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Healthcare and medicine have definitely come a long way and what we have today is vastly different from what was the norm centuries ago. What this implies is that patients now have several alternatives and in an age of information and sophisticated advancements in technology, patients can now gain very easy access to useful information. Because of this, many patients do not see the need for them to go to hospitals or consult with doctors and this clearly has an adverse effect on the medical business.
However, the smart ones always put useful techniques in place to ensure that this never happens to their enterprises. One thing you need to know about healthcare marketing strategies is that you have to approach them with all levels of seriousness. In fact, some doctors and healthcare providers go as far as hiring trained professionals to handle this for them. Either you are able to sort it out on your own or you had to get professionals to do them for you, the most important thing is that you get results at the end of the day. Also, depending on the type of strategy mix you will end up using, you need to have some decent budget to run them all as some of them do not come cheap at all.
Below are very efficient healthcare marketing strategies that will be of great help to your business and more importantly, keep your patients very happy.
21 Healthcare Marketing Strategies for 2020
1. Be steady with Your Brand
Establishing your brand is one thing, remaining steady with it is another thing entirely. You have to be steady with your brand so that your patients know precisely what to expect as far as experience is concerned. You need to have very specific and unique features about your medical center. It may be the way you receive and handle your patients or it may even be the floral designs in your office. Whatever it is that will make your business really stand out, let it leave a lasting impression on your clients. Lack of consistency is going to put off so many of your patients because it will get to a point that they will not even know what to expect from your medical center again and no one likes to be placed in a condition of suspense. Spell out very clearly your mission, goals and aims and stick to them no matter what.
2. Assess the Feedback Patients Leave Online:
Now that you have a website, it should not just be a piece of graphic work. The website is a very good platform for you to know precisely what your patients are going through. So, you need to first make sure that the website is designed in such a way that patients find it really easy to navigate and that they also feel very welcome on your digital platform. If the website is annoying or too complicated to navigate, then you should not expect them to become returning customers. Pay very close attention to the feedback left by these patients. These responses will be a mixture of positive and negative, assess them all and do the needful.
3. Let Your Website Be First-Class:
Having a website is one thing but having a website that is a true delight to your patients is another thing. One of the best things about your website is for it to have a responsive feature. What this means is that irrespective of the type and nature of the gadget that your patients use to access your website, they will encounter no problems with viewing the pages. You should also focus on the graphics and ensure that it is not too flashy and the colors must blend in perfectly. Zocdoc is a great example, the healthcare website helps connects people who are looking for a nearby doctor. The website has a clear navigation, clean design and appointment booking through text. Unless you are trained in website design and maintenance, it is advisable that you let experts handle this for you. There are top-notch website designers all over on freelancing websites who will be more than ready and willing to do an excellent job for you and at very reasonable rate.
4. Let Search Engines Find Your Website Easily:
This is also a part of the design of the website. If this part is not properly sorted out, you may end up with a beautiful site but one that is not indexed by the search engines like Google. In order to ensure that this does not happen to you ever, your platform should be fully optimized for search engines. Because ensuring this is a very technical work, you can always hire the best hands if it is a task that you cannot handle yourself.
5. Do Not Have A Slow Website
Who loves a slow website? Of course, no one does. If you notice, a lot of emphasis is placed on the website as far as effective healthcare marketing strategies are concerned and this is because a lot of the work to be done are going to be on the online platform. Thus, you must ensure that your website load at the speed of light. Your website must be configured in a way that it will be responsive. This is crucial as different visitors will be accessing your platform by making use of different gadgets like smartphones, notebooks, computers and so on. Your platform should be optimized to handle all of them perfectly.
6. Make Use of Smart Advert Campaigns:
Today, there are several options that one can use when it comes to advertising and executing productive healthcare marketing strategies. One way to do this is to sign up for pay-per-click advert packages and Google is the most popular option in this regard. With this form of adverts, your hospital, clinic or medical center will come up faster and more prominently on the pages as people are searching. The best thing about this is that you can always tailor your budget precisely so there is no issue of you overspending and not getting the needed results.
7. Make the Best of Social Media:
There are more than 65 globally known social networking sites live on the internet. However, the most popular ones are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Twitter. These social networks are not just for staying connected with family and friends, healthcare providers and other business owners can boost their business presence through social media.
Information can blow up quickly on social media. It is ideal for reaching out to individual clients and even business owners. A lot of people are interested in health-related tips and would always be happy to follow people who share good tips online. This should be your primary focus. Also, you should pay for social ads. You can either share information specific to your field or general health and fitness tips. Building a reputable social media presence is going to take time and effort. Most importantly, you need to proceed with caution. As stated, information spreads quickly on social media and sending the wrong information can give your clinic, pharmacy or any other health-related establishment backlash from every angle on social media.
It is without a doubt that social media networks today are some of the biggest platforms out there and there is no way you can successfully implement workable healthcare marketing strategies without making use of social media. With billions present on different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others, it is clearly a good idea to embed them in any digital healthcare marketing strategies that you might be considering. One way to ensure that you get very useful results from this strategy will be for you to hire experts in social media marketing to handle these platforms for you. It is not a mistake or a coincidence that some of the most well-known brands on the planet make use of social media in the promotion of their services and products, you should also do the same by making the very best of all the opportunities that social media has for you and your business.
8. Communicate with Your Patients:
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It is safe to state that even the best-designed healthcare marketing strategies are as good as useless if there is no room for communication with your patients. By communication, it is not just talking to your patients but actively asking them for their feedback and ensuring they leave their reviews on services rendered on platforms like the website. Many health service providers lose very valuable information by failing to ask for reviews from their patients. If you deploy excellent health marketing strategies, one of the most efficient ways to gauge the performance of these strategies is to ask for the feedback from your patients. They will be more than glad to let you know how they really feel then you can use that feedback to ensure further improvements with the services being rendered. This explains why the most loved healthcare brands all seem to have very friendly relations with their patients and this is very visible in the way they handle their affairs.
9. Provide After-Appointment Services and Checks
If you get a feedback from a patient, either positive or negative, you should not just stop at that. You should make it a practice to always do a follow-up with the patients and this is even much more important when negative reviews or feedback are left by disappointed patients. It is your duty to ensure that you sort any and all issues raised by the patients and this should be done promptly. Patients absolutely love it when you decide to always pamper them with after-appointment services at no extra cost.
By checking on them from time to time, you can be sure of the efficacy of all the healthcare marketing strategies you deploy. When you remember that you have competitors who will gladly offer the same service, then you will not hesitate to pamper your patients by checking up on them even after the primary healthcare service has been rendered. This can easily be done with a simple phone call or even a well-intentioned email message.
10. Do Not Ignore Conventional Media Platforms
A lot has been said about digital online platforms when it comes to the promotion of your healthcare services. However, that is not to say that you have to ignore the usual and conventional media platforms. These include paper publications like leaflets, pamphlets, magazines and newspapers. Others include the radio stations, television platforms, signposts and billboards. These are also very effective measures and one or two of them can be considered when the time comes to deploy the various healthcare marketing strategies.
11. Network With Other Doctors
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Do not make the mistake of trying to operate as an island. That will be very counterproductive because one way by which you can build up your customer base is by networking with other doctors. In doing so, you are able to get as many referrals as possible from these other professional colleagues. The bigger and more elaborate the network you build; the more patients can be referred to your venture.
12. Content Marketing for the Win
Content marketing is strategically creating content such as blogs, press releases and social media updates with the goal of acquiring leads and sales. The content created is not aimed at promoting the brand but at sparking interests in the brands products or services. Cleveland Clinic does a great job of this on their blog Health Essentials. The blog shares very informational content on healthcare. Some of their most recent blog posts are on healthcare topics such as, “What Can I Do To Avoid Headache and Migraine Triggers?” and “7 Signs That Exercise Is Actually Hurting Your Health”.
There are billions of blogs available online. A large number of these blogs are used to generate revenue from advertisers while the other half is used by business owners who want to promote their products or services. Most advertisers make blogging their number one priority during their content marketing campaigns. All you have to do is generate relevantly, value-adding content on your blog and distribute it efficiently on Google, and social media. Apart from creating valuable content, you also need to maintain consistency. If you post content daily, make sure you maintain the trend. If you prefer to post once a week or even once a month, make sure you don’t miss any publication.
13. Keep In Touch With Messaging
Last year, Facebook reported that over 2.1 billion people use its instant messaging services on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram daily. Monthly, over 2 7 billion people use at least one of them. You can use the instant messaging app in your digital marketing campaign. As a healthcare provider, you can ask your patients and prospects for permission to collect their details and add them to instant messaging networks.
You can also collect these details from social media. With instant messaging, it’s easier to gain the trust of your clients and prospects than when you use other forms of digital marketing. You can send offers, tips or just respond to inquiries directly via instant messaging. The goal is to keep the line of communication open and build trust.
14. Build Online Presence With Global Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You can’t make a list of the best digital marketing strategies without adding search engine optimization. There are many search engines on the internet but the most popular is Google. Google processes over 1.2 trillion searches every year on a global scale. This number is only going to keep increasing. Many businesses depend significantly on Google to survive. It’s a vital part of the internet that cannot be ignored.
Google allows business owners to reach their target market without having to physically go there. Research has revealed that over 68% of online businesses generated new leads from Google landing pages. The best way to get noticed by Google is to create a high-quality health-focused website that tells people about your products and services in the healthcare industry. At first, you may need to pay for Google ads, but you can’t run ads forever. So, getting organic and relevant traffic on Google is what will sustain the campaign long-term.
Companies like InsureChance, who have used these with great success.
15. Make It More Targeted With Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If your goal is to invite more people to your clinic, you should consider listing your business on Google. Google allows you to list your business along with vital information that can bring people in your locality to your practice. You will have to fill your business address, phone number, website, etc. Each time people within your business environment search for the services you offer, your business will show up in Google Places.
The higher your page ranks on the search engine, the more likely it will show up on the first page. After you have listed your business on Google’s places page, you should add it to as many directories as possible. Directories like Yelp and Yellowpages would do just fine. Search for as many directories as possible and list your business on all of them for more visibility on Google business page.
16. Add A Taste Of Traditional Marketing With Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing that borrowed some features from traditional mail marketing. Instead of sending letters to physical home mailboxes, you can send digital mails to your clients and prospects. The stats from 2019 showed that over 3.9 billion people around the world use their emails regularly.
In the next two years, the figure is estimated to grow to about 4.3 billion making up for half of the world’s current population. As a business owner, you need to use email marketing by promoting your healthcare services directly through electronic messages. Your goal should be to start and maintain interactions between your clients or prospects and your brand. Make sure your emails are personalized so your prospects can feel comfortable and willing to open them. The content of your email headline will contribute to your email response rate.
17. Pay Per Click Ads (PPC)
When you set up a Pay Per Click campaign, you will only get charged when your prospective clients click on the ad. The more clicks you get, the higher the chances of generating leads. Statistics have shown that 75% of people who search the internet for information click on ads.
This is why advertisers from across the globe spent $10.1 billion on Pay Per Click ads in 2017. It also shows that people are 50% more likely to purchase products after clicking paid ads than organic content. Even if Pay Per Click ads don’t bring organic visitors, you should do it from time to time to boost lead generation for your healthcare business.
18. Partner With Affiliate Marketers
Affiliate marketers are people who promote products or services for others for a percentage of each sale known as commission. You should partner with affiliate marketers in your niche. The industry standard for affiliate marketing is 10% of the amount the customer pays.
For example, if your affiliate marketer brings a customer who pays a consultation fee of $100, you have to give the marketer 10% of this amount. Most affiliate marketers have websites that are used to promote the products or services they are trying to sell. Make sure you visit the website to ensure that it meets your standards.
19. Spread The Word On The Go With Mobile Marketing
Do you know that more than 5 billion people have mobile phones across the globe? Out of this number, 3.5 billion users have smartphones. This makes up about 45% of the world’s current population. Having a smartphone is like carrying a computer in your pocket everywhere you go. Customers tend to discover new brands through their mobile devices.
There are several ways to use mobile devices to promote your services. You can use text messages, pop up notifications or take things up a notch by creating a mobile application. Ads on smartphones are 50% more likely to be opened than others.
20. Get Visual With Video Marketing
Video marketing is a form of content marketing that requires videos instead of texts. People respond more to videos than text and this is why 76% of the B2C marketers use videos and 72% of B2B marketers do the same. You will increase your chances of generating leads by up to 66% if you use videos along or instead of texts. You must add video marketing to your digital marketing campaign because a significant number of traffic from search engines is brought from videos.
Review the Healthcare Marketing Strategies:
Well, it is not just enough to have marketing strategies in place. it is important that you review and analyze the performance of these different healthcare marketing strategies from time to time. In doing so, you are able to quickly observe the best-performing strategies which you will always adopt and the worst-performing strategies which you either modify or drop entirely.
All that have been listed above are reliable strategies that can be utilized in the marketing of healthcare services. It must be stated at this juncture that you are most likely not going to get the results you desire by using just a single strategy. The best method is to combine these strategies then assess each with time and retain the best performing strategies.
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