Climbing the visibility ranks of social platforms like Google, Facebook, Healthgrades and Vitals has never been easier for healthcare providers thanks to Silicon Slopes-based SocialClimb, a patient acquisition platform designed to help medical professionals and facilities target and attract patients by improving their reputations, dominating local search and growing the value of their medical practice.
Having just secured $12M in growth funding from Resolve Growth Partners, SocialClimb will now be able to further accelerate its transformation of healthcare marketing technology. “This funding will allow us to further develop our disruptive technologies and expand into additional specialties and more hospital groups in need of our platform,” said Ty Allen, SocialClimb CEO.
To learn more about the topic, we conducted an interview with Ty Allen.
1. Can you tell us more about SocialClimb?
The idea behind SocialClimb was born as a result of an accident founder and CEO, Ty Allen, experienced six years ago. The ordeal showed Ty how difficult it could be to make informed decisions as a medical consumer in the United States.
With a spinal cord injury, and throughout a year-long rehabilitation process, Allen made 10-12 key provider or facility decisions that significantly affected his recovery and quality of life, many of them in less than an hour. These decisions all required more information about medical providers than was available to him as a medical consumer.
Allen discovered a disconnect between what medical consumers need to know to make a good decision and how medical practices market themselves. SocialClimb provides a solution to benefit both the medical community and the consumers who need medical services by helping medical providers become more visible to consumers when they search for information online.
We help healthcare providers target and attract patients by improving their reputations, dominating local search, and growing the value of their medical practices. In addition to helping providers collect reviews and improve their rankings, our industry-leading platform makes use of data on more than 240 million Americans and predictive analytics to automatically deliver ads that attract profitable patients.
2. Who can benefit from SocialClimb?
Doctors, medical practices, hospital service lines, hospital systems, and other healthcare providers will see direct benefits from using SocialClimb’s platform. We help doctors improve their reputation to become visible to healthcare consumers looking for medical care. In addition, we have the tools in place to leverage their reputation to target specific patients with reputation ads in the moment they need to make these important decisions.
Healthcare consumers indirectly benefit as they have access to more accurate information on doctors and healthcare options available to them.
3. What are the main features of SocialClimb?
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SocialClimb integrates with most patient management systems. Integration allows our platform to be fully HIPAA compliant as we automate patient acquisition, provide reports on raw data, offer role-based access, and more.
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We offer automated review and survey invitations. One of the best ways to improve a physician or practice reputation is to ask patients to leave a review. Our customers can send out fully automated, personalized review requests within 24 hours of care, which results in a 1.3 star increase in their online rating on average. They also experience an increase in the number of reviews they receive.
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Our platform provides streamlined access to manage Google My Business (GMB) listings and reviews. Providers can manage GMB listings for all practices and providers from a one-stop dashboard to update information, add posts and services, track interactions, view reports, set up targeted ads, and watch their reputation grow. In addition, providers can see and respond to reviews across all social media platforms from a single location with no need to log in to Facebook, Google, or other review sites.
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We enable providers to send targeted Boost Ads powered by predictive analytics. We have data on over 240 million people in the U.S. across 400+ data points that our AI tools use to predict risk for specific health conditions. Doctors choose the type of patient they want to attract, and our tools find them. Patients are identified based on their health concerns, the type of insurance they carry, and other factors. The platform then creates ‘Boost Ads’ targeted directly to those specific patients. The ads leverage Google, Facebook, and Instagram to be seen by patients at risk for specific medical conditions in the zip code/areas selected.
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We provide a full suite of reports to track metrics, including the patient acquisition cost (PAC) and the return on investment (ROI). Enabling healthcare professionals to easily measure the effectiveness of their marketing spend is a game changer. They can fine-tune their spend and maximize efficiency.
4. How does SocialClimb differ from its competitors?
Our competitors offer reputation management services to varying degrees, but none go beyond the basics. We offer the best reputation management suite at a reasonable rate as a baseline feature. For medical practices wanting to move beyond the basics, we offer one-to-one marketing through targeted ads fueled by our predictive analytics. We also have the ability to track the results of marketing efforts to give healthcare professionals accurate PAC and ROI measurements.
No other organizations focused on the healthcare sector come close to what we can do for healthcare professionals, and the metrics prove the value of our platform.
5. What are critical factors that aid medical practices in acquiring new patients in today’s market? How does SocialClimb help in bringing up those factors?
Reputation Management
Today’s healthcare consumer uses the Internet to seek out, fact check, and verify information as they make choices for their medical care. A 2020 Software Advice survey found that 90% of patients use online reviews to evaluate physicians, 71% use online reviews as a first step in finding a new doctor, and 94% use reviews as a step in the process (https://www.softwareadvice.
Medical practices need to be visible online with a presence that accurately reflects the high level of care they provide. They need to be deliberate in managing their online reputation. We help practices and physicians get their GMB listing in shape and improve their reputation so they show up to patients seeking medical care. Our platform integrates with most practice management systems to send out automated, personalized review requests via text or email to patients within 24 hours of care.
We have found with our customers that around 10% of patients will leave a review when asked in this way. When left to chance, most patients won’t think to leave a review unless a strong emotional experience—either negative or positive—has spurred them to action. This means a doctor’s reputation, when left to organic reviews, often does not accurately reflect patient sentiment. Simply asking for a review gives voice to a doctor’s silent majority of happy patients.
In addition, because of the deep integration we provide, our platform makes it easy for providers and their staff to manage multiple profiles from a single location, track and respond to reviews, and set up reports to track their progress with their reputation.
Targeted Marketing
We offer an additional layer to reputation management with one-to-one marketing. Using predictive analytics and data on 240 million people across the U.S., we can identify individuals at high risk for specific medical conditions. These patients can be filtered further to see those who have the right insurance and best profile to become high-value patients for that specific doctor.
We use this information to match doctors with their ideal patients and send reputation ads to these individuals as they seek care online. In this way, one doctor can literally get their information in front of one specific patient that is ideal for them to see.
Medical practices are busy keeping up with electronic health records and focusing on their patients—often too busy to spend much time worrying about improving their marketing. We have streamlined the process of sending out our Boost Ads by providing playbooks that will set up ads with appropriate keywords, negative keywords, ad copy, and ad structure. We’re seeing conversion rates with Boost Ads around 35%, which means their marketing spend is highly effective.
6. How does SocialClimb improve connections between medical practices and patients?
We help medical professionals optimize their GMB listings and improve their reputation so they show up in Google’s Local Search 3-Pack when patients search for medical care online. An improved reputation will also help them look better to patients on Healthgrades, Facebook, Vitals, RateMDs, Yelp, and other platforms.
Our platform allows medical practices to easily update multiple GMB listings from a single location so their listings stay current and patients see critical information. Through our platform, practices can update Covid-19 information, add services, create Google posts, and keep their patients informed.
Our targeted ads get doctors’ improved reputation in front of patients searching for care. Patients need to see their best options so they can make an informed decision regarding who they want to see. We make sure our customers can get seen by patients with reputations in place that accurately reflect the level of care they provide.
We help patients more easily make an informed decision with accurate information at their fingertips, and we make sure doctors get seen so they can be chosen by patients in search of medical care.
7. You have secured $12M in growth funding from Resolve Growth Partners. What are your main plans after securing this funding?
We are focused on growth that will allow us to reach more healthcare professionals with our next-generation automated healthcare marketing platform. We are in the process of adding to our team to put the structure in place to grow quickly. In addition, we make use of the latest innovations to give our customers an edge over their competitors with disruptive technologies. This funding will allow us to continue to stay on top of new technology that will benefit our customers and expand into additional specialties and hospital groups that need our platform.
8. What challenges did the COVID-19 pandemic bring to medical practices, and how does SocialClimb help in coping with such challenges?
Many hospitals and medical practices have taken a huge financial hit due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The cancellation of elective surgeries and procedures caused many facilities to make difficult decisions in their fight to remain operational. Some physician groups shifted to outpatient surgery centers to minimize risk to patients and staff when possible, but many surgery centers closed or drastically cut back on procedures. The financial strain on an already struggling healthcare system, though not the greatest focus in light of the health of patients and staff, has been an ongoing concern.
During the pandemic, it is critically important for healthcare providers to be highly visible online. We help them improve their reputation and visibility to be seen by patients in critical, decision-making moments.
We have helped our clients make the best use of their marketing spend, connecting patients looking for care with doctors ready to help them. Our predictive analytics help practices focus on attracting high-revenue patients, which helps increase their profit margin. Focusing on high-revenue patients means identifying which patients are a good fit for specific doctors, which is mutually beneficial to both patient and doctors.
9. Where do you see SocialClimb in the next 5-years?
We will continue to make the latest technology accessible to medical professionals as it evolves. The funding we received will give us the ability to reach more clients across the nation, so patients in search of medical care will have access to accurate information when they need it and doctors can attract the patients they need to meet their growth goals.
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