Get a "Virtual Counselor" to convert more leads

Web Marketing is more than just getting lots of traffic. It is also critical to convert website leads into new clients or patients. Some practices have invested in telephone intake (hiring the right people, training them and developing protocols and resources) to ensure they succeed, but have done nothing to ensure the same success in their email leads.

Consider the following:

• McGraw Hill Sales Statistical Studies indicate that about 96% of all sales happen after 5.6 exposures to information.
  
  
• Internet researchers, particularly those conducting medical-related searches, are hungry for information.
  
  
• There is a small window of time and opportunity when consumers research a service and are in the market for it.
  
  
• The majority of website-based leads come in the form of emails, rather than phone calls.

What does this all mean?

It means that you only have a concentrated period of time to do multiple follow-ups with email-based leads if you want to convert more of them into patients or clients. If you only rely on one superficial, follow-up email you may be losing more than 90% of potential business!

Why? Because most consumers don't buy or engage in anything when they first hear about it and the Web allows them to be "in the market," yet remain somewhat anonymous or voyeuristic. They want to hear and see more before taking the next step.

Some suggestions to improve your practice’s ability to convert more website leads into clients:

- Secret shop your practice’s website and your biggest competitors' sites to see how you compare. Don't make the mistake of assuming you are the only website a prospect visits or contacts. There is undoubtedly competition within your market who you can secret shop. Set up a fake email address with Yahoo or Hotmail and send a question to one of your competitors. Take note on how long it takes them to respond and how they respond.

- Develop more strategic follow-up emails that do more than just tell them to call you. Superficial, text-only responses that don't offer something new, or provide web-friendly "next step" actions, fail to keep potential clients moving down the decision-making path that leads to your front door. Make sure you respond with the information about your practice. How will your email lead know who is responding without the name of your practice spelled out? You should have a link to your site at the bottom of the email. You spent a lot of money building your site; show it off.

- Finally, you should be responding to your email leads with follow up information on your practice areas. Your site has a lot of information on it. Part of the reason we require so much content is to encourage you to reference the information on it in your email responses. Copy the URL of the page into your email response when talking about the specific practice area in question. If you need help doing this, your Account Manager will be able to walk you through it.

- Implement Virtual Counselor, an online database that captures all website leads and automatically follows up each one individually with strategic emails. After your initial efforts to convert an email lead, Virtual Counselor takes over and keeps you in front of each prospect during this crucial window of time, without burdening you or your staff.

These simple steps help differentiate your marketing from your competition even further. If you would like to discuss these topics in more detail, contact your Account Manager.