Healthcare Marketing Strategy
Healthcare marketing strategy is one of the ways that healthcare practices can use to reach out to patients. Without an effective marketing strategy in place, you will most likely fail in your healthcare practice.
Over the years, healthcare consumers have evolved to change the manner healthcare providers deliver their services. Healthcare practices must also evolve to meet the transforming needs of patients to stay afloat in the competitive healthcare industry.
Definition of Healthcare Marketing Strategy
Healthcare marketing is a method of strategic outreaches and communications put together to bring in new healthcare consumers, usher them through their healthcare journey, and constantly engage them with the healthcare system, service, and products.
A well-structured marketing plan integrates different channels, highly targeted, and specific online and offline marketing efforts to drive engagements and growth.
Why is Healthcare Marketing Strategy Important?
Healthcare marketing strategy is an essential element of sustainable development. Without it, there would be no inflow of new patients, and even your loyal patients may eventually stop coming to you.
The healthcare industry is changing rapidly. The healthcare industry was formerly a volume-based industry with the doctor in full control, but it has now become a quality-based industry centered on the patients.
With effective marketing strategies, you can be sure to acquire new healthcare consumers and also keep your existing to ensure the growth of your medical practice.
Online Healthcare Marketing Strategies for Medical Practices
Online marketing strategies are the online marketing efforts you put in to acquire new healthcare consumers. With effective online marketing strategies, you can generate massive growth for your healthcare practice.
Online marketing strategies for healthcare practices include:
1. Utilizing Social Media Platforms
Social media is a tremendous communication portal to engage with healthcare consumers and build personal relationships with them. Social media will offer your medical practice a human personality that is more relatable to healthcare consumers.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have become increasingly beneficial for healthcare marketing. You can reach out to healthcare consumers on your various social media platforms, and engage them until you successfully convert them.
2. Creating And Maintaining A Professional Website For Your Healthcare Service
The most important step in building your online healthcare practice is to create your website. Your website is your online identity. Through your website, patients can trace you to your hospital. People will also likely navigate around your website if it is user-friendly and mobile-friendly.
Make sure your website contains relevant information that people need to know about your medical practice.
3. Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines
For your website to appear on top positions of search engine results, you need to follow search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. Optimize your website and follow SEO best practices so that your website can appear on the first page of search results on search engines like Google.
4. Utilizing Online Advertising Like Google Adword, And Facebook Ads
Online advertisement campaigns help you reach more of your target. Google is the largest search engine platform with millions of people using Google to search for information every day. Facebook has almost 3 billion users, making it the largest social media platform in the world today.
Utilizing online advertising like Google Adword and Facebook Ads can help you reach out to millions of people who may need medical services. Making use of advertising mediums can also generate massive traffic to your website.
5. Building An Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing is one of the oldest online marketing strategies used to reach out to prospects.
Sending bulk emails directly to prospects can undoubtedly bring in the most massive return on your investment. Practicing an effective email marketing campaign can help you acquire new healthcare consumers for the growth of your healthcare practice.
6. Utilizing A Patient's Portal To Communication With Patients
For patients who are busy with work or live a busy lifestyle, patient portals are a quick and easy way to organize their healthcare needs. You can effectively communicate with your patients via patients’ portal.
These convenient and comfortable alternatives can ultimately assist the patients leading to satisfaction and retention. You should create patients’ portal if you don’t have one already.
7. Creating And Sharing Patients' Testimonials
Patient testimonials are a tremendous complement to your website. Testimonials exhibit the success stories of patients under your watch, which can reassure new patients about your services. You can make it easy for patients to put forward testimonials through a form on your website.
Placing testimonials on your website is recommended to boost your online reputation and your marketing efforts.
8. Using Chatbots On The Website And Social Media
Chatbots are programs developed to respond to messages and carry human-like chats.
With the assistance of machine learning, chatbots can modify their replies to match different situations.
You must incorporate chatbots on your website and social media to improve your healthcare practice. It will help in attending to patients and help patients solve ordinary issues in a time-effective manner.
9. Creating Virtual Tours Of Your Practice
Healthcare is a rapidly changing industry, particularly when it comes to its online presence. The web is a vast explorative place for potential patients to find medical answers and local healthcare providers.
For years, healthcare institutions have held open houses and events to show off facilities to patients, but with technology like virtual tours, interested patients can now visit the facility right from a computer or mobile device. This can boost your marketing efforts as a healthcare provider.
10. Creating And Running Facebook And Instagram Contests
Facebook and Instagram contests are fun in social media. Each social media channel has set up rules and guidelines to oversee the contest to protect both users and the business.
You can perform a contest that demands active participation. Creating and running Facebook and Instagram increases engagement in your Facebook and Instagram pages. This can help you know more about potential patients and help you to convert them more easily and quickly.
11. Creating And Sharing Patients' Educational Videos
YouTube videos can be a great resource for healthcare consumers and a very useful educational platform for them. Educational videos can also help new patients get familiarized with doctors before booking their first appointment.
YouTube also enables healthcare consumers to attach a face to the person behind the screen. YouTube videos can also be used to disseminate health tips, explain processes and services, and share the results of certain procedures.
All these are the added advantages of YouTube that you can use to acquire new patients for your healthcare practice.
12. Creating And Sharing Infographics
Infographics are information graphics that visually communicate information. Creating high-quality infographics can help you disseminate information to healthcare consumers.
Infographics are effective digital tools that allow patients to obtain knowledge on certain procedures, diseases, and trending healthcare topics. Infographics are also a powerful digital tool that provides multiple understandings of specific infections, techniques, and hot healthcare topics.
13. Utilizing pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising
Paid search is a rapid way to channel traffic to your website, and it can be very helpful in targeting the right people.
Advertising on search engines is incredible if you want to increase your online exposure. Paid search can also enable you to get highly-targeted traffic from potential patients searching for specific services and methods.
Offline Healthcare Marketing Strategy
Offline marketing strategies are strategies you put offline to achieve your marketing goals and objectives.
They include;
1. Networking And Building Relationships With Other Healthcare Professionals
There are lots of ways to connect with professionals in your medical field that will be beneficial to you and your healthcare practice. One of the most effective ways to do this is to join professional associations and attend events regularly.
Networking and building relationships with other healthcare professionals can help you acquire new patients through referrals.
2. Participating In Community Events And Sponsorship
Participating in community events and sponsorship helps patients identify you for your positive work. It also enables you to connect with patients outside the official working hours.
You can partake in charity fundraising events, offer your time and services to the growth of your local community, or speak at community events to get acquainted with potential patients.
3. Running Print, Radio, Or Television Advertising Campaign
TV and Radio advertising are tremendous ways to showcase your healthcare practice to local healthcare consumers. Radio and TV commercials are traditional advertising strategies that have been used for decades. They have been very effective and are still effective even till date.
The good thing about radio and TV adverts is that people in your local community get to hear about your practice. This will help you quickly convert people in your community that needs your services. You can go to your local radio and TV stations to help you advertise your healthcare practice for a fee.
4. Creating Brochures And Other Print Materials For Your Healthcare Practice
Brochures and Pamphlets can help to educate patients about your healthcare practice, your services, and the ailments you treat. Ensure that you incorporate this into your healthcare marketing strategy.
You can decide to give these brochures and pamphlets to new patients, have them at the front desk of your hospital for patients to pick up, include them in care packages, or distribute them at health fairs and events. This marketing method may be a perfect alternative to promote your practice to patients who can’t access the internet.
5. Hosting Educational Seminars And Workshops For Patients And Community
Seminars and speaking at events are a way to showcase your expertise on various health-related topics. Hosting educational seminars and workshops for patients and your community is a way to disseminate important information to your patients and people in your local communication.
This way you can educate them on the need to have periodic medical checkups and other healthcare treatments.
6. Creating And Distributing Business Cards
Your business card is an important advertising tool that you can use to promote your healthcare practice offline. Creating and sharing business cards can yield good returns on investment because they are less expensive and easy to create and distribute.
7. Hosting Health Fairs And Screening
Hosting health fairs allows healthcare consumers to know more about your healthcare practices. You can offer free blood pressure screening or free flu shots to the first 20 patients who visit your clinic. This strategy can enable you to attract new and loyal patients.
8. Partnering With Local Business
When you partner with local businesses within your community, it gives you the opportunity to drastically increase the exposure of your healthcare practice.
For example, you can visit a provision store nearby and partner with the store owner. In your partnership deal, you can decide to be dropping your fliers and brochures in the provision store. When people visit the provision store, they will see your fliers and brochures.
9. Creating Referral Programs
Doctor’s referral is one of the useful organic healthcare marketing strategy for getting in new healthcare consumers. ​​Partner with other healthcare providers to create referral programs.
You can also create your own referral programs whereby you will give incentives to anyone who refers a patient to you. This will help you acquire new patients as well as maintain your existing patients.
10. Creating And Distributing Patients' Newsletter
Newsletters are a superb way to continually inform your patients about your new products and services.
Your newsletter may contain news articles from your blog, health tips, community events, and new offers. You can also attempt to include various types of content to determine what works best for your practice or conduct a survey to discover which types of content patients want to read.
11. Hosting An Open House For Ribbon Cutting Event
When your healthcare practice offers to sponsor local events or sports teams, you will probably be awarded some promotion, maybe by being recorded as among the sponsors or having your banner or logo featured at events.
This is also a great way to be projected into the minds of the local patients, regardless of whether they require your services now or might need them later in the future.
12. Collaborating With Other Healthcare Providers In Your Area
Collaborating with other local healthcare providers in your locality is an excellent way to introduce your practice to them and also encourage referrals. Hosting and inviting other healthcare physicians to dinner or other social events is a great way to get them in one location for collaborations.
Content Marketing Strategies
Content marketing strategies are marketing efforts you put in place to inform potential patients or existing patients about your medical practice. Your aim in content marketing is to inform and educate patients which will make them desire your services.
Below are the content strategies you should deploy for your healthcare service.
1. Blogging About Relevant Healthcare Topics
Creating exceptional content should be a part of your healthcare marketing strategy. You can develop quality content to educate patients about your practice, procedures, qualification, and services. Running a blog page is an effective way to share your content with healthcare consumers.
Creating quality content on relevant healthcare topics and posting them on your blog page is an effective way to get the attention of potential patients for your healthcare practice.
Consistently posting quality content on relevant healthcare topics shows your level of expertise, making healthcare consumers have great trust in you.
2. Producing Podcasts
Podcasts are another way to inform potential patients about your expertise on various topics. Podcasts will let you share information in an audio format, which may assist patients who lack the time to read through text content.
Podcasts could also be a useful way to release information on topics having to do with your patients. You could also invite patients as guests to talk about their experiences in your Podcast sessions.
3. Writing and Publishing eBooks and Whitepapers
eBooks and white papers are similar in several aspects. They can both be used to position your healthcare practice as a knowledgeable resource base. These publications are full of facts and understandings and help to demonstrate that your healthcare practice is a trusted brand.
4. Offering Free Consultation Or Screening
Offering free consultation and screening is a perfect way to get your practice across to potential patients. When you conduct free consultation and screening, you are creating awareness for your practice.
5. Creating And Sharing Educational Blog Articles
Educational blog articles are a way to inform your target audiences about various topics in healthcare. Creating and sharing educational blog articles also shows your level of expertise which makes healthcare consumers believe in your abilities.
Reputation Management Strategies
Online reputation management is one of the healthcare marketing strategy that you need to incorporate into your marketing efforts.
Successful reputation management begins with understanding all the internet platforms you can scrutinize and regulate to ensure your online identity stays positive.
Below are reputation management strategies that you can use to boost your healthcare practice.
1. Responding To Online Reviews And Feedback
Social media pages and review sites allow other users to leave comments and reviews. Do not ignore reviews, particularly from your patients. Reviews are open opportunities for you to engage and interact with your patients to know what they think about your practice.
It is also very important that you don’t ignore negative reviews. Address them timely and adequately to maintain a good reputation online. Responding to reviews is a way to increase the level of trust that potential patients have in you.
2. Encouraging Satisfied Patients To Leave A Review
Consumers want to know people who have had a positive experience before booking an appointment.
Online reviews keep gaining credibility for potential and existing patients. Generally, healthcare patients only leave reviews when they are motivated to do so. Unless you request reviews proactively, you will miss out on opportunities to feature positive consumer feedback that can help you acquire new patients.
3. Creating A Crisis Management Plan
A crisis management plan summarizes how your medical business will respond in crisis. In your healthcare crisis plan, you will specify what crises are likely to affect your practice and how they will impact your healthcare practice.
Scheduling responses for each crisis will prepare you and your staff to minimize any long-term damage your medical practice might face.
4. Monitoring Your Online Reputation
Online reputation problems can affect any business or individual, resulting in devastating impacts if not handled properly. Maybe poor online search results are impeding your professional and career prospects, or negative reviews are driving away potential patients, you should always monitor your online reputation to know what people are saying about your practice.
Online reputation management will position your healthcare practice to attract new patients and retain existing ones. Taking proactive steps can help minimize any negative impact on your reputation.
5. Actively Requesting Patients' Feedback
Actively requesting feedback from your patients can help boost your marketing efforts.
Feedbacks are very important in today’s healthcare industry. Many healthcare consumers go through feedback before deciding whether to contact a healthcare practice. Also, you can use feedback to improve your healthcare practice.
6. Creating A Patient Satisfaction Survey
Creating a patient satisfaction survey can also immensely benefit your marketing efforts. You should know how satisfied your patients are with your services. This will help you know the areas to make changes and how to improve your services.
7. Providing Exceptional Customer Service
In the healthcare industry, exceptional customer service is crucial. Healthcare is a customer service-oriented industry, so customer service should be taken seriously. There should be excellent customer service from you and your staff to your patients.
The quality of consumer service that you provide to your patients will determine what they will say about you on your review pages. The quality of service you provide to your patients will determine whether they will return.
Conclusion
As you create a healthcare marketing strategy to grow your healthcare practice, take note of the key metrics you want to achieve and the different marketing strategies you can use to get there. Combining the right marketing strategies will help you take your healthcare practice to a greater height. Contact us for more queries.