Healthcare Marketing Strategies to Stay Ahead of the Crowd

Healthcare providers are different. While a digital marketing strategy for flower shops and outsourced IT services may be similar, promotion methods for healthcare providers differ substantially.  The Healthcare business requires a delicate yet powerful approach to target audience search, information sharing, and advertising. When we are talking about peoples’ lives and health, everything becomes a little more serious, even the digital marketing strategies. In this article, you’ll learn how to create a strong digital marketing team, find out which tools can assist with drafting powerful strategies, and discover numerous tips to help you stay ahead of the competition.

The Right Team Is Everything

Even the largest healthcare providers often have funding limitations. The amount of money spent on equipment and doctors’ salaries may not leave too much room for maneuver for other parts of the business.  We would like to share how you can build a marketing team without spending too much money.
A strong marketing team is key to a solid marketing strategy. It can help you worry about other important matters, which a healthcare provider is bound to have plenty of. Each marketing team should have six key members:

1. Strategist

A marketing strategist is a person, who is responsible for drafting the campaign and making decisions. It’s possible that if you are just starting your business, this role is yours. This person needs to understand the business fully and know what the owner needs to achieve.  The strategist works with the digital marketing team to create a schedule of events and goals. This person keeps track of the team’s activities and gives other specialists a nudge in the right direction in case the results aren’t as perfect as expected.  

The strategist keeps the finger on the budget’s pulse and ensures that the priorities are balanced. Ideally, the strategist is the only person on the team, who reports to the owner. The rest of the marketing team follows his or her rules and advice.

Finding a strategist is a tough challenge, but once you do, the marketing effort is likely to improve exponentially.

2. Social Media Expert

Social media marketing (SMM) is a vital part of the digital marketing strategy for healthcare providers. With the volume of work that must be done, it’s tough to work without an expert in the field. The strategist drafts an SMM plan, and the expert puts it into action. This person is responsible for interacting with patients on social media channels. He or she must know all about your company’s area of expertise in order to find the target audience and keep it coming. 

Ideally, a social media expert for a healthcare provider should be knowledgeable about medicine and the healthcare industry. If not, he or she would often need to work with one of the certified medical specialists in order to provide the correct information to the patients. 

When looking for an SMM expert, you need to check out his or her social media presence. The results of such an expert’s previous work should be easy to track. Ideally, the person should have experience with SMM strategies for healthcare providers.

Source – Pixabay

3. Content Manager

When it comes to healthcare providers, content is not just the king, it’s the queen, the Prime Minister, and the President. In the 21st century, patients don’t call the doctor when symptoms occur, they go to the internet to research them first. That’s why, according to healthcare SEO specialists at Miromind, content is an essential part of the digital marketing strategy for any healthcare provider.

A content manager collaborates with the strategist and the social media expert to become the voice of your company. The person must have excellent writing and communications skills. The candidate should have a large portfolio of blog posts, videos, website content, and the like.

A good content manager can provide you a slogan on the spot. These people know how important it is to make a quick first impression with just a few words or images. Always ask for samples of the person’s work before hiring.

4. SEO Specialist

The quality of your content can be high, but without the right effort, no one will see it. The Healthcare industry is an excellent field for SEO maneuvers. A digital marketing strategy can’t work properly without SEO. The role of an SEO specialist is critical to the campaign’s success.

The SEO specialists must know how to use a variety of tools, from keyword search software to interlinking methods. The expert optimizes your website and social media content in order to put your business on the first pages of Google search. Ideally, each member of the team should have certain SEO skills, especially the content manager.

5. Information Analyst

Analytics is another integral part of any digital marketing strategy. Marketing is similar to long-term treatment. The results don’t appear immediately. It will take time until you understand whether the strategy is working or failing. 

Without timely analytics, when you understand that you made the wrong turn, it’s too late. You’ve spent too much money on the wrong approach. Thankfully, the right analyst can help you avoid such unfortunate consequences by evaluating the result of your marketing efforts along the way. This person tells the strategist when it’s time to change the approach. 

An analyst allows you to save time and money on the wrong marketing approach. This candidate should also have a portfolio of his or her previous work. The specialist should have an easy understanding of numerous analytics tools for the healthcare marketing realm.   

6. Technical Expert

The technical expert knows how to implement a digital marketing strategy physically. The majority of digital marketing tools require a certain knowledge of HTML and CSS. The person can help build templates for social media marketing and content. 

Most likely, that’s the person, who designs your website and gives advice about the latest trends and developments in digital media. The expert polishes the content, finds the right place for it, and knows how to make the website or social media account more attractive for the patient. 

It may be hard to interview such an expert if you aren’t tech-savvy. Have the person show his or her portfolio. You can also ask a techie friend to help you with the interview.

How To Capitalize On Your Marketing Team

Source – Pixabay

When building your marketing team, you need to follow a few rules in order not to lose money. The cost of a digital marketing strategy for healthcare providers often depends on how well you capitalize on your team.

1. Set The Objectives

Before giving tasks to your marketing team, you have to understand what your priorities and objectives are. Declaring that you simply want to make higher profits is unlikely to reduce the costs of your campaign. Set monthly goals, such as:

• Gain 100 new leads
• Appear on the 10th page of Google Search
• Increase Facebook likes to go up 5 %
• Set up an Instagram community

All of the above are simply examples. Depending on where your business stands today, you can set your own goals. Ideally, they should follow the below rules:

• Be Strategic
• Be Measurable
• Be Achievable
• Be Realistic
• Be Time-bound
  

2. Limit The Channels

Numerous digital channels exist to improve your marketing efforts. However, taking advantage of all of them can spread the efforts thin and fail to achieve proper results. Save time and money by choosing just a few channels, which can help you achieve the objectives.

For example, you can stick to Facebook marketing and email efforts, rather than trying to acquire clients on all social media platforms. In the future, when your marketing campaign starts working, and the funding becomes more formidable, you can always extend the efforts.

3. Make The Most of The Talent

While the above-described team may be ideal, it doesn’t mean you must hire six people. You could find specialists, who combine such skills as content management and SEO, strategical thinking, and analytics.  

Perhaps, it would be cheaper to train one of your existing marketing team members to help them acquire new skills rather than hire an extra person. It’s possible to start with a two-person marketing team: someone, who deals with the content and someone, who works with analytics. The business owner can act as a strategist for the time being.

4. Be Realistic

Be realistic about the tasks you give to your marketing team. Digital marketing campaigns don’t bring amazing results in just a few weeks, no matter how wonderful your team is and how much money you spend. It’s important to realize that you are unlikely to get 100 new patients a week immediately after the team starts working.

You have to understand that it may take as long as a year for the substantial results to start showing. Meanwhile, your team members will work non-stop. Be ready to accept small achievements and celebrate reaching of short-term goals.

5. Be Ready For A Long Game

A digital marketing campaign is not something that stops after you see the results. You don’t fire your marketing team once you have the desired 100 patients appear at your doorstep. Because tomorrow they may leave to take advantage of another clinic’s services.

Digital marketing is an ongoing process so the team is here to stay. Once your funding grows, you could improve the efforts of the team by hiring new specialists. It’s important to have a long-term plan for the marketing campaign, as well as long-term goals.

Using The Right Tools For Your Digital Marketing Campaign

Today, it’s possible to draft a digital marketing campaign for a healthcare provider simply by knowing which tools to use. Of course, you would need to spend a substantial amount of time learning how to use them. So it’s better to have specialists helping you.
If you are just starting your business, some of these tools can save you money on hiring additional team members.

Source – Pixabay

• Referral MD – improves the marketing strategy by automating the feedback loop. A special feedback format allows you to improve the customer service you provide the referral sources and get new referrals in return.
• Hubspot – helps manage email and social media accounts, do lead management, improve mobile marketing, and much more. A great tool for automating your digital marketing efforts.  
• Get Response – another marketing automation platform to help you deal with different digital marketing channels. It automates patient notification and helps keep them engaged. The tool also helps make viral and beautiful landing pages.
• Google Analytics – you can analyze the way your marketing campaign works with important information that GA collects on your website. It’s one of the main tools your analyst should be using.
• HotJar – a program telling you how to design the webpage in order to make it more appealing to the audience. For example, it can tell you where to place the contact form to make the patients share their information more readily. This tool also helps you prioritize the content.
• Google Keywords Planner – keyword search is one of the most important parts of your campaign, and this program can help you with it. When you are just starting out, it’s an excellent tool to work with. It’s free and easy to use.
• Moz Local – Healthcare providers need to boost their local search results. Moz allows you to improve your local marketing campaign. It assists with setting local SEO efforts straight.
• Google My Business – this program allows you to get all the reports from different Google platforms in one place. You can see how your business appears on searches and map results, deal with the reviews, and improve SEO efforts.
• Facebook Power Editor – for your social media marketing efforts, Facebook is the king. This tool can help you set up the right audience and make your posts more popular. It can also create ads on Facebook and Instagram.
• Google Ads – hardly any marketing campaign can work without using Google AdWords. Even though it has a certain learning curve, it can help you get to the first pages of Google search results.

5 Tips To Improve Digital Marketing Strategy For Healthcare Providers

These tips can improve your existing digital marketing strategy and give you important information if you are just starting to draft one.

1. Make Your Strategy Mobile-First

Even though everyone knows that the majority of internet users have gone mobile, only about a third of healthcare providers have oriented their marketing campaign on the mobile user. Be the one to join them as soon as possible, and you have the best chances of acquiring hundreds of new patients.

In 2019, the number of mobile users worldwide will reach 4.68 billion. Thousands of them are your potential clients.

2. Go Micro

The attention span of today’s consumers is quite short. So you only have a few seconds to catch the patient’s attention and capitalize on it. That’s why many industries are currently adopting the micro-moment strategy.It involves giving out content in small pieces in order not to overwhelm the consumers while piquing their interest. The types of micro-moments are:

• “I-want-to-watch-what-I’m-into” – offer the necessary video information.
• “I-want-to-know”– give out the required content.
• “I-want-to-go”– helping take action.
• “I-want-to-do”– offering instructions.
• “I-want-to-buy”– helping make a decision to buy (in your case, get services).

Having your services tailored to satisfy the above micro-moments can make your campaign highly valuable.

3. Get Reviews Of Your Work

While telling everyone how amazing you are can help you achieve some results, it’s always better to have someone else vouch for your credibility. For a healthcare provider, positive reviews are the air and water it can’t leave without.

• Take advantage of all types of tools that can help you get reviews from your patients. Offer them incentives. Make it easy to post reviews on the website and social media channels. Help them make the review easier to leave.
  
• For example, if you don’t want to get a simple “great job. Thank you” type of review, create a review form, which will force the reviewer to list pros, cons, share what they liked most, etc. You can even make the replies multiple choice.
• Make sure you have social media share buttons available everywhere you post content. Your readers and patients are an integral part of your marketing team. Just one social media share or repost can make a big difference in a short period of time.
  

4. Share Information

Information is your main tool for the digital marketing strategy. Patients are open to new information whether they have certain symptoms or just want to get educated. You have several ways to share information in order to convert potential clients.

• Free webinars – patients are open to information about their conditions and readily share their contact data in return for free webinars. You can educate your patients and market your services at the same time.
• Messenger Communities – since your existing patients are much more likely to come back for more services than new clients, you have to work hard to maintain their interest. Some healthcare providers choose to set up a messenger community where besides answering questions, they share promotions and important information about their services.
• Blog – each healthcare provider can provide important information related to its services in the blog. By keeping the content viral, you can keep the patients coming. With an easy-to-find social media sharing button near your blog, you can extend your reach to thousands of people.

5. Make The Most Of Social Media Channels

The majority of your patients are likely to be using Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In a world, where everyone is pressed for time, people always find moments to check their social media accounts. Meanwhile, they may not find time to read your blog or even emails.  

So it’s up to every healthcare provider, to pay close attention to its work done on social media. Information sharing on social media platforms is easy but requires a special approach. Having an SMM specialist on your team can simplify the process.

Source – Pixabay

The content you can post on your social media pages can involve:

Answering a patient’s question – many people are ready to get free advice. However, they are highly likely to choose your clinic in the future after getting a qualified reply.

• Sharing a story – when you are starting your digital marketing campaign, you should draft a story of your business. It’s not too bad of an idea to make it a little more entertaining than it actually is. People love stories.
• Share statistics – people enjoy seeing statistics related to their health conditions. Stats are often easy to understand and make a great impression. They are also excellent at sharing and reposting material.
• Videos and images – visual posts are gaining impressive popularity. It’s easier to catch a person’s attention with fast-moving pictures than with text. Having a person responsible for media on your team can improve your SMM campaign.
• Correcting misconceptions – The health industry is changing every day. Since many things the older generation believed to be true are now outdated, the younger generation loves reading about correcting misconceptions.
  

3 Digital Marketing Trends For The Healthcare Industry

Digital marketing strategies in the healthcare industries are changing every year. It’s important to keep yourself up to date with the newest trends. Some of them are closer than you think.

1. Voice Searches

In the time-constricted modern world, users are opting for simplified access to information. It’s important to build your SEO campaign around the rise of voice search approaches.

2. Organic Living

Healthier ways of life coupled with organic products have been overwhelming the minds of the modern consumer. Healthcare providers that don’t forget to make interesting posts about the above are bound to get more likes, shares, and reposts.

3. More Videos

Videos are slowly edging text out of the content realm. The more videos you’ll include in your digital marketing campaign in the future, the more popular your website is likely to become. Meanwhile, you can attract new patients with less effort.

Conclusion

Building a strong digital marketing strategy for a healthcare provider is a long-term project, which requires serious investments. By building the right team, choosing your priorities, and following the trends, you can stay ahead of the competition. 

It’s important to remember that digital marketing strategies don’t start working immediately. Analyzing each step of the campaign can help you avoid costly mistakes.