Size of Ad
Cost per Month
Exposure to Potential Patients
Patient Likely to Use
ROI
New Patient Cost
Website Required
MDcircle.com High Profile
5 lines
Name and Address FREE
100+ million
Low
Free
No
Full page
$50 Full color
High
>50%
$50-$0.01
Phone Book Ad
1 or 2 lines
$10
thousands
$181
Your Own Website
Creating your own simple website $500-$5,000.
A website has little value without marketing and promotion.
Google Call-Forwarding Pay-Per-Call
Depends on user clicks
10%
$100-$200
Google
Pay-Per-Click
1-5%
$200-$1000
Example: MDcircle.com
A more effective way is to join a network that is actively building a large community that benefits patients and doctors. MDcircle does all the work for you to market your practice and give you feedback on the performance of your network.
Example: Let’s see what it takes to attract 100 new patients. Your main goal is to attract new patients. So if 100 patients click on your ad after a search, how many will actually call for an appointment? This is dependent on many factors such as the detail and completeness of your ad, the average patient rating, the number of ratings and the number of doctor referrals you have given and received. What makes MDcircle so attractive is that we help patients do a search on so many criteria so by the time they get to you; they are ready to make the call.
The cost of MDcircle is $50 a month regardless of how many patients call you. So if 100 patients visit at a 50% conversion rate, your cost per patient is $1. If 1000 patients visit at a 50% conversion rate, your cost per patient is $0.1. Worst case is $50 if you only get 1 patient to pennies per patient once you create a detailed high profile. What were people thinking paying for users who clicked on their ads by mistake?
Conversion rate greater that 50%. New patient cost $50-$0.01. A website is NOT required.
Example: Phone Book
The problem with phone books is that there is limited information about a practice, no patient reviews, no interaction. Patients use the phonebook as a last resort and randomly select a doctor or once they have a friend’s recommendation and require contact information.
Example: Call-Forwarding Pay-Per-Call
Call forwarding services display doctors' ads with a toll-free telephone number. When users click the ad, they see a brief information page about the practice. This doesn’t require a website. Example is YellowPages.com.
When a patient calls the number, the pay-per-call service forwards the call to the practice. The doctor pays for each forwarded phone call at a cost of $10-$20 each. Call prices vary between $10 and $20 each. Conversion rates for this service are about 10%. If 100 patients call, that will cost you $1000-$2000. If 10% make an appointment, your new patient marketing cost is $100-$200. You also pay for wrong numbers, telemarketers, equipment companies, vendors. This can be expensive.
Conversion rate 10%. New patient cost $100-$200. This does not require that you have a website.
Pay-per-click places ads on search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, to drive people to your web site. These sponsored links appear on the right side or top of the results page when running a Google search.
How does pay-per-click work? You bid on keywords they you believe potential patients would type when searching to find a specialist like you. The keywords are related to your business. For example, if you are a NYC plastic surgeon would bid on keywords such as "NYC plastic surgery".
When someone searches for a keyword in Google, ads by the top doctors bidding for those key words appear on the search results page. The doctor that bid the most for those key words are listed first. When Google searchers click the ad, they are taken to that doctor’s web site. The doctor pays the keyword bid price to Google (can be pennies to more that $10 depending on word popularity) only when someone clicks their ad. You can set a budget and limit how much you want to spend on pay-per-click.
Example: Let’s see what it takes to attract 100 new patients. Your main goal is to attract new patients. So if 100 people click on your ad, how many will actually call for an appointment? This is dependent on many factors but the industry norm is 1%-5%. Which results in 1-5 patients. If your bid for the add words was $10 and 100 patients clicked on your ad, it cost you $1000 to have those patients come to your website. So if you have 1-5 patients that actually make an appointment, your new patient marketing cost is $1000-$200. You also pay for users who clicked by mistake and competitors who want to spend your marketing budget.
Conversion rate 1-5%. New patient cost $200-$1000. This requires that you also have a website.
MDcircle.com
Other Competing Services
Credible Community – A credible and trusted community is built in two ways. All users are validated. A referral system for doctors and patients to refer people they know and trust.
Limited Credibility – There is little trust and credibility when users are not validated and anyone can pretend to be anyone and post anything.
ROI – We offer the tools and system that offers the lowest risk and the highest return on investment. Please view the Competitive Analysis table.
ROI – No other medium is positioned to provide you with the highest return on investment. Please view the Competitive Analysis table.
Referral System - The referral system allows you to refer your colleagues and patients. This builds your trusted network. The more referrals you give and receive the bigger your trusted network and search results placement. The bigger your trusted network and the higher patient search result placement results in greater exposure and new patients.
Referral System – not an option.
Mini-website – We turn your practice information, pictures and service offering into a 1 page website. You don’t need to go through the expense to create and maintain your own website.
Mini-website – not an option.
Large Detailed Profile – We give you the ability to list detailed information on your practice.
Large Detailed Profile - not as detailed or complete since the profile is updated by third parties.
Marketing – We spend most of our time marketing and building the MDcircle community. We do all the marketing so you don’t have to. All you have to do is create a profile. We also make it possible for Google to list your 1 page website so patients can find you directly from Google!
Marketing - Limited at best.
Coupons System – We give you the tools to entice new patients, drive patients to visit you on slow days and the ability to measure the effectiveness of your actions.
Coupons - Limited options at best.
Detailed Site Statistics – Detailed profile statistics that includes # times you were listed in a patient search, effectiveness of coupons, your rankings among your peers and much more.
Detailed Site Statistics - not an option.
Credible Ratings and Reviews - We validate all users providing you with more credible ratings by preventing patients from signing up under different names to boost the ratings of your competition. Validated users tend to be more honest and credible.
Misleading Ratings and Reviews - The competition does not validate their users. Since users can log in under many names and rate as often as possible, the ratings become misleading and your feedback inaccurate.
Credit Card Protection – We do not keep your credit card information on our site since or in our office. Your information is kept by the credit card company providing maximum protection. We also provide a solid refund and no commitment policy in case you change your mind.
Minimum Credit Card Protection – The chances for fraud are higher when the site offers little protection and credibility,
Contact My Referral Doctors and Patients - Adding a new service? Changing insurance? Moving? Easily send an email to all your patients and doctors notifying them of your new address. Easily print a mailing list and mail them a reminder.
Contact My Referral Doctors and Patients - not an option.
Service Improvements –We are constantly improving the user experience and working towards proving the highest quality data and services.
Limited Service Improvements –
Con
Pro
Insurance Listing
Basic doctor information.
Search variables limited.
Doctor profile limited and users cannot differentiate
Doctors are simply listed and not marketed
Doctor listing is limited ONLY to the insurance that the MD accepts.
No patient feedback on each doctor
Most nonstandard medical providers are not listed
Up to date doctor information
Top location for patients to gather contact information but cannot compare or view ratings
Google search
Random results.
Information presented is mixed with misinformation
Difficult to find relevant information in detail, quality and quantity.
Searches performed on different days yield different results.
Doctors require an internet presence such as a website. Doctors still have to promote and market site to drive users there.
Internet savvy users are able to perform extensive research BUT are still faced with figuring out what is valid and what is total BS.
Yellow Pages
Expensive. See below.
Limited patient exposure.
Limited ability to provide patients with information beyond contact information.
Not the first place people look for medical providers
Yellow pages are everywhere but are the last place people look
Network still growing
Network requires everyone to get involved and requires user’s feedback
We are working hard to drive patients and build a patient community that you can target
We provide you with a mini-website ad that is marketed and promoted on Google and to the MDcircle patient community
You can drive patients to your ad by creating a high profile ad that places you ahead of the pack.
You can obtain new patients by posting coupons
You can also normalize your patient load through coupons for the slow days.
Patients can rate and exchange information.
You get detailed patient feedback
You see how you compare against other doctors
Detailed statistics to see how you are doing
You don’t need to incur the costs of creating and hosting your own website