Five Ways to Transform your Healthcare Marketing Strategy and Stay Ahead of the Rising Trends of 2023
And what your healthcare marketing services agency should be doing for you
Marketing has gone through a massive change over the years. Its importance is highlighted by the change in the very nature of marketing itself – a conversation. Healthcare marketing has become even more important based on how critical the role of these conversations now play in healthcare itself.
Patients are no more at the mercy of their doctors. Patients come in armed with information – some even dangerously misinformed – to assess their options with doctors. So, healthcare marketing needs to consider this change in doctor-patient relationship to draw out the most suitable marketing strategy.
If you are working with healthcare marketing services, these tips can help you steer the direction that you would like them to take for your healthcare marketing.
1. Who are you marketing to?
To really know your audience, you will require to dig deep into information that goes beyond the demographics of the people that access your services. While you want to know the age, gender and location of your target audience, try to break them down to even more buckets that can help categorise each audience.
For example, one bucket may consist of mothers who bring both their aging parents as well as young children for healthcare services. Another bucket may be young professionals who want to access quick healthcare services since they work closeby. Further questions may involve some of the media or communication tools that they use to access information.
2. Answer their questions – before you ‘sell’
Most people that are searching for healthcare related content, want information about specific healthcare issues. This means that people are seeking educational information and would like to be completely informed before reaching out to a healthcare professional. This means that your healthcare marketing services provider needs to be able to help create content that is accurate, meaningful and simple for your audience.
It also helps create an opportunity to make use of good keywords for SEO content. Ranking high on search engines has no straightforward formula but catering to content that people are looking for with useful and up-to-date information definitely helps.
Keep in mind the journey your audience takes to find information so that you can easily navigate them through all the sets of information they will be looking for. For example, from an article on the blog to understanding related services available to understanding how to make an appointment and confirming that appointment. Seamless navigation helps keep your audience engaged through each step.
3. Keep the dialogue going, creatively
Social media is a great way to keep the conversation going and engage with your key audiences. Use of videos that can show facilities and processes, or ‘how-to’s’ stand out for your audience who then know what to expect from your facilities. Genuine patient testimonials captured in video are also useful to showcase the impact your organisation is making on the lives of people.
Also having your patients provide online reviews is very important since most audiences rely on reviews to make their decision between competing services. This also helps SEO ranking. Being prompt in answering questions posted on Google or social media is essential in letting your audience feel important and valued.
4. Content, in all its forms, is King
Going beyond the absolute basics of content marketing is not easy. However, it is key to have a 360° content marketing strategy that can establish your authority on healthcare subjects as well as come across as honest and caring. This could be both a digital marketing strategy as well as a multichannel marketing strategy covering traditional media like the radio and print media.
Use multiple platforms, meaningfully. This may need the help of healthcare marketing services to lift off, but creating media and communication platforms like podcasts and webinars as well as community engagements ensures you are targetting different audiences and creating added value to them. This can all be quite complicated without a content release schedule that can very quickly bring together a definitive plan to your diverse content.
5. Website user experience is key
Last but not least, your website user-experience is key to bringing all your efforts for healthcare marketing together. Without specialised expertise in healthcare marketing services, your website can be your downfall. How the website is organised, the branding and language that is used, the ease of finding information, the level of engagement it allows, etc.
Healthcare marketing services in India have evolved over the past few years and there are several agencies that now provide specialised services. If you are looking for healthcare marketing services in India, choose an agency that is able to provide 360° healthcare marketing services and is well versed in the healthcare industry and related services outside of being simply a marketing agency.