How To Get Your Practice On Apple Maps

Right about now everyone knows just how bad Apple MAps is and the majority of us have already with Iphone have already reverted back to the old Google Maps App because Apple Maps was well and truly driving s insane with lots of false data and business which did not even exist. I decided to write this post after seeing several posts on the topic and the importance of what being included on Apple MAps is to local business and healthcare practices in general. This may mot be the case now with all the confusion but the day will come that Apple sorts everything out and when they do Im sure you will not want to join to rush.

So why the need for your practice to be included in Apple Maps. Well this is simple. There is an estimated 1,000,000,000 iOS devices projected to be in the hands of consumers worldwide by 2015. Yes this is a big number and if we are thinking on a local level the numbers of people who will be searching for your business will undoubtedly be high as well so no matter how much the app sucks now it is something that as a practice you need to address and get listed.

The most frustrating thing so far from the information I have gathered is there is no consistent way of getting yourself listed.

Search for Your Business
Get your hands on an iPhone or iPad that has been updated to iOS6.  Open the Maps app and enter your business name and location in the search box.  Make sure you use the location.   In its current state, Apple Maps can get easily confused if the query is not precise.  In fact, because the app suffers from quirky data consistency issues, I recommend you do the following searches, just to make sure your business shows up for all of them:

- business name + city
- business name + street address
- business name + street address + city
- business phone number

If your business listing does not appear for any of these queries, it’s possible that you may have one of the following issues:

- Apple Maps does not have your business in its database
- Apple Maps is confusing your location with a different location (e.g. Miami, FL v. Miami, OH)
- Apple Maps does not have your location in its database

Here are some ways you can try to correct the situation:

The way to add your Business to Apple Maps

There are three main ways to currently add a US-based business to Apple Maps:

Report Your Location to Apple Map

i. Search for your location

ii. In the location detail click the “Report a Problem” 

iii. Choose the appropriate proble

iv. Choose “Other” on the Report a Problem s

iv. Choose “Other” on the Report a Problem scree

Add your business data via the various fields and submitIt’s unclear how often Apple is updating the maps based on user-submitted data, but my guess is they are furiously figuring out how to do it asap.

Add Your Business to Yelp

Yelp syndicates reviews and other content to Apple Maps.  If your business has been verified on Yelp, there’s a good chance that it will show up on the maps.  If you do not already have a business listing on Yelp, check out How To Add Your Business Listing To Yelp.Again, it’s unclear how often Apple updates the Yelp data, but my guess is this is some of the more frequently updated data on the maps.

Regular Checks of Your Business Listings
With so many things going wrong with Apple MAps just to make sure it may well be worth your while just regularly going to Apple MAps and seeing what information it is grabbing about your business and correct it when necessary.

I will be updating this post regularly as updates from Apple and other sources are constantly changing on this subject. I would like to thank Andrew Shotland however for providing me with the bulk of this information.

Is it worth advertising in GP practice booklet?

This is an interesting thread which I came across recently in a Linkedin Forum and wanted to share my thoughts and advice on this because it seems to be a regular thread that comes up again and again and I feel needs some guidance.

GP practice booklets have notoriously low conversion rates and this seems to be the norm especially in my experience and feedback I have had from several therapists who have plaed there ads there. The healthcare sector seems to be the worst hit in conversion rates in comparison to other verticals such as plumbers and electricians and decorators who advertise in the same space. Conversion rate measured as the amount of referrals who have told you they came directly from the GP practice booklet and those we have been able to measure in some way. For a financial outlay of lets say £100 to advertise and only to get 1-2 referrals is not a good investment. I feel the initial idea of advertising in this space needs to look more at not the niumbers of direct referrals you get but what is your strategy what are you looking to get out of it? How are you going to measure the amount of people who see your ad and come through to your site? When they do come through to your site how will you then be able to measure  those that then went on to make a booking if you do not have some sort of e-commerce tracking installed on your website?

These are the question you need to ask yourself before you do any sort of advertising to avoid disappointment 6 months down the line when you evaluate your results. As human beings rarely do we act on impulse when we see something advertised. After seeing an ad for the first time we acknowledge its existence, go home ponder over what we thought of the ad then go back several times again over the next few weeks after we have noted the website address, ask friends for their opinion, thought again then do another Google search, this time we see another advert in the Google organic searches or in their paid ads section and on this occasion you decide to click through and go to the website or ring up to make the appointment. Who then gets the credit for that conversion, the person who finally after several months makes the appointment. Do we attribute the client booking the appointment from the GP advert he saw 6 months ago, the Google organic search results or the Google paid per click ad? We could say they have all worked together to help in the conversion but as the great marketeers we are as health professionals we will probably forget all about Ad placed in the GP practice booklet and atrribute to the last click to the Google organic search result. Looking at things this way brings a whole different way of looking at things. The point I should be making is that instead of wondering if our ad has worked is to ask ourselves the question are we really measuring the success of all our advertising.
The internet has come a long way and gone are the days where we have to guess if things have failed or worked. Now everything is at our fingertips and Google has made it easy for everyone to access their Google Analytics tool to help you measure your campaigns. This is something that should be set up straight away on your website and you should get your web developer to install this. I will provide some Analytics dashboards in future posts which you can download to help you get started.


MEASURE EVERYTHING
you can't capture every bit of ROI, but you can capture alot. Measure everything

Websites that do not invest in measuring their campaigns are losing an opportunity to understand their patients and what they are looking for and ultimately what works to attract them to your practice.

I strongly believe to make your practice a success you need to be advertising in several places at the same time and keeping track of what is working and what is not so that in the future you are not wasting your time doing something which gives minimal returns whilst maxing out on things that do work. In todays world of small business the demands of the business demand you to increase footfall into your  practice to increase your bottomline straightaway. Those needs are understood so why not make your advertising spend more efficient by measuring it in the first place. When we do measure it is simply not a case of looking at the raw numbers like for example the ad attracting several clients but we need to bring a context to this number and look rather at increases made throughout different times of the year or comparisons with the same time last year. Was there some other kind of advertising you did that in tandem helped to drive up referrals or visitors to your website.

I strongly believe in a multifaceted approach to advertising a practice website to increase its visibility so that includes using offline and online marketing channels like email, search engine optimisation, sponsorships. I truly liked the quote which James Butler at the Painless Practice quoted

"however connected and social media led the world becomes there is still merit in the old fashioned tactic of building relationships in person face to face. Google is a great place to attract people you dont know at all. Networking and word of mouth attract people who almost know you."

Please feel free to drop any comments to this post or if you like it share it with your friends and collegues.