Healthcare marketing aims to promote health practices by communicating health information using customer-centered and science-based approaches.
The healthcare industry faces some unique challenges when it comes to digital marketing. It evolves at the same pace as the healthcare industry. In order to compete with the medical marketing tactics of today’s society, healthcare professionals must maintain two steps ahead.
The role of healthcare marketing is to create and deliver credible health information and interventions aimed at improving health using a combination of science-based and customer-focused approaches.
In patient marketing, several tactics are integrated with multi-channel targeting to acquire a specific demographic of patients, engage them through retargeting, and nurture them throughout the buying cycle until they become lifelong patients. Measuring healthcare advertising success is done through specific metrics that align with the business’s objectives.
Understanding The Healthcare Digital Marketing Ecosystem
Taking into account the projected growth rate of 19.72% for the sector, the global healthcare PPC marketing & communications market can be expected to reach $8,498.72 million by 2026! Considering this, if you have not already jumped on the bandwagon, perhaps it’s time to do so. Nevertheless, before you make any decisions, there are a few things that you need to be aware of:
What Are You Targeting in the Marketing in the Healthcare Industry?
Healthcare providers use digital healthcare marketing to target two primary types of clients: exterior and internal clients.
Those who do not belong to the hospital ecosystem but still seek treatment here are considered external clients. Included in this category are patients, their relatives, and the general public. A practice/hospital’s marketing strategy for this segment primarily focuses on positioning itself as the best choice for patients seeking treatment.
Those within the medical ecosystem, on the other hand, are interior customers, including doctors, hospitals, medical staff, and other healthcare professionals. Marketers for this segment seek to build the brand of hospitals and practitioners as well as manage competition within hospitals and practices.
Read Also: Why Digital Marketing is Important for the Healthcare Industry?
In What Ways is Digital Marketing Useful to the Healthcare Sector?
Online marketing in healthcare serves many purposes, including healthcare lead generation, product launches, conversions, outreach interactions between healthcare providers and communities, engagement and education, and maximizing ROI (return on investment).
Return on Investment for Digital Marketing in Healthcare
1. Provides three times more return on investment than traditional marketing
2. Video marketing in healthcare generates 66% more targeted leads
3. A digital content and healthcare marketing strategy is implemented by 83% of health organizations
4. Health marketers maintain a blog in 58% of cases
Read Also: Medical SEO: 10 Ways You Can Improve The Ranking of Healthcare Sites.
Benefits of Healthcare Marketing
Gained a Competitive Advantage
A great deal of competition exists between hospitals and other medical institutions. In this competition, care is evaluated not only on the basis of cost but also on quality. The best results require extra effort and investment. Advertising for healthcare services allows your institution to gain a wider audience as more people become aware of the services offered.
Networking
The institution can improve its healthcare SEO services by interacting with patients and consumers. Rightly implemented, healthcare marketing strategies should increase the likelihood of connecting with more customers than they would achieve through manual communication. Increased profits are directly proportional to an increased patient base. Keeping your patient base strong is best achieved by building relationships with your customers and resolving any issues they may be facing.
Visibility
The traditional method of advertising in healthcare has been coupon mailers and word-of-mouth. However, healthcare social media marketing has since changed principally due to its popularity. The Internet and other offline platforms used for healthcare marketing. Thus, it should be no surprise that most people will turn to the internet when searching for healthcare providers.
The changing times will require healthcare providers to stay on top of their game. Utilizing social media as a strategy for healthcare marketing is sure to be a fruitful one & attract more patients. It takes physicians to where customers are so that they can educate them about health issues.
No Misinformation
In healthcare advertising, doctors are able to show what makes them unique, which helps patients make decisions. In contrast to traditional methods of healthcare marketing passed on by word of mouth, which had no opportunity for refuting incorrect information, the strategies used in recent years enable physicians to counter incorrect information via online media. Additionally, healthcare marketing allows a patient to find a doctor who understands their personal circumstances.
5 Ways to Boost Patient Volume in 2022
Optimize Consumers Seeking Healthcare via Organic Search Engines
Medical practices and hospital networks can obtain top search engine rankings using search engine optimization. But in reality, search engine optimization can be a complex process.
In order to rank #1 on Google among all doctors, physicians, and surgeons providing healthcare services near you, you simply can’t use the term “orthopedic surgeon” 100 times throughout your website and expect to rank there.
In order for Google to understand your healthcare organization’s websites, you need to use the right search phrases and keywords. Focusing on organic SEO tactics enables you to rank higher for relevant, related, and relevant search terms related to healthcare (e.g., medical conditions, treatment from healthcare professionals). It is important to use these terms naturally throughout your content, as Google is most concerned with readability.
In addition to this, there are still many other healthcare marketing best practices for SEO you should also be aware of.
- It is important to develop content pages that include high-quality information optimized with your keyword.
- Linking back to relevant pages on your website via internal links can enhance the performance of your website.
- It is important to gain external links from reputable health-related websites.
- Indexing and distributing your site maps (making it easy for search engines to read and rank your site).
- Complete your business listing with accurate information on your healthcare website on Google Business Profile.
- Fill out every part of the form for each location
- Include Videos and photos
- Review and optimize local listings
- In the Q&A section, you can post frequently asked questions
- You can increase your chances of appearing in Google Local Pack by optimizing your site with local SEO tactics.
- Google submission is the process of submitting your website to Google.
Effectively Use Social Media (the Right Way)
A large portion of hospitals and healthcare practices’ digital healthcare marketing strategies devoted entirely to organic social media. A form of organic social media is updating Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube with photos, updates, events, etc. It’s a good way to build a brand and communicate what’s new to healthcare consumers.
This should not be your sole social media strategy, however. You can reach more people through paid social media advertising even if you’re not connected to them already, as they may be looking for services you offer. In actuality, people rarely share posts from organizations related to local healthcare online unless they are already familiar with them (or worse, employed by them).
When a business page posts, it appears with the “Boost Post” button underneath. However, paid social media goes far beyond that. A PPC campaign or display campaign involves strategizing and setting a budget to target the most relevant audience.
Physician Liaison Marketing Grows New Patient Referrals
Build a proactive program for contacting the practices and physicians in your community that refer patients.
Hire a physician liaison, a physician relations manager, or a Healthcare Digital Marketing Agency to establish strong physician referral relationships with your neighboring physicians.
You can use a physician liaison to connect your practice, physicians, and referring physicians to expand patient referrals and increase revenue.
As a physician liaison, you can ensure that referring practices get the information they need to make easy referrals.
In addition to being a physician liaison, a physician liaison will serve as the practice ambassador for the physicians they represent to simplify communication and provide value to referring physicians.
Assess the Online Patient Experience
Twenty years ago, just having a website impressed prospective healthcare consumers and made it easier for them to find a healthcare brand online.
Consumer engagement has become increasingly complex as the healthcare industry moves more readily into telehealth and remote monitoring.
Your website is the front door to your organization. The first thing consumers see is your website; if it’s not optimized, it may also last thing they consider when considering your hospital or healthcare practice.
The imagery and wording on the page should reflect your intended audience and the accuracy and accessibility of your website’s contact information (e.g., addresses, phone numbers, contact forms, and primary services).
Additionally, for healthcare businesses to improve customer engagement, they have to engage employees in value-added experiences, like being able to access information easily, accessing timely appointments, and keeping constant communication with the providers of healthcare. It has embedded into everything they encounter with your brand, intentionally or not.
Creating a great user experience for your website is essential. Designers are sometimes so concerned with making the site look good that they fail to put the patient’s experience first. Websites often redesigned from the ground up. In addition to making small but immediate improvements, we also try to position the “Contact Us” form above the fold in order to drive more business.
You also have to analyze how most consumers interact with you (e.g., website, social media, paid advertising, third-party listing service, etc.) to create a positive patient experience.
You want the target audience to interact with you according to their preferences. Must consider every consumer touchpoint in your medical marketing plan.
Observe how customers engage with your business after they first contact you, including whether they call or fill out an online form (or not). By mapping your consumer’s journey, you can better determine their needs and what can trigger conversions.
Market to Consumers Based on Their Feedback
Consumers who leave poor reviews of your practice on external review sites like Google, Facebook, and Yelp should be responded to and shown that you’re working to solve the issue. Following up promptly may motivate your customers to update their reviews to let others know that you have remediated the issue.
You should manage your reputation as part of your healthcare marketing strategy, but don’t get defensive when you receive negative reviews. Instead of seeing them as negative experiences, consider them learning opportunities and improve equipment and processes as needed for the best patient experience.
Final Takeaway
In the end, you want to increase patient volume. It is guaranteed that at some point, your patients will land on your website, whether they called the number on your PPC ad or made an online appointment. Therefore, these strategies cannot achieve their full potential without a responsive, friendly, and optimized website.
The foundation for your patient acquisition strategy is your website. You can see users searching for health solutions by using your website as your main communication channel with search engines.
Meanwhile, your website is the digital front desk to your practice that either warmly welcomes or turns away future patients. Therefore, you should ensure that your website creates an easy-to-use, seamless experience for your existing and prospective patients. Let a Healthcare Seo Agency like Cheenti guide your patient acquisition strategy. Call today to learn more!
