sure we pick a time that's good for both of you. As the hearing center owner, it's your responsibility to have all of this messaging prepared for your practice ambassador so that the proper message is delivered with the proper tone, all of the information that you need. You're collecting address, you're collecting phone numbers, which allows you to expand how you market with them as you move forward in the future. So practice messaging, not only the message itself, but the tone, and then finally, measure results. A good way to add the human touch is to call those prospects that scheduled online and confirm that you did receive that request, and you look forward to speaking with them. Again, oftentimes people will leave out information like the address or phone number when they schedule, so reaching out to them is a good way to secure that additional information so that you can build your database and the marketing information that you need for that database. Another fixture on your website should actually be a contact us page where your patients can send an email to you, and you should always reply to every single message from your patients and prospects, regardless of what it is. Again, you're letting them know that you're listening and that you're paying attention. And most important, responding to these messages tells your prospects and patients that you are paying attention, and that's what you want them to know and to hear because that's what you want them telling the people at their card games and their bingo games, that you're the practice that has their best interests at heart. So the best way to add the human touch to email marketing is to treat it exactly like a direct mail marketing. Both email and direct mail are designed to get people to call and schedule an appointment, so both email and direct mail are designed to get people to call and schedule, but just like the physical mail, email often gets lost in the shuffle. So unlike the direct mail that you sent, email can be filtered intentionally or unintentionally without the prospect even seeing your Wellcraft message. So the best way to remedy this is to call after your email list the way you would call after a direct mail list. You can see the folks that have opened your email, and so you can tailor your message accordingly. You can say to Mrs. Jones, good morning, Mrs. Jones. We are very recently inviting you in to our Health Fair Open House event. We've not heard from you yet, and we wanted to make sure that you were still able to get scheduled to take advantage of this wonderful set of specials. Or the folks that have not opened it yet, the tailored message can be Mr. Smith. We are just following up on the message we had sent to you very recently. We want to make sure that you knew about the event so that you too could also take advantage of this wonderful Health Fair Open House that we have taking place this next week. So the biggest difference here is you can stack your telemarketing efforts in your favor. You can see who has opened the email, who has read it, so you know those people that are interested, and you can close on the appointment by having your practice ambassador deliver exactly that message to them. Another thing to keep in mind is sometimes people will just hit reply, hoping that their email will get to you. And this is perfectly fine, and it's a great interaction between you and your patient. However, be aware, certain email marketing service defaults from the from email to an unmanned, undeliverable dummy address. So be alert to that so that if someone does reply to your email, it actually will come back to you. So in that case, for example, what you would have to do is change the default reply to an email address that could be checked on a regular basis by you or your practice ambassador. Now a lot of social media marketing happens before you make the post, but a very important part happens after you've posted and boosted. It's the nature of social media that people interact with you, and some people will like your post, they'll like your page, and some people will leave comments. This is actually the start of a dialogue or a discussion within your network that can give you valuable insight into what your prospects and patients are thinking about and what's important to them. This also means that this is a dialogue with a prospective patient that you may not have had without this. So if someone leaves, for example, a kind but brief message on a post that you made, simply like the comment or reply so that they know that you're watching your page and you're listening. And some comments to your post may need a reply, and when you do reply, make it short and sweet. And for comments that require a longer response, you can ask the poster to email you directly, indicating that you'd like to provide them with more comprehensive information. Liking or responding to a comment does two things. It lets everyone in your network know that if they say something, you'll read it and you'll take it to heart. Another thing that it does is it does let someone know that if they have a genuine complaint or a genuine concern, it lets them know that you're watching your page, and it may deter them from doing that online, and it may encourage them to actually call you and know that they can have a conversation with you about it. If someone actually leaves a negative comment, it doesn't happen often, but you have to be prepared on the oft and brief occasion that it does. Send the poster a message asking them to contact you privately so that you can help them and discuss the matter in private. Then delete the post. And what this does is it shares with them and anyone else that you care enough about them to address the issue. You care about their privacy, but you are a problem solver and intend to take care of them. And finally, when you do have someone that asks a question on Facebook, ask them to contact you to schedule an appointment and tell them that you will make a point of making sure that that is one of the things that you cover when you meet with them. Leads come at a cost to us, and that's why using all of our marketing resources are so important. A qualified lead can cost us anywhere from $200 to $350. A qualified competitive lead, which is ready to purchase, can cost us anywhere from $350 to $400. So digital marketing helps you generate more qualified leads. So let's do this. Let's take digital marketing to the analog world. The easiest thing that you can do day-to-day when you're in your office is simply to ask your patients when they come into your office to like you on Facebook and to tell them that you appreciate their support. The easiest place for you to get a like is from your patients. It's the same thing with referrals. The easiest place to get referrals is from your patients. Another thing that you can do is to print on your direct mail pieces or on your business cards, like us on Facebook, or include a logo like the one that you see here on this particular page. But you can include that on business cards and or on direct mail pieces. And finally, run contests. Have some fun. Encourage your patients and your community to like and join your e-mail list by holding a drawing, for example, for free batteries, or a gift card, or even a holiday turkey. But have some fun with your patients. And then finally, as we bring this year to a close, this is just the perfect time to understand how all of these methods absolutely help you exponentially find more new patients. More importantly, it gives you the edge over your competition. And so it's the thing to do. These are additional tools that really represent found money for you. And it's just the perfect time to firm up the resolve to learn this and to do it and to venture into this new digital world, but with the human touch that helps bring the new business home. And with that, I conclude my presentation, and I thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, we're so committed that we've had over 100 of your fellow colleagues join us today in this webinar. We do have some time for questions. If you have a question for Michelle, please enter it in the question box on your webinar dashboard. And, Michelle, our first question comes from Jennifer. And Jennifer asks, what would you say are the top three social media sites that are the best fit for hearing health care practices? The top three social media sites. I would say absolutely, yes, Facebook would be the first. I would think Twitter would probably be the second. And I would consider Instagram as your third as well. Great. Thank you, Michelle. Our next question is from Nicholas. And Nicholas asks, do you suggest using social media to provide customer service? Well, short answer is yes. I think the long answer is the type of customer service that you want to provide. I think social media is a wonderful way to educate your patients and to remind them, for example, how to take care of their equipment or a reminder for maintenance visits for their equipment or to have their hearing instruments cleaned, the clean and check visits. So I think that social media is a wonderful opportunity to do that. If you have very specific service problems, for example, you're going to want to do that one-on-one. But I think general education, I think that's a great opportunity to do that as well as the maintenance issues, the clean and check items. Great. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, our next question is from Michelle. And she asks, would you recommend that each store having their own Facebook page or just one Facebook page for a particular franchise, so if that franchise has multiple locations? Well, I would say that it depends on the size of your organization. If you are a large organization, you may want to have one major Facebook presence and then have an area where the viewer can go to their specific area. But if you have a smaller practice, then that's something that might very well make you stand out in your community because it looks like you've got a more personal touch. So you may, if you're a smaller practice, I think that's something that would be valuable to you. Maybe some guidelines there. I would say probably guidelines are that if you have more than 30 offices, then you may want to have like one presence with it broken down by region or by city. And if you have under 30, you may want to consider going to the individual presence. We see that in the marketplace as the line of demarcation that's typically taking place. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, our next question is from Megan. And Megan says, I've read that newsletters should be exclusive and not posted to social media. What is your opinion? My opinion absolutely is that they should be posted to social media, absolutely. It's a wonderful way to show people who you are. It's a wonderful way to show people that you are taking care of your patients, that you're actively involved in taking care of your patients. So not only does it satisfy that need and that fulfillment with existing patients, but with prospective patients as well that are viewing social media or people that your existing patients are referring or sending that to or their families, their sons or daughters. The sons or daughters need to know that mom and dad are going to be taken care of. And I think once we get outside of a primary, like our primary physicians, I think that's the big question is will my mom or dad be taken care of the same way their primary doctor takes care of them when they go to this other specialist. So social media is absolutely a wonderful place to do that. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, our next question is from Peter. And Peter asks, what would you say are the biggest mistakes that you see your clients make when it comes to their digital marketing strategies and campaigns? Biggest mistakes. That's a great question. Let me think about that for just a moment. You know, I can give you some small things like the social media presence being too dry where there's just not a lot of variety. There's not a lot of variety of information. It's very dry and not a lot of variety. I think you can tailor your messaging to not only fit the time of year but anniversaries for patients, anniversaries for the practice, again, technology posts, medical information that is available, links to articles. These are all things that are very, very relevant, funny stories. But I think probably the biggest mistake I see clients making is that there's just not a lot of that information. And that kind of information is what brings credibility to your practice. You have to be careful about plagiarism as well. If you're going to copy articles, you want to make sure that your posting is exact and you have to be careful with plagiarism. So you want to include original content. Great. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, our next question is from Arthur. And Arthur asks, we used to post a lot of patient success stories to our blog, but no one seems to be reading them anymore. And Arthur would like to know if blogs are dead now because of social media. Boy, I don't think so. Blogs. I don't think that they're dead. I think that they're probably overshadowed a little bit. They're probably overshadowed a little bit. Are they dead? No. But if you have the time, I would say do it. I just don't think it's probably a top priority. Does that make sense? Yes, I think so. Thank you, Michelle. I have another question from Joe. And Joe asks, how can I target people on Facebook that have searched for hearing aids? Yeah, this is very, very powerful. Joe, when you boost a post on your page, you're actually required to select interests that you want to focus on. And here is where you would put in terms like hearing aid or hearing loss or audiology or even something like a manufacturer's name. You could put in tinnitus. You can put in the type of hearing aids. Or you could put in your practice name. Or, even more importantly, you could put in your competitor's name. And the reason you would want to do that, for example, to put in your competitor's name, is so that you can target the people who have been looking at your competitors in your area. But that's exactly how you do it. It's a very powerful tool within Facebook. And I encourage everyone to use that. It's very, very powerful. Again, these are prospects that are looking, they're motivated, and they just want to find someone that's going to do the best job for them that's interested in them. And that can be you. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, our next question is from Marcia. Marcia asks, in your opinion, is it possible to incorporate human touches into a LinkedIn advertising campaign? A human touch into a LinkedIn advertising campaign. It's tough to do, but yes. You can. What you can do is provide a call to action. And that in itself, that is something that your practice ambassador needs to be prepared for. But this is, LinkedIn is probably more focused on business as opposed to consumers, which is why we're talking more about, you know, Facebook and some of the other social medias, the website, some of the other social medias that we've mentioned here today. I think LinkedIn is probably more focused on business and probably would not be as productive. But, I mean, certainly you're welcome to try that. Just have your scripting prepared for your patient care coordinator as they respond to those. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, our next question is from Lindsay. And Lindsay asks, well, Lindsay says, you touched on paid advertising for Facebook. Can you give the audience more of an idea of what Facebook advertising actually costs? Sure. Facebook advertising, look, I'll give you the short answer and the long answer. The short answer is that it can cost you as much as you decide that you want to spend. The long answer is that it literally can cost you as little as a dollar a day, up to $100 a day. I think most people that are doing that, they're probably spending somewhere right around $10 to $15 a day. But that would be probably a very, that would be a fair expectation in terms of the range. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, our next question is from Steven. And Steven wants to know, how would I know if I should respond to a comment on Facebook? Are there certain criteria that he should follow? Well, it's a great question. If someone's actually spending time on your page, if they're spending time on their comments, you absolutely always want to respond. You want to send them, again, that message that you're paying attention, that you're listening to them. But someone that has questions, if they've spent a fair amount of time on their comment, you absolutely want to respond always. And that would be, that would probably be the biggest indicator. People that have liked and have, you know, have responded in other ways, you want to show that you see that. But comments should absolutely respond to someone that puts some time into what they've put on your page. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, our next question is from Marcus. And Marcus would like to know if you have any tips on growing organic prospects. Tips on growing organic prospects. Well, yes, what you want to do is to make sure that in terms of your database, you're collecting as much information as you possibly can. You want to actually, what you want to do is actually boost your page. And we mentioned that, we mentioned your page likes are actually the foundation of your Facebook marketing. In boosting your page, what this does for you is the more page likes you have, the more people are just going to see you. So in terms of actually growing the organic prospects, that's how you do it. And that leads you to finding them so that you can gather the rest of the information that you need to build your database. But that's how you get there. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, we've had a couple of questions come in, and people would like you to maybe go over what a boosted campaign is or the concept of a boosted ad. Could you briefly touch on that? Sure, absolutely. Boosted ads, these are simply paid ads. These are ads that are designed to find the people that you're looking to target. So these are paid ads, and I'm sorry, what was the actual, I'm sorry, if you could repeat the question again. Were they, they were boosted posts, or what was the question again? I'm sorry, people were just unclear what the term boost actually means. Boosted. Okay. Boosted means that these are posts and ads that are paid. That's essentially what it means. Great. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, we have a question from, let's see, another Stephen here. And Stephen asks, I need a new website. I'm not sure how much I should be spending on a new website. Can you give Stephen some guidelines as to how much you should be spending on a new website? Sure. It can cost you, Stephen, if you're doing the website yourself, it can cost you as little as $124 a year, for example. It can cost you as little as $124 or as much as $250 a year if you're doing it yourself. If you're using, for example, a reputable service that provides you with a website that's going to last and it's going to be sustainable over a long period of time, then it could be initially somewhere between $800 and $1,000 initially. And then thereafter, your maintenance for that would revert back to $124 to $150 a year. So that's the kind of expense that you're looking at. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle, I'd like to thank you for just an excellent presentation today, and I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today on the IHS webinar, Regeneration of the Human Touch in a Digital World. If you'd like to get in contact with Michelle, you may e-mail her at michelle at source1specialty.com. That's michelle at source, the number one, specialty.com. For more information about receiving a continuing education credit for this webinar, visit the IHS website at ihsinfo.org. Click on the webinar banner or find more information on the webinar tab on the navigation menu. IHS members receive a substantial discount on CE credits, so if you're not already an IHS member, you will find more information at ihsinfo.org. Please keep an eye out for the feedback survey that you'll receive tomorrow via e-mail. We ask that you take just a moment to answer a few brief questions about the quality of today's presentation. Thank you again for being with us today, and we will see you at the next IHS webinar. ♪

digital marketing strategies

personal touches

websites

email marketing

social media

practice ambassador

customization

Facebook

human interaction