As medical aid becomes more available globally, patients have more options now more than ever when it comes to receiving healthcare. Today, patients can travel to any part of the country or world to seek the best healthcare services, making the healthcare industry one of the most competitive industries today. To keep the hospital doors open and running, medical professionals have to keep up with the latest marketing trends in the healthcare industry.
Healthcare marketing can be tricky. Unlike other industries, there are many regulations governing marketing in the healthcare sector. Healthcare involves a lot of sensitive information, which calls for caution when using it to attract patients to a facility.
To maintain large patient volumes, you need to have a well-planned healthcare marketing strategy in line with industry regulations. These regulations include:
- HIPPA mandates standards to be adhered to when sharing healthcare info and electronic billing in protecting patient privacy
- GDPR regulation that governs how a hospital, marketer, or doctor can use patient data
- The CAN-SPAM Act regulates the information deliverable by emails from doctors
A healthcare marketing strategy can be used to build better relations between medical practitioners and patients while drawing potential new patients to a facility.
Here is everything you need to know about building the best healthcare marketing to ensure your facility comes first to mind whenever a patient needs medical aid.
Planning Your up to Date Healthcare Marketing Strategies
Healthcare marketing can be used by hospitals, doctors, healthcare practitioners and networks, caregivers, and marketing executives in the healthcare industry. It is a strategy that ensures your patient care CRM database never runs empty.
The healthcare industry undergoes rapid changes, often, which calls for agility and focus to be able to keep up with the trends. While it requires time and sometimes a larger budget, doing it right will see your patient volume numbers grow. To make the process easier, here are ideal marketing steps you can take to promote your healthcare facility.
Have a Responsive Healthcare Website
The world has become a digital village where at least 85% of users seek information online. Having a website is an easy way of ensuring your healthcare facility is visible to the billions of people using the internet every day. It is not enough to have a website. You need to ensure that it is responsive.
A responsive website is one that can be accessed through multiple internet devices without compromising on the user experience. Your website should have the ability to adjust to different device screen sizes, offering the same responsiveness on a computer, mobile phone, or tablet.
As of March 2018, Google gives priority to websites that are highly mobile responsive. This means that Google now ranks healthcare websites based on their mobile responsiveness. Therefore, having a web-friendly only website excludes your healthcare service from search results online, which makes it invisible to online users.
Part of working on local SEO for your website is ensuring it is highly responsive on different devices. This means that your website should load on any device screen without compromising on loading time or site speed.
With a highly responsive website, you will give your patients and potential patients a good mobile digital healthcare experience. This will reduce the site abandonment rate and increase conversions.
When designing a responsive website, you need to include a call-to-action button on your web pages and ensure it is easy to find for the visitors.
Use Email Marketing
Email marketing still remains one of the most effective marketing methods for any business, including a healthcare facility. Ensure you encourage your patients to sign up for your email list to receive helpful health tips and information.
With a good email marketing strategy, you can show your patients that you are interested in their wellbeing long after they have left your facility. You can use email segmenting to9 customize your email messaging for different patients based on their health needs.
Maintaining communication with your patient base is important in building your hospital’s brand reputation as an authority in your field. This makes you the go-to facility whenever your email recipients need healthcare services.
Some of the ideas you can use to grow your emailing list include hosting webinars, paid advertising funnels such as assessments and quizzes, subscribing to access eBooks and downloadable content, and subscribing to exclusive health-related content.
Use Social Media for Engaging Patients
At least two-thirds of internet users use social media every day for an average of 12 minutes. Based on studies, at least 41% of internet users are likely to pick a healthcare provider based on their reputation on social media platforms. This makes it imperative for your healthcare facility to have an active social media presence.
One of the ways to build an excellent social media reputation is by taking time to engage with your followers, answering questions, and participating in online discussions related to your niche. The most common social media platform for the healthcare industry include Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook. These platforms allow you to connect with patients outside of their normal appointment schedules.
It is also advisable to constantly keep your social media pages active and up to date with relevant information. Create viral content on social media to improve organic traffic from advertising. You can also leverage humor-based content on a platform like TikTok to reach millions of potential patients.
This will keep your pages front and center of your followers’ minds whenever they need services related to your healthcare facility.
Build Your Healthcare Business Online
Today, almost everyone with access to the internet uses the web to find relevant information related to doctors, illness, symptoms, and more. If your healthcare facility is to keep up with the competition, it needs to have an online presence. You need to become better at identifying your strengths and capitalizing on them to build a strong brand image online.
Whenever prospective patients come to your website, you need to ensure they see your strengths, including your special talents and skills. Ensure you use high-quality images of your facilities like the patient rooms, OR facilities, and laboratories. Also, include any industrial awards and accreditations on your website to help foster visitors’ trust in your services.
Ensure the benefits you offer are properly highlighted, focusing on what you offer and what isn’t available by your competitors. Always focus on highlighting your commitment to providing a fantastic client experience in and out of your facility.
Before visiting your physical institution, the majority of your prospective patients will visit your online facility. Hiring an online admissions counseling specialist can help you to grow your business. MBA admissions and advisors assist applicants throughout the whole process. Admissions consulting includes everything starting from understanding the steps and standards to producing applications materials (such as essays and resumes).
Use PR to Get Your Name Out There
One thing you cannot overlook when looking to attract patients to a healthcare facility is the need for a PR strategy. Having an ideal public relations team and strategy is the best way to get your facility’s name out to the public while focusing on educating them on your services.
Consider using:
- Press releases to inform the public on the good your facility is doing for the community
- Interviews by relevant local press where you address the latest healthcare issues facing the community. This helps to build a sense of trust and familiarity
- Publishing an article that highlights your services and products, plus their benefits. This will pique the interest of potential patients and other healthcare professionals
Do Not Forget About Video Marketing
The healthcare industry is one of the industries that underutilize video content in marketing. Video content is one of the few marketing strategies that guarantee to capture the audience’s attention. According to research, at least 90% of leading companies use video content to impact the decisions of their target audience.
In the healthcare industry, video marketing can be used to create information packs and guides, show behind the scenes of your healthcare facility, and even share patient testimonials and stories.
Some of the ways you can incorporate video content in your marketing strategy include using YouTube, the second largest search engine, offering a great way of reaching millions of people through video content. You can also include video content on your social media pages like Facebook, which prioritizes video content than any other type of static content.
You can also incorporate video content in blog posts to illustrate the content you provide in words. This is a great way of boosting your SEO. Video content can also be used on website landing pages, giving the visitor a glimpse of what your organization or facility has to offer. Using the word ‘video’ in your email subject can increase your open rate by up to 19%, making it essential to use video content in your email marketing.
Track Your Strategy
After implementing your healthcare marketing strategy, you need to test it to ensure you are getting the most out of it. You can use different analytics solutions such as Google Analytics to track the performance of your strategy and know areas that need improvement.
You can measure performance using hard metrics such as cost per lead, conversion rates on landing pages, and web traffic to know whether you are on the right track with your strategy.
Conclusion
The healthcare industry becomes competitive every day. It is the job of the healthcare marketing team and practitioners to stay on top of the latest trends if they are to maximize lead conversion and ROI.
As technology advances, digital healthcare marketing also evolves to create new marketing opportunities. You can combine the techniques highlighted in this article to make your healthcare business stand out from the competition.
