6 Benefits of Online Marketing for Healthcare

There are over 6,100 hospitals in the United States—and this number does not reflect the dozens of clinics each hospital represents.

Healthcare can be a big business if you know how to properly market your clinic and hospital. How can you make your healthcare facility stand out among the thousands?

Keep reading to learn the major benefits of online healthcare marketing.

What is Online Healthcare Marketing?

All healthcare providers, insurers, and suppliers—basically anyone in the healthcare industry—should use ethical and effective online marketing techniques. These techniques include pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), social networking, blogging and content production, and press releases.

Online marketing strategies can yield rich benefits for low cost per acquisition.

1. Evaluate Your Current Online Assets and Identify Your Potential Target Market

Creating a healthcare marketing scheme will force you to evaluate your current system. Audit every single online sales channel that you are in control of….including your website, social network pages, directory listings and online business profiles. You will end up understanding your business better.

After taking account of your online assets, make a list of your most typical or ideal customers.

Marketing gurus refer to this understanding of clients or patients as understanding your “patient persona.”

You cannot effectively market until you know the people you’re marketing to. You need to know your audience. Marketing to a babyboomer in the middle of retirement will look much different than marketing to a millennial starting a family.

Evaluate your current patients. Look at your patients’ age, income level, and jobs.

Then ask yourself why they’ve chosen your practice for their health needs. Look in particular at how they’re paying you.

The answers to these questions will help you create a marketing strategy for that audience. You will receive better returns for a slim marketing budget this way.

For example, you can select the right images for your website to reflect your patients. They should look at the website and see themselves.

2. Reconfigure or Build a New Website

Creating a healthcare marketing strategy forces you to redo your website. The quality of your website is key to the success of this strategy.

Your website should reflect you, your services, and your location.

Did you know that 80 percent of patients search for healthcare issues online? You need a quality website as your number one strategy for marketing.

Make sure your specialty is evident at a glance at your site. When a visitor comes to your site, they should have no doubt as to what your business is about.

3. Showcase Your Knowledge

Great content leads to great marketing.

A new website will give you the opportunity to showcase your knowledge about your subject matter and to educate your patients.

A healthcare market helps you create the content you need to take your brand from the fiftieth page of the search engine to the top.

Successful marketing will do that. So when someone begins to look for your specialty in your geographical area, they will find you.

4. Make Your Website Mobile Accessible

Moving into healthcare marketing will also make you available to more people. Marketing companies understand the value of making your website mobile-friendly.

Google understands this. They actually created algorithms that move mobile-first sites to the top of their searches. If you do not have a mobile-friendly version of your site, your website will not show up on the search.

So when you market smart, you reach even more patients.

When you have effective content, you will end the piece with a CTA or a call to action. This CTA will have a link that takes the reader right back to your contact page.

No matter what changes you make to your website, make sure it has great content that is mobile friendly.

5. You Can Show, Not Just Tell

Smart healthcare marketing means you can show your clients what you’re doing and not just tell them about your services. You can use video.

TV ads work so well because of their video. They engage the viewer.

Professional healthcare marketing will put your business out there. You will be able to engage people through Youtube and not just your website.

Youtube garners more web searches than the smaller search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com

Thus, your healthcare marketing strategy must make video marketing a priority.

Many people find doctors and healthcare professionals intimidating. A professional video can turn physicians into real people and reduce white-coat syndrome, which makes so many people afraid of doctors.

Make sure your video is of high quality. Do not just rely on a selfie with your phone or a Snapchat video. A media team will put together a great video that adequately represents your brand.

A combination of great content and great producing will help you make the best video you can to showcase your clinic.

6. Boost Your Online Reputation

Nothing matters more than your reputation in the business. The same idea applies to the healthcare business.

You can boost your online reputation in a few different ways. One is to have that website we talked about earlier.

Patient engagement matters as well. Great marketing understands that you should create points of contact for your patient. Have online chatting or a way that patients can contact you other than just by phone on your website.

To get a customer to walk through your doors, they need to trust you. So make sure the marketing techniques you use make your business trustworthy.

Have a professional marketing company put together your website. This will boost the trust a client has in you as you look trustworthy.

Marketing Matters

Excellent healthcare marketing can revolutionize your healthcare business. Ultimately, you will have the opportunity to treat more patients, and that’s what great healthcare is all about.

Learn more about the best marketing services available by visiting our website.

 

You May Also Like