Digital marketing remains the best option for any healthcare outfit that wants to remain relevant in the affairs of its clients in this 21st Century medical practice.
There is no doubt that marketing a medical practice is important for the stable flow of new and old patients. More patients look online on websites, as well as on social media to find healthcare providers in this era of the internet.
In a world characterized by a digitally competitive environment, the survey has shown that searching for the healthcare provider and health-related information has become the third most common activity today.
To keep your medical and healthcare practices alive, there is every need for you to learn how to meet your customers in the very place they go to find your kind of services- online the internet.
You just have to learn what online and internet positioning for your clients’ discoverability is all about. And if they find you online, will they like what they find strong enough to encourage them to come to you for their medical needs?
How Digital Marketing Can Promote Your Healthcare Business:
Digital marketing tactics can promote hospitals, clinics, and indeed every aspect of the healthcare business in many ways. Let’s find out the key reasons behind it:
1. Prospective patients hang around online
As the popular saying goes, ‘fish where fishes abound.’ Today, everyone, including your prospective patients live in the digital world. And even, according to statistics, most successful healthcare deals started on the internet.
A significant percentage of the population in every country, especially in the US look up health information online
2. The use of mobile devices has risen
Many people, including millennials, now turn to their mobile devices for information. Everything from catching the latest football score to the newest supplement in town. Utilizing this recent trend can be a turnaround for digital healthcare marketing.
3. Digital metrics track down everything
Digital metrics are powerful and can track any info, trend, or happening which, in the long run, are helpful to run a successful campaign.
4. Email marketing is a saver
Hospitals can tap into the numerous benefits of email marketing for reaching out to patients.
5. The ability to target particular demographics
Digital marketing allows hospitals to segment campaigns to target local areas, suburban, and certain healthcare territories which makes it easier to reach out to the target audience.
6. Most prospective patients value reputation
Digital tools allow healthcare services to display professionalism, reputation, and reliability. Patients look up the reputational aspect of a business before giving them a try.
7. Most health service audiences are college-educated.
A recent study from Think with Google confirmed that over 75% of people who look up health-related issues are college-educated. 50% of them are looking up information about a specific healthcare practitioner online.
8. Change is constant and digital healthcare marketing isn’t exempted.
People are beginning to dive into the digital marketing healthcare industry to connect with the right hospital or medical practitioner. Digital marketing is the most flexible, reliable, and easy-to-implement strategy for a hospital marketing pursuit.
What are the advantages of investing in healthcare digital marketing?
Not only is digital marketing a lucrative strategy for getting more patients, but also a cost-effective way of advertising a healthcare service. With effective digital marketing and search engine optimization, you can increase your chances of becoming visible on Google’s first page.
Let’s explore some key advantages.
1. Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA)
Implementing a digital marketing strategy to acquire new clients can reduce your total ad spend. According to a survey by US vein practice, medical centers spend over $314 and $348 per patient on print and TV ads, respectively.
This is a lot of money, compared to what they’ll spend on running a digital marketing campaign (over 50% slash in ad spend)
2. Location-based targeting
Digital marketing avails healthcare centers the opportunity to target a specific demographic, including age, sex, location, and more. That way, relating to patients will be easier, and patients can get a more personalized experience.
3. Data-driven decisions
Tracking down patient information can be difficult with traditional marketing, but with digital marketing, the process is easy. Plus, making an informed, the data-driven decision is easier with digital marketing.
4. Better visibility on Search Engine
One out of 20 searches on Google is healthcare-related, including health and wellness tips, disease symptoms, diet tips, and more.
5. Increased patient referrals
With digital marketing, you have access to several professional tools and software that can scale your campaign for utmost performance and drive quality leads to your healthcare service.
Healthcare Digital Marketing Strategies and Best Practices
Digital marketing has gained huge traction because people turn to the internet to get quick access to a specialist from the comfort of their homes. More patients are now able to speak to their specialists online.
Outline of Some of the Most Effective Strategies and Best Practices in Healthcare Digital Marketing- Facts and Statistics:
1. Plan for Local SEO
– Search Engine Optimization and user experience go hand in hand. Implementing an efficient local SEO strategy will help scale a successful healthcare business.
– Responsive design, web load time, mobile and voice search optimization, easy navigation, and quality content are some of the features that make a website stand out.
– SEO, a digital marketing strategy, boosts your visibility online. With the help of a professional SEO agency, you can target a specific location, boost user experience, and brand visibility, and generate more traffic to your website.
Check out these statistics highlighting the importance of SEO for your healthcare service.
a) 77% of people who look up online for health concerns use Google, Bings, and other top search engines.
b) People who search for an optometrist, therapist, and nursing home have a higher chance of putting a call through to a medical center.
c) Over 70% of people who look up health-related searches online don’t go past the first page of the search engine
d) 47% of online searchers look up for more information on a doctor or a medical center.
2. Consider pay-per-click advertising
– PPC is an advertising service implemented by search engines, social media, and other platforms where you only have to pay when a lead clicks on your ad. An example is Google AdWord which offers text and image ads. Text ads are those ads you see on the first page of search engines.
– Image ads are those occasional display ads that pop up on your screen. The algorithm of these ads works based on your search history.
– PPC ads allow your healthcare service website to be visible on search engines and generate more traffic. You can monitor the progress of your PPC ads to know what’s working and what’s not.
These statistics show the importance of PPC advertising in the healthcare industry.
a) Globally, the Healthcare industry spends an estimated $36B on advertising in 2020.
b) Over 7 million healthcare services spent over $10.1 billion on PPC advertising.
c) On average, healthcare providers get $3 back on every $1.60 ad spend on Google.
3. Social Media marketing
– The healthcare sector uses social media to reach out to more people, including prospective patients.
– Social media marketing allows hospitals and healthcare practitioners to target their desired demographics, such as age, sex, location, and more.
– With social media marketing, not only are you able to put your healthcare service out there, but also to educate people on certain health concerns, provide tips on mental and physical health, and lots more?
The following statistics reveal the importance of social media in the healthcare industry.
a) 94.41% of healthcare centers in the US have a Facebook account, 50.82% have a Twitter account, 99.14% have yelp, and 99.41% use Foursquare.
b) 60% of social media users love health-related tips posted by professionals online
c) 83% of social media users in the United States have looked up health-related information on social media.
d) 91% of social media users confessed that the health information they looked up on social media has helped them make better decisions.
4. Content marketing
– As with many industries, content marketing has been one of the most effective tools for healthcare specialists to engage with patients.
– Whether it’s through articles, blog posts, infographics, video content, and more, content marketing allows you to share your expertise with patients.
– For example, if you’re a dietician, you can share information on diet tips, give nutritional advice, fitness tips, and lots more.
– The goal is to provide valuable content. Avoid being promotional with your content. Focus on providing value; everything else will fall in place. Also, avoid using too many medical terms. It makes your content less engaging.
– Content with fewer medical terms will easily connect with the audience and is generally understandable.
The following statistic reveals the importance of content marketing in the healthcare sector.
a) Healthcare content marketing generates three times more ROI than outbound marketing, and ad spend is 62% less than other marketing plans.
b) Healthcare video marketers make 66% more targeted leads in a year.
c) 83% of health organizations implement a content marketing strategy
d) 58% of health marketers have an updated blog
Mobile marketing
– Everyone uses smartphones, from young to old. Mobile marketing in the healthcare sector is aimed at targeting people who use mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and other handheld devices with internet connectivity.
– Text messages, In-game mobile marketing, mobile image ads, mobile search ads, location-based marketing, geofencing, and cross-channel marketing, are some of the popular ideas that work well.
– Mobile marketing allows you not just to target a wider audience but also to share health-beneficial information and boost your reputation.
Here are some proven statistics on the impact of mobile marketing in the healthcare sector.
a) 44% of people who look up hospitals on their mobile end up scheduling an appointment
b) 47.6% of healthcare emails are opened via mobile.
c) 19% of mobile users have health and fitness apps on their mobile devices.
Invest in email marketing-
– If you want to maintain a healthy, near-direct relationship with your patients, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to achieve this goal.
– Personalise your email messages based on demographics like age, interest, location, health condition, and more. Always create friendly messages, enticing subject lines, and calls to action.
– Implementing an effective email marketing strategy can help generate more leads and more patients for your hospital.
Here are some proven statistics on the impact of email marketing in the healthcare sector.
a) Email is 40 times more effective than Twitter and Facebook when it comes to acquiring new leads
b) 89% of digital health marketers said email is the primary source of their lead generation
c) For every $1 spent on email marketing, the ROI is $44.25
Note:
– There’s no denying the fact that healthcare marketing is the new normal for a successful professional health service.
– The importance of digital marketing in the healthcare sector cannot be underestimated.
– Establishing an online presence is critical to the growth of your healthcare service as it allows you to reach out to a wider audience who hangs around in the digital world.
– In the long run, a patient’s experience and brand reputation will remain the most crucial factor for a successful digital marketing strategy.
THE BEST TYPES OF DIGITAL MARKETING FOR HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS
– Many people assume that the healthcare industry doesn’t need to rely on advertising, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
– It’s important to market your services to customers so that you can stay competitive and valuable.
– Some countries have millions of doctors and healthcare medical personnel. This makes it difficult as a healthcare professional to truly carve your niche and acquire the patients you need.
– Digital marketing can be your solution to growing your local patient base and building a powerful reputation as a trustworthy and caring practitioner.
Let’s look closely at the best types of digital marketing for healthcare professionals!
1. Engage in Active Marketing Campaigns
– Active marketing implies that you have positioned yourself online such that those who are searching for the services you provide will find you before your competitors.
– For example, if you set your medical practice up in the Google campaign on Google
Pay Per Click (after conducting research to determine and use relevant keywords that those looking for your kind of service are likely to use in Google to do their search). Generate leads through Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.
– If someone types “best Cardiologist in Lagos” your website is likely to come up at the top of the page, and you have a chance for the person to click. You only pay when customers click and are navigated to your website.
The client is likely to pick the phone to call and consult you for services. Optimize to rank locally.
– Medical marketing has gone local (within a 15-25 mile radius of your practice.) Include every detail of your contact information.
2. Build a Website & Put it on TOP of Google
– There is no other alternative as it were, build a website and work to optimize it for search engines. Build proper medical SEO and keywords.
– Patients nowadays will first know you, like you, trust you and build a relationship with you before ever walking through your door. They do this based on what you do with them online.
– Make sure your website design has customized features in them, the pages must load speedily, and it has to be interactive and mobile-friendly.
– Mobile phones and tablets are where the majority of people do their browsing today. Your webpage must include all your services and treatments.
– Make provision for patients to book appointments with you, call you, chat with you and even make payments online.
The truth about today’s people is that when patients want to find a doctor or health practitioner, they go to Google to search. And if you are not on the internet they can’t find you. Period! They will discover and go to those who have an online presence.
– Get a home, online home- a website for your medical practice. That’s the new order.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is Key
– SEO is an essential component of any healthcare digital marketing strategy. A well-crafted SEO campaign can increase your online visibility and grant you more opportunities to ‘get noticed.’
– Many internet users rely on search engines like Bing or Google to find information.
– SEO means optimizing your online content so that it is more likely to appear as results for popular Google searches.
– As a healthcare professional, you have the advantage of being part of an industry that is always in demand. But SEO can help leverage your specific healthcare niche so that you can fully harness the potential of this demand.
– You can optimize your website for keywords catered to your line of work. If you are a physical therapist, you can optimize content for “athletics physical therapy” or “senior therapeutic services.”
– Well-optimized content can ensure that you achieve first-page Google rankings for the searches likely to draw the most patients.
– Local SEO, in particular, can boost your reach to local patients. Local SEO means optimizing content for location-based searches, like “neurologist in Lagos.”
4. Social Media Campaigns
– We have established that you need to be online as a health professional, staff, or personnel. But your ability to remain consistent, especially in your social media handles is the challenge.
– About 53% of medical practices have a Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram page, and a lesser percentage of that are active on those social media handles.
– Consistency in producing relevant content and giving valuable information to your web visitors is the ultimate in finding success online. So making daily or frequent posts is key.
– You build an audience followers and nurture them till they trust and believe in your competence and then contact you for consultations.
– Share contents that drive patients to your website. Never be afraid to show the real you, and what you can do out there where your patients and potential patients can see you.
– Use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and/or Instagram to build business profiles. Stay active on these profiles in order to engage with potential and existing patients.
– Share posts that may be relevant to your patient base. These may include information about your hours of availability, answers to common medical questions, or patient care tips and strategies. Social media can also help you create virtual partnerships.
– Share posts that may be relevant to your patient base. These may include information about your hours of availability, answers to common medical questions, or patient care tips and strategies. Social media can also help you create virtual partnerships.
– Re-share posts by other healthcare professionals or industries that are of value to you.
– Patients will be more likely to defer to professionals who are linked to prominent institutions.
– You can also use Facebook to acquire patient reviews and feedback. Enable reviews under your business profile “settings.” You may also want to send out surveys to your existing patients to ask for valuable commentary.
5. Social Media Messaging
– Messaging gives you a valuable opportunity to engage with patients in real-time. Patients are likely to prioritize health care services that are willing to connect with patients on their level.
– Effective digital marketing for healthcare professionals should emphasize transparency and engagement with patients.
– On your social media profiles, encourage patients to reach out to you if they have questions through Facebook or Instagram messaging systems. You can even use messenger systems to deliver ads to existing patients.
6. Use Video
– Video content is always intriguing because it has the capacity to captivate audiences in a way that images simply cannot. Live video can also enable you to share information with patients in real-time.
Use YouTube or Facebook Live to build some videos into your digital marketing scheme
– Some of the best types of digital marketing for healthcare professionals involve the simple use of video.
– When it comes to targeted advertising, consumers are more likely to respond to content that is intriguing and informative.
7. Maintain a Blog
– Blogs give you a chance to provide relevant and educational content to your patients. They can enable you to share your voice beyond the professional scope of your website.
– Patients like to be informed, especially when it comes to their own self-care. Keep them informed by maintaining a blog on your website.
– Blogs can also give you more material for search engine optimization campaigns. You’ll also be able to share blog posts on your social media accounts.
8. Craft an E-Campaign
– Set up a system of email marketing to remain and maintain close communication with your clients.
– It’s clients that are happy with your relationship with them that can give you referrals for new clients if you remain in their minds and consciousness through contact and relationship management using email correspondent.
They are very familiar with your brand and trust your practice. But you need to keep in touch with them via frequent correspondence, and email remains one of the most effective mediums to do this.
– You can build your opt-in email list using Mailchimp or AutoResponder. You can send frequent newsletters and other helpful information to those who subscribe to your website.
– Harness the great power of this statistic by building email into your digital marketing strategy!
– Send regular e-newsletters to your subscribers and patients. In these newsletters, incorporate links to recent blog posts, reminders about seasonal vaccines and medications, and/or other useful information for your patients.
You can also use email to advertise relevant promotions or request patient feedback after a particular service.
9. Prioritize Content Marketing
– Content marketing is the leading digital marketing tool, behind SEO. This is largely due to the fact that patients are picky in choosing the ads they wish to respond to, and they are picky about their providers.
– The most effective forms of digital marketing for healthcare professionals incorporate highly valuable content.
Whatever content you do use in your digital marketing, make sure it is top-notch. Top-notch content is always useful, well-written, interesting, and sometimes plain humorous.
10. Outsourcing Marketing Services
– You don’t have to take all of this marketing into your own hands. Professionals can help!
– Industry experts can help craft a full-bodied campaign that incorporates a variety of the ideas here and gives you the results you need.
Other Helpful Digital Marketing Ideas for Healthcare Practitioners to Attract Clients
We all know how tedious it can be to capture the interest of new potential customers for our businesses, especially if we are a small firm.
If you are amongst those who have passion and determination but lack massive funds to support your small-sized healthcare business, then the following marketing ideas are worthwhile.
1. Word of mouth
This is a super technique for entrepreneurs who are looking to target a local audience. Word of mouth can be done online as well as offline. Remember the news of your company, good or otherwise, will spread like gunfire.
Some of the tactics that can be employed to increase word of mouth are as follows:
Always ask for feedback from the customers by asking them to leave a review on your website
A Local business directory along with other social mediums is one of the good platforms to ask your customers for reviews of your product
2. Write Articles
You can create a magnificent online presence by writing relevant articles on social platforms such as blogs.
This practice will help you gain credibility and instill confidence in your customers. If you don’t have the skills to write then hire those who have but do it.
3. Take membership in your local business confederations
No tactic can beat this one. Actively participate in local meetings held by relevant professional bodies or business chambers.
You will meet like-minded people and perhaps end up gaining insights or discovering varied opportunities to talk and listen.
4. Local Business Directories
Don’t forget to list your business in a popular local business directory as it will improve your SEO ranking in a significant manner. Many people search for products and services on search engines
such as Google, however, inevitably most of them end up being on a local business directory. Local business directories do an excellent job in organic search rankings which is credible.
This is particularly a useful thing for those businesses that cannot get their respective sites ranked high for a specific term, as it can appear on local business directory sites that may rank for that term.
5. Corporate Social Responsibility
Don’t do this out of desperation. Have a proper plan for sufficing your social responsibilities.
Perhaps you can allot a certain percentage of sales to the local charitable organizations. This activity will help you win your customers’ hearts and you too will feel happy inside!
6. Demand testimonials and recommendations
Don’t feel shy to ask for customer testimonials from your current customers. Also, feel free to ask for reviews and recommendations. They would be willing to give you testimonials preferably on online platforms
such as Linkedin, Local Business Directories, Facebook, Twitter, and the likes.
7. Have a presence everywhere
Yes, be omnipresent! There are numerous platforms both offline and online available in these times. Be present on each of it. Some of the low-cost mediums include being on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube channel, Local business directory, and podcasts on iTunes.
Be known to the masses. It’s a competitive world out there, and you need to be known to the masses, for your business to grow.
8. Google Maps
It is a good idea to list your small business on Google Maps. When we talk about small-sized businesses, presence in Google Maps is essential. There are many undue advantages of it. Firstly, it’s free so you have nothing to lose.
Since your business is listed on Google Maps, it invariably ranks high in Google Search Rankings.
Your customer also has an option of reviewing your product or services, which should help you in understanding your customers better.
9. Make small gestures
Some of the most mindful ways of treating your customers right are as follows:
Return their communication immediately.
Call them on their special days and let it be a genuine one.
Send them special notes such as good wishes, if the beings have touched you.
Be genuinely interested in their stories if they have anything to share
It could be a little hard at the beginning for you to implement these gestures, and you might even falter! It isn’t going to harm you though. Just try and be a good person.
It could be a little hard at the beginning for you to implement these gestures, and you might even falter! It isn’t going to harm you though. Just try and be a good person.
