Interesting one this. It’s a health clinic that was managing to grow client enquiries year on year for the last few years but they’ve seen a drop in new client enquiries in the last year. There could be any number of reasons for this, which I will explore.
TL;DR?
Health clinic marketing
Firstly, what is this health clinic doing right? They’ve used a comprehensive range of different marketing methods over a number of years.
- They optimised their website with SEO, set up their Google business profile, and started blogging to grow organic search engine content.
- They posted on social media with a mix of content including funny reels, creative video, carousels, photo posts, shareable information and hashtags.
- They ran email marketing using market leading medical email software and grew their email list into the thousands.
- They took booths at trade shows and events and attended networking events.
- They collaborated with other business partners who had larger audiences than they had to get their business seen more.
- They kept their prices competitive for the local market and focused on solutions for common health complaints.
That’s a lot for a solo business owner who is running his own marketing for his clinic while running the business operations. I think he did very well and I can see why he saw growth for a couple of years, especially starting from scratch. So, what happened?
What changed in marketing in 2024
Two things immediately came to mind when thinking about marketing at health clinic business in 2024: Google and social disruption.
Google updates 2024
Last year saw a number of Google updates that changed the ranking of the vast majority of websites.
March 2024 saw a significant update on helpful content (and one for spam). There’s been quite a few of these now, so most people who are familiar with SEO know what they are about. They’re about differentiating between low quality and high quality content and reducing spam to fight abuse of the search algorithm. Google estimated a 45% reduction in less helpful content in search results.
In August 2024, Google effectively re-ran the helpful content update, ostensibly to mop up more issues but also to autocorrect for those small publisher websites that had been hit hard in March. Content that is written solely for search engines is downgraded. Now I have been singing the praises of useful content for decades, so nothing really new here.
In November 2024, Google ran another update, this time on user experience. Again something I have been banging on about for decades. If users don’t like using your website, that’ll send a signal to Google. This was less traumatic.
The November update finished rolling out in December and wham bam, Google ran a final update just before Christmas to keep us SEO on our toes. It was accompanied by a spam update. The December update hit hard. Websites that had been operating for years and that were previously pretty stable after updates saw a dramatic decrease in website traffic in the weeks after this update.
No discussion about changes on Google would be complete without a word about AI. Leading AI tools like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot do perform millions of searches daily, but they are still nothing like the volume of Google. Also, Google’s AI overview shown at the top of search results has swiped a lot of traffic away from search results lower on the results page.
Social disruption in 2024
Last year also brought about a number of changes on social media with political volatility and AI issues.
In the accounts that I have access to, X user numbers have fallen since its acquisition and rebrand from Twitter. User numbers have fallen in both 2023 and 2024 from a high in 2021-2022.
Meta’s Facebook is still a market leader & both Facebook and Instagram have grown but at nothing like the rate that they did in 2012. Facebook and Instagram reach and engagement have fallen year on year to very low single digits. Facebook reach ‘peaked’ in the summer holidays last year but overall is still declining and under 3%. Instagram reach decreased by 18% over the year. Instagram engagement remained around 3.5% but Facebook engagement declined to an abysmal 1.2%.
In other words, Facebook shows your post to less than 3% of your followers and only 1.2% of those who see it engage with it (on average).
100 followers = 3 people see it, 0 people engage with it.
1,000 followers = 30 people see it, 0 people engage with it.
10,000 followers = 300 people see it, 3.6 people engage with it.
Tips for health clinics looking to grow
The events of 2024 did impact marketing efforts by businesses on Google and social media. Here are some tips for health clinics who have seen a dip in new client enquiries.
Diversify – don’t depend on a single marketing channel for your business. Measure the effects of your current marketing and add to the mix when possible with your resources. Identify where you lost business in the last year and remedy it or replace it.
Expand – consider other social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Linkedin, BlueSky, etc depending on the type of clinic and the health conditions you work with, so that you are not overly dependent on one platform.
Community – build a community of followers outside of social media. You can do this locally with networking and events, and online through email newsletters and community forums.
Content – create high quality content that will help you weather the storms of Google’s core updates and bring you website visitors without paying for ads.
Advertise – when appropriate advertise to counteract the reduction in reach on platforms where you can see the best ROI on advertising.
The reason for a drop in enquiries may not be due to Google update or social media changes, it could be due to something totally unrelated. The customer journey is a complex one and requires an overarching strategic approach that needs to be regularly reviewed.
