Dream Practice Websites

Websites for Naturopathic Doctors: The Essential Factors Involved in Attracting New Patients to Your Naturopathic Website

If you're a naturopathic doctor who is looking to build your practice through your website, then you should find a wealth of helpful information within this article.   Most naturopathic websites are missing one or several key ingredients necessary to attract new patients on an ongoing basis.

Naturopathic medicine is gradually making its way into mainstream culture, which is of course a wonderful trend to witness.  As a naturopathic doctor, you can help greatly facilitate this trend by becoming a savvy marketer who reaches as many people as possible with your message.  If you know how to use it, the internet is your greatest ally in building your personal practice and expanding worldwide awareness of the power of natural medicine.

This leads into the first point that you really want to implement on your website:

Create As Much Valuable and Unique Content As Possible On Your Naturopathic Website

You want to become an educational pioneer whose mission is to help people understand this form of medicine in the easiest, more direct way possible.  Most websites for naturopathic doctors have a deficiency of content for the visitor.  The more content you have, the more powerful your search engine optimization will be.  People will type in all kinds of keywords to find your articles and blog posts.  The best thing about content creation is that it's a residual form of marketing, meaning that it's a one-time effort for long-term reward.  Your content will often sit for years on Google and other search engines, driving a steady stream of traffic and business to you.

Perhaps more than any other form of alternative medicine, education is a key component for a successful naturopathic practice.. and your website or blog is the best place to educate your community about what you do and how you can help them.

This is one reason why we build most of our websites in Wordpress.  This is a blogging platform that enables you to log into your site anytime and add your own content without needing a web designer.  With Wordpress, it's really easy to add videos, audios, and images to your content as well, so it looks really professional.

Google will often reward Wordpress sites above others.  They are considered very search engine friendly, but the benefits don't stop there.  Wordpress is also great because it integrates so well with Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.  The Wordpress platform allows for a lot more interactivity and engagement in comparison to static HTML websites.  These 2 words-- interactivity and engagement -- summarize the future of online marketing for any small business.

If you can get prospective patients engaged with your content by commenting on your blog or Facebook fan page, or replying to your email messages, you're way ahead of the game.

Integrate Your Naturopathic Website with Social Media

We touched on this a bit already, but it's becoming increasingly important to have a strong social media presence that is tied into your practice website or blog.  Your website visitors should be able to easily learn more about you on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.  We highly recommend that you have a Facebook fan page and 'connect with us' buttons on your practice website.  This helps break the ice of the internet; prospective patients can build a relationship with you through social media without you having to be physically present.

Every time you post content to your Wordpress blog, you should let your Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and email list know about your new information.  This kind of syndication is a key component of traffic generation and exposure.  Most naturopathic websites are like isolated entities or deserted islands-- they lack integration with other websites where massive amounts of people are spending a lot of time.

Your goal is to get your information featured all over websites that get the most trafffic, with Google and Facebook being the top two in the world.  Getting on Google requires good search engine optimization; getting on Facebook requires networking and building relationships.  Both sites are great places to attract new patients.

Incorporate Video Into Your Naturopathic Marketing Plan

If you think about the easiest ways to differentiate yourself from other practices in the area, video is definitely one of your greatest assets.  A simple way to stand out from the crowd is to add a short introductory video to your home page welcoming the visitor to your website, then another one on your 'about' page sharing your background and mission in practice.

You can also create a highly professional Youtube channel that brands you as an expert.  It's quite easy to shoot short video clips featuring various aspects of your practice, then upload them to Youtube.   This is one of the most effective ways to educate people about your practice and also get placed well on Google and Facebook, as Google loves video and will often rank Youtube videos high on their search engine.. and you can syndicate your video content to your Facebook friends and fans on a regular basis.

Implement Lead Generation

Generating a lot of traffic to your naturopathic website is a smart area to focus on, but it's essentially useless if you don't have a lead generation system set up on your site.  This entails having an email opt in form where you give away something for free in exchange for useful information in the form of a special report, e-book, or video series.

When a visitor opts into your email list, you can then do the all-important follow up with them on a continuous basis until they are ready to come in and see you.  If the visitor's only choice is to pick up the phone and call your practice right away or leave your website, most will leave.. and you'll lose a lot of business.

With good lead generation, you can build a highly responsive and large email list over the next several years of your naturopathic career.  This list will become one of the greatest assets of your practice.  If you look at our portfolio of sites, you'll see that almost all of them implement a lead generation system.   What's interesting is that only about 5% of the naturopathic websites I have reviewed online are doing this effectively.  The vast majority are entirely missing this critical feature.

When done right, the internet can drive new business to your practice on autopilot.  This is a wonderful development, as it frees up your time to work more with patients and of course have a life outside the practice.  The better your online presence, the more free time you should have.

Our goal is to build you a highly professional website that is set up to generate leads, then teach you how to drive traffic to your website through a variety of marketing strategies.  Along these lines, as part of our basic web package, you'll get a series of training videos on blogging, pay per click marketing, social media marketing, and online video marketing.

Most web designers will build you a site and wish you good luck.. then leave it all up to you.  Through the training we offer, you'll be empowered to take control of your marketing and get as much exposure for your website as you want.  The internet makes this possible on a scale that we have never known before.

If you'd like to discuss your naturopathic website design, you can fill out this form  to schedule a free consult with Kevin Doherty.  You can also review our web package by clicking here