Track 35: Healthcare Marketing
Introduction
Over the past twenty years, the internet has significantly changed how patients and doctors interact. The internet has developed into a comprehensive source for knowledge about health and wellbeing, especially in recent years.
The ease with which a doctor can be contacted, the speed with which an appointment can be scheduled, reviews of healthcare providers on Google, Facebook, or rating platforms, and the use of social media (such as using hashtags on Twitter to spread breast cancer awareness and encourage mammogram registrations) all influence patient perception today and influence purchasing decisions.
Medical professionals and organisations must have a budgeted healthcare marketing plan. Look at how the Mayo Clinic, a renowned medical facility, became a household name throughout the world with content marketing, or how a small dental practise in California uses Instagram to find over three-quarters of its patients, to see how marketing strategies can help them reach prospective patients, retain current patients, win back former patients, and stay top-of-mind in their community!
Continue reading to see how healthcare companies can boost customer views of their services, improve service delivery on a budget, and set themselves apart from rival organisations.
How does healthcare marketing work?
The process of developing, disseminating, and providing healthcare information is known as healthcare marketing. It draws on a range of disciplines, including patient care, communications, marketing, and healthcare analytics. It is a multidisciplinary approach that makes use of both conventional marketing ideas and evidence-based preventative and health promotion strategies.
Modern healthcare cannot function without marketing, and practitioners and institutions share many of the same goals with other businesses:
Increasing brand recognition by showcasing thinking leadership
producing leads via coordinated marketing techniques
strengthening the patient acquisition process
providing local searches with the appropriate information at the appropriate time
interacting with past and present patients to generate social proof
What role does healthcare marketing play in achieving these goals? It entails spreading health messages that enlighten, educate, and inspire people as well as showing how healthcare is related to people’s needs and how technology may be used to provide seamless healthcare.
What healthcare marketing can do for you
To make the most of any business’s potential, marketing is essential. In general, healthcare providers underuse their marketing platforms, which enables them to realise even higher returns.
1. Establishing credibility and demonstrating knowledge
Building a library of specialist information is easy with content marketing. Blogging, making videos, posting on social media, using forums, and other forms of content sharing are all part of content marketing. Although it doesn’t promote the brand like advertising, it is used to generate interest in the company’s goods and services. Information that is accurate and pertinent can position your company as a leader in the field and foster patient relationships. If done properly, content marketing can even boost appointment setting and sales.
2. Increasing brand recognition
Similar to how people choose Amazon for online shopping, YouTube for content consumption, or a specific brand of mobile phone, healthcare professionals rely on brand knowledge to influence positive decision-making. Coordinated brand messaging enables suppliers to stand out from the competitors, communicate their unique selling proposition, and build a presence online. Building brand recognition requires the use of resources like websites and social media channels. Because of this, the enormous healthcare organisation AdventHealth (previously Adventist Health System) finished a thorough rebranding across almost 50 hospital sites in 2019!
3. Maintaining good name
Reputation management in print and internet media is crucial. Poor news coverage and unfavourable evaluations can damage a facility’s reputation, influencing how potential patients and the medical community see it. This may directly result in fewer clients and referrals. A unfavourable impression may even lead patients to anticipate a terrible experience.
4. Online medical services
The digital healthcare revolution is quickly transforming how patients interact with doctors, as well as how they are evaluated, tracked, and treated. Even older populations are more likely to use technology that enhances their quality of life and makes healthcare more accessible. Telemedicine and health applications are significant components of healthcare marketing that advance the provision of healthcare and increase market presence.
Strategies for marketing healthcare
Four out of five people, according to some estimates, look for healthcare professionals and advice online. And every day, Google responds to more than one billion health-related queries, or 7% of all daily search queries. Questions concerning symptoms, diseases, treatments, insurance, the closest hospital, and other topics are all possible. Due to the abundance of publicly accessible health information online, healthcare practitioners must not only compete with other local doctors but also with websites that offer alternative medicine and healthcare information.
Social media has also developed into a fantastic medium for healthcare marketing. By promoting healthy living, practitioners can acquire a base of supporters, influence, and covertly promote their services. Learn how to increase your web reach and lead generation.
1. Reliable medical branding
Healthcare providers find it difficult to stand out to online audiences. A unique identity can be developed and a wider audience can be projected with consistent branding. If people can connect a provider’s distinctive proposition to a brand, they are much more likely to remember it.
2. Improving the experience for patients
Digital platforms like websites can be intricate, challenging to use platforms that result in a bad patient experience. Form and function are balanced in a sophisticated user experience: a website with a contemporary design that prioritises crucial information.
3. A mobile-friendly website
Did you know that Google will index a website’s mobile version before its desktop version? To guarantee the best healthcare experience regardless of the device used to access it, a responsive website and healthcare platform are an imperative must. A mobile-friendly website is more likely to be listed higher on search engines, which increases the possibility of receiving more website views in addition to providing a much better user experience.
4. Search engine marketing
Healthcare providers must completely optimise their websites for indexing by search engine crawlers since search engines are the main source of online traffic today. The website is quietly and methodically prepared through search engine optimization (SEO) so that it can rank above rival material for pertinent search queries and local searches.
5. Making the most of online advertising for healthcare marketing
One of the most affordable and measurable forms of advertising is pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. PPC allows providers to contact audiences with high intent and provide them pertinent offerings. Search engine marketing (SEM), a branch of this, assists suppliers in rising to the top of search results. PPC assists in increasing brand awareness in addition to patient acquisition because users are presented advertising.
Utilizing social media
Using social media, healthcare professionals and organisations may communicate with patients, advertise their goods and services, share information, and much more. A coordinated organic (i.e., “non-paid”) social media strategy will promote community growth, user engagement, and brand building. The best results come from allocating a portion of your marketing budget to paid social media, where you can “boost” posts and run advertisements.
7. Compiling feedback and references
One of the primary factors influencing purchasing decisions is social evidence, which can take the shape of reviews, testimonials, videos, and ratings. A proactive method for developing reviews enables service providers to solicit patient input, provide material for the website, and engage customers on social media. Asking patients to post reviews as they leave the facility or following up with email marketing are two simple ways to adopt a “automatic review” approach for healthcare facilities.
Monitoring your healthcare marketing approach
Modern marketing strategies encourage a data-driven strategy and open performance indicators. Digital healthcare marketing is a fantastic source of information about consumer behaviour, the buyer’s journey, and how individuals find the provider.
List of Home Care Nursing Services Association
- Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses
- Academy of Neonatal Nursing
- ACNP- American College of Nurse Practitioners
- Advanced Practice Nurses of the Ozarks
- Advanced Practice Nurses of the Permian Basin
- Advanced Practitioners for the River Region
- Air & Surface Transport Nurses Association
- Alliance for Psychosocial Nursing
- Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments
- Alzheimer’s Association
List of Home Care Nursing Services Healthcare
- American Assembly for Men in Nursing
- American Assisted Living Nurses Association
- American Association for Respiratory Care (AARC)
- American Association for the History of Nursing
- American Association of Colleges of Nursing
- American Association of Critical Care Nurses
- American Association of Diabetes Educators
- American Association of Heart Failure Nurses
- American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants
- American Association of Managed Care Nurses
List of the 10 best Home Care Nursing Services University
- Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh
- Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, Karnataka
- Christian Medical College, Vellore
- Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai
- JKK Muniraja Institute of Health Sciences
- Lingayas Institute of Health Sciences
- Metro College of Health Sciences and Research
- Jr Kissan College of Pharmacy and Health Science
- Calcutta Institute of Pharmaceutical Technology and Allied Health Sciences
- Acharya Institute of Health Science and Nursing
List of Home Care Nursing Services Society
- United Nurses Association
- Indian Nurses Association.
- All India Nurses Association
- Kerala Govt Nurses Association
- Kerala Nurses Union
- The American Association of Healthcare Administrative Management
- American Health Information Management Association
- The Healthcare Financial Management Association
- National Association of Health Services Executives
- The National Association of Healthcare Access Management
Submit Abstract
Sub-tracks of Healthcare Services
- Optimize your practice website for patient experience
- Invest in social media marketing for doctors
- Develop a local search engine optimization strategy
- Correct your provider profile listings
- Have an active content marketing strategy
- Email is still a viable medical marketing strategy
- Generate new patient reviews
- Start creating videos with your providers
- Create procedure based content that related to patients
- Generate leads with Google Ads and Social Ads
- Generate new patient referrals through physician outreach
- Depend on marketing analytics to make decisions