Digital market research for Hearing Care Professionals: Why and how

How to do digital market research

The end goal of digital marketing is to build brand recognition and gain the trust of your consumer base. So, the end goal of digital marketing research is to gain a better understanding of your consumers’ needs, which can help you entice them into buying your product.  For hearing care professionals, this means researching the industry around hearing care. Who are the major players? Are there any influencers in the community? What are the current trends? Are there any special communities or popular hashtags? Identify these aspects of the industry and build your campaign to include them.

Free tools for digital marketing you should know

There are a number of tools to help you track and analyze your digital marketing campaign. Here are a few free programs:

• The Twitter Analytics Tool.  Not sure how your business’s Twitter is performing? This tool can help you find out.
• Facebook Performance Barometer. This barometer tracks the performance of your Facebook page to give you a detailed look into its traffic stats.
• Canva People like looking at pretty things, and Canva helps you create beautiful graphics for free.
• Easel.ly People like facts and statistics, and they love graphics. Easel.ly combines both to create easy-to-understand infographics. Perfect for audiologists who want to post information without boring their readers.

Set up the perfect website with WordPress

If you don’t already have a website, you need to consider building one. Your website will become the hub for your business’s online activity. You can post contact information, blogs and announcements there, and customers will use it to learn more about your company.  If you lack the skill necessary to build a website on your own or just want something simple and sturdy, WordPress can help. Currently, 28% of the sites on the web were built using WordPress. To start building a site, you need a domain name and logo. Once these things are taken care of, you can begin building your brand and website.  While WordPress simplifies things a great deal, building a site can be somewhat complicated; search for guides to help you through the process. Your site should be straightforward and easy for visitors to navigate.

Best way for local SEO

The final step in building a successful digital marketing strategy is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO will get your website listed in search results, which improves your chances of being seen by potential customers. To improve your Google ranking, it’s important to follow Google’s rules. There are algorithms meant to catch people that try to outsmart Google, and cheating the system might get you flagged. 
To improve your ranking and net new customers, you need to play it smart. Here are a few ways to improve local SEO organically:

• Make the most of local keywords. If your business is located in Atlanta, make sure to include the city name in your keywords. ‘Audiologists in Atlanta’ is a better keyword than just ‘audiologist’ and is more likely to get you listed on the top of local search results.
• Create authentic content. Original photos, pages, and text will get you better results. Respond to reviews personally and avoid photoshopping your photos.
• Address customer needs. When people need help, they turn to Google. Creating pages that cater to frequently asked questions can get you listed in search results when a potential customer has a question.
• Cultivate multiple profiles. Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook are great ways to build your brand and listing yourself on sites like Yelp and Google+ can help you establish an online presence. Keep these updated and give potential clientele multiple places to land. You can also share informative content from Signia’s social media channels at Facebook, YouTube, Twitter @SigniaHearing and Instagram @signiahearing.

Look out for our next blogpost in this series, where we will provide more information on how to use social media effectively.