Healthcare Marketing Strategy: 12 Actionable Tips in 2021 (2023)

In 2021, we also find ourselves in a world that is still grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the healthcare industry will be dealing with the consequences for some time to come. When it comes to healthcare marketing, it will become increasingly important to reassure patients that they will be safe in your facility. Making sure patients are up-to-date with vaccinations and other preventative measures will be another opportunity to communicate with patients that you can take advantage of. These are points that will be important to include in all of your medical practice's marketing efforts. Marketing strategies for healthcare organizations that include measures being taken to protect patients will help reassure patients and make them feel confident in choosing their facility.

In this article, ComboApp will go through the basics of creating a strong medical marketing plan. Online medical marketing is one of the best ways for doctors and medical institutions to convey important information to their patients. That's why it's so important to have a healthcare marketing consultant navigating the complicated landscape of regulations and rules that medical staff must adhere to when seeking new patients (while retaining existing patients).

Standards that the health marketing strategy must meet

Healthcare providers must comply with various federal healthcare marketing laws and regulations that affect healthcare marketing strategy. The most important are:

• HIPAA– A regulation that enforces industry-wide standards for health information exchange and electronic billing services. The purpose of HIPAA is to protect patient privacy.
• GDPR– This is a law that started in the EU and crossed the ocean to the United States. The law states7 principlesfor the lawful processing of personal data. Regulates the collection, organization, structuring, alteration, consultation, use, communication, combination, restriction, deletion and storage of personal data. Protects how doctors, hospitals and marketers can use patient information.
• A Lei CAN-SPAM– This law regulates the context of the information that health professionals and doctors can deliver in emails. It also provides the patient with the right to opt out of receiving emails from their doctor or other medical institutions.

These regulations only increase the need for a comprehensive healthcare marketing strategy. To enjoy a steady supply of patients, providers must master the unique nature of digital healthcare marketing and stay on top of the latest healthcare marketing trends.

Why is health marketing important?

A Prophet study explored the current state of the patient experience and revealed this alarming statistic: 81% of consumers are dissatisfied with their healthcare experience. Additionally, 43% of millennials are likely to switch primary care providers in the next few years, according toSolution Scoping Investigation.

2021 trend – Reputation managementIn the past, patients generally found doctors through personal recommendations. In the digital age, social media has become an integral part of how patients find healthcare professionals. Online reviews posted on these networks by other patients play an especially important role in your selection process. Even a few negative reviews can convince a patient to seek help elsewhere, which is why reputation management is a growing priority for all professionals in the healthcare industry.

Clearly, patient expectations have evolved considerably over the past decade. Now they have more options than ever to get the care they want for themselves and their families. For this reason, healthcare professionals must view healthcare marketing not just as a great investment, but as an absolute necessity.

~89%of consumers immediately turn to online research when looking to solve their health problems. In healthcare marketing, it is important to approach a strategy tailored to each market segment, each individual specialty, and each specific practice.

according to ain-depth study by Dr. Paul Stuart-Kregor, narrow approaches to segmentation, an overemphasis on "one size fits all" campaigns, and a lack of real customer insight are among the factors that are causing healthcare marketing strategies to fail. The industry needs to shift towards creating organic and sustainable campaigns that apply basic marketing principles and provide unique differentiators for the healthcare customer base. Otherwise, the legitimacy of health marketing is called into question.

There are a number of basic healthcare marketing strategies that a medical marketing agency can implement to effectively and personally market and engage their client bases. In this article, we will discuss 12 of the most effective health success strategies to use in 2021.

2021 trend: health and telemedicine applicationsOcost of developing a mobile apphas declined tremendously in recent years, and more and more medical providers are adding them to their marketing strategies as another way to communicate important data points about a patient's health with a variety of stakeholders in the patient's well-being. (including the patient!)

Additionally, patients welcome the option to access healthcare from the comfort of their homes, and healthcare professionals should not miss the opportunity to establish themselves as dominant players in the telehealth market.

12 tips for health marketing strategy

Health marketing strategy is an interdisciplinary practice. There are specific techniques that should be used in healthcare marketing best practices. But what should a digital marketing strategy for healthcare look like and what should it include? Let's take a look at 12 health marketing strategy tips that all providers should at least seriously consider when brainstorming their health marketing plans.

Before we get into the details, here is a summary of what we will cover in this section:

1. Stand out and be consistent

TO ACA (Affordable Care Act, 2014) has increased the demand for qualified physicians. And, with the advent of telehealth, increasedaccess for patients in remote or underserved communitieswho previously did not have access to good care.

“The use of telemedicine has been shown to enable better long-term care management and patient satisfaction; it also offers a new way to find health information and communicate with professionals (for example, through email and interactive chats or video conferencing), increasing patient convenience and reducing the amount of travel required for the doctor and patient. patient". (AJMC, 2017)

This has been great for the healthcare industry. However, it has created challenges in creating effective healthcare marketing plans.

From the point of view of patients, most healthcare professionals look more or less the same, advertise the same services, and wear the same white coats. Taking the time to discover the specific needs and pain points of your patients will produce solid results. Being able to address these issues in a personalized way will set you far above the competition.

What makes your practice different from the competition? It's important to find out what sets your practice apart from others and reflect that uniqueness in your healthcare marketing strategy. There can be many angles that will make you stand out from the competition. Take advantage of these aspects in your health marketing plan. Some ideas to consider to help you present yourself at your most attractive include:

• The way you treat your patients. Do you care for your patients in a comprehensive 360? This personalized approach will appeal to patients who feel that their previous providers have not listened or paid attention to all of their body issues.
• Your friendly staff. One of the most painful points for many patients is that they feel dragged into a system in which they are treated in the cold and pay little attention to how they sleep. If you have an extremely empathetic, friendly and dedicated team, that's a huge differentiating factor from many other practices. This would be a key aspect to emphasize in your health marketing efforts.
• a modern facility. This essentially resonates with patients who have not had access to frontline facilities. Compared to what they are used to, having a clean, modern and attractive facility will make a favorable impression on many new patients. Gone are the days of the old doctor's office, in the age of technology people want to see bright, airy, streamlined facilities with the most modern treatments available.
• Online Event Hosting. This is a new way to differentiate yourself from the competition. Especially in a time of major health crisis, being able to speak 1:many and answer questions in real time will really have an impact on the visibility of your organization or practice. When people are concerned about their health, they want to make sure their healthcare professional is thinking of them, even when they can't see them in person.

Constantly highlighting what makes you unique will ensure that patients remember you. This is an area where health marketing services can help you the most. They can help you narrow down your brand proposition into catchphrases and memorable messages. Healthcare marketing services can also help you create a consistent design ethic that you can implement across all of your communication channels. Not only that, but many companies can help you develop sophisticated online and mobile products to make you stand out even more to your patients.

Just make sure your efforts are consistent. Confused and obscure marketing can spell the downfall of any business. Even in health. Constantly reassessing your existing efforts and improving them, while implementing new ideas is great. Just make sure you follow your brand guidelines.

2. Take advantage of paid search ads

In 2021, the marketing strategies of healthcare organizations must include programmatic advertising. Search engines have become the first stop for8 out of 10 peoplelook up health information. This represents a great opportunity for health professionals. Taking advantage of paid search ads and including them as part of your health marketing strategy will be critical to your overall success.PPC (pay per click)Ads can be precisely targeted to reach the specific people best suited to your practice.

Patients search for doctors or offices that are within 5 to 7 miles of their home. PPC ads can be set to be micro granular in their targeting and will only show to local traffic. Generating targeted keywords and keyword phrases that grab the attention of local traffic will improve your reach. Since you only pay for clicks, not impressions, your ROI will be much higher compared to regular display advertising.

The importance of market analysis in healthcare cannot be underestimated. Make sure your team reviews your guidance on an ongoing basis. There is nothing wrong with modifying your campaign to optimize results. All the best agencies will recommend that you do this with them. If not, raise an eyebrow. You should A/B test everything to determine which collaterals or calls-to-action are converting at the best price. You should also do this to determine if your keywords are correctly targeting who you intend them to be.

3. Focus on how you help

When companies engage in marketingThey usually focus on what they do because that's where their expertise lies. They describe their technologies, past results, key partnerships, and future goals. The only problem is that they often forget to mention the most important information: how they help their patients.

Medical and hospital marketing strategies are very different from the marketing practices of other consumer-focused companies. These organizations are in a unique position where they can really help people. Sometimes in life or death circumstances. In 2021, research shows that one of the biggest marketing trends will be personalization. Marketing, in general, gives your brand a megaphone. Using that amplified voice to express how you can help the community or make sure everything will be okay is a strong way to align your practice or organization as someone who is aware of what is happening. And that you are there to help. Speaking about the needs of your community or addressing a crisis through the voice of your practice/organization, highlighting your core values, will increase patient brand loyalty.

2021 trend: wearable technologyWearable technology has enormous potential beyond the fitness market, and healthcare is one of the industries where it can really make a difference, potentially saving human lives. By adopting this technology and developing their own wearable products, healthcare professionals can be with their patients at all times and provide proactive medical support when an abnormality occurs.

When advertising your practice/organization, you should always start with a help-focused headline. This is a health strategy that seems natural for health professionals to adopt.

Using top tips as a sales pitch is a personal and strategic way to encourage users to learn more about your practice. Specific headlines like “Top 10 Tips for Instant Headache Relief” provide much more ROI than a general headache headline. Suggest a solution to a problem, rather than a shaky scientific medical article. Science is great, but not everyone is ready to understand the technical aspects of its practice. The difference may not seem important to doctors, but it has a profound impact on patients who are looking for a solution to their problem.

To go a step further in creating strategies for healthcare organizations, ComboApp recommends making all the information you present online accessible to the average citizen. Whether you're sending emails, creating blog posts on specific topics, or promoting your practice on social media, being able to connect and resonate with your audience is a must.

4. Ask for reviews

Consider the following 3 facts:

• 72%of patients in 2019 used online assessments as the first step in finding a new doctor
• 88%Trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
• 48%would go out of their insurance network for a doctor with great reviews

The conclusion is clear. In the age where UGC (User Generated Content) is a key personalized way to get referrals, you need to ask patients for reviews. Then you need to display them prominently on your website and on social media.

When you receive a review, both negative and positive, respond.within 12 hours, max. Be courteous, even if the reviewer is being unreasonable. Listening and addressing their pain points will give you a chance to encourage them to give you a second chance. You will also show other patients or prospective patients information about how you work with your patients. You can even hire a health marketing consultant to help you create answers.

5. Partner with a health marketing agency

Balancing your online medical marketing with patient care and professional growth isn't easy. To optimize your ROI across the board, strongly consider partnering with a healthcare marketing agency that can help you connect with patients across all digital platforms. Marketing consulting in the health area is a very specialized area of ​​communication. There are several areas that you may not have thought to address and that your health marketing agency can advise you on. As:

• Building an app to give your patients an easy way to schedule appointments and get answers to basic questions

• Creating long-form video tutorials for your social media that address common issues seen in your practice
• Connect with potential patients on more informal platforms and engage with patients using pop culture (like Dancing Doc on TikTok, we love Dr. Adkins!)

2021 trend: digital firstIt probably comes as no surprise that digital marketing channels continue to dominate healthcare marketing in 2021. Potential patients read reviews online, visit social media profiles, and consume many different forms of content.

6. Create a mobile-optimized website

About60%of people access the internet from their mobile devices. Google and other search engines are favoring mobile-optimized websites.

2021 trend: specific health websitesIt doesn't take a lot of Google searching to realize that the most reliable medical information is found on some big sites like WebMD. Knowing this, many patients bypass Google and go directly to these specific healthcare websites, virtually all of which have implemented some form of search functionality. To prevent these visitors from leaving, healthcare-specific websites need to make good use of hyperlinks and intelligently suggest additional content based on the information they collect about their visitors.

What does it mean to be “optimized for mobile devices”?

Mobile-optimized websites automatically adjust to the screen size, reduce load time, and improve website speed.

A study by Aberdeen research group says that a 1 second delay in your website speed can result in a7%reduced conversions. It may not sound like much, but it's a huge chunk of potential traffic that you're missing out on.

Are there other reasons why mobile-optimized websites are important?

Google also announced that it ismobile first indexing. This means that they are using the mobile version of your site toindexmiclassificationYour place.

• Indexing means that Google bots are crawling your site looking forkeywordsthat belong to popular search terms.
• Ranking affects where and how your site appears in Google search results. The goal of any business is to rank first in ads or last on the first page of Google.

This makes it extremely important that youcreate a mobile website.

ComboApp recommends tools likeGoogle Page Speed ​​Informationto monitor and improve the speed of your health website on all types of devices. Medical assistancedesign make roomoptimized for desktop and mobile may require a higher initial investment, but it's well worth it.

2021 trend: search with zero clicksIn 2019, marketing analytics firm Jumpshot revealed that 48.96% of all Google searches in the US ended without a click. Marketers understand the implications of this important finding: People pay attention to information in Google's featured snippets and knowledge graph, and seem to settle for answers no longer than a few sentences.

7. Optimize for search engines

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is still an essential part of healthcare marketing services. This means marketing medical services by placing keywords in your content and on your website. Your health marketing agency needs to spend time researching the best target keywords to optimize your content and website.

Especially important are long-tail keywords, made up of three and four key phrases, that are very specific to your business. Instead of using the term “optometry practice”, it is a much better idea to target long-tail keywords like “central London optometry practice” or “wheelchair accessible optometry practice in Chicago”.

While long-term keywords get much less traffic than short-term keywords, they are also much easier to rank for.

2021 Trend: Location-Based SEOSmartphones and wearables have become ultra-preciseLocation Based SEOone of the most effective tactics healthcare marketers can use to reach patients at the right time and in the right place.

In addition to keywords, SEO also involves optimizing images, sitemaps, backlinks, meta tags, crawl errors, and much more. Have your marketing team create a highly optimized landing page for your practice. There is absolutely no reason not to use an optimized landing page in healthcare marketing.

8. Don't forget to optimize for users too

When optimizing all of the above aspects of your website, it's important to make sure you don't miss out on the most important optimization of all: user experience. You don't want to go through all the effort of getting users to your site only to have them get frustrated with the experience and leave. Making sure your site is easy to navigate with relevant information that is easy to find and access will ensure that your visitors have a positive experience.

Making your health marketing strategies pay off after potential patients visit your website is just as important as the marketing itself. Some basic tips are to make sure your website simply says who you are and without the patient having to search for you. From there, make sure the navigation is simple and not overly layered, making it easy for a potential patient to find the information she's looking for with little effort. Having an easy-to-find "contact us" link is vital because it makes it easy for them to figure out how to bring their query to your office or schedule an appointment.

Adigital health marketing agencyhow ComboApp will have experience in designing websites that users love and can help you maximize patient visit conversions.

9. Social Networks and Health Marketing

Consider these facts:

• Two-thirdsof all internet users are active on social media daily for at least 10-12 minutes
• 41%of consumers say content found on social media is likely to affect their choice of hospital or treatment center

Many healthcare professionals refuse to include social media in their practice marketing because they don't think it's a good fit for them. In reality, social media marketing should be an integral part of all health marketing strategies.

2021 trend – Social networksFor many Internet users, especially those in emerging markets, social media is synonymous with the Internet itself. They visit different social media platforms to socialize with friends, read current news, and get information and advice from professionals they trust. When used for healthcare marketing, social media can generate excellent ROI, making it an essential part of any healthcare marketing strategy.

How social works in health marketing:

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube make it easy to engage large numbers of users with organic content and paid advertising.

Participating in healthcare social media marketing gives you the opportunity to personally interact with potential patients and build lasting relationships with them. It allows you to be authentic and personal while reaching a new audience.

Creatingclingyoviral contenton social media will also provide organic ad traffic whose power cannot be underestimated.

To takethe washington postFor example. By using the new video app, TikTok, they have leveraged humor based contentto reach millions of potential subscribers, from Gen X to Gen Z. (That's 229 million potential subscribers!)

The same strategies can work in health social media marketing (Dancing Doc is a prime example). Make them laugh and they will remember you and your clinic/organization.

Social is one of the most overlooked medical marketing strategies by professionals. Don't fall into that trap.

Trend 2021 – Video marketing2020 was expected to be the year 5G mobile connectivity hits the mainstream, and this is very likely to lead to an explosion in video consumption among mobile users. Health professionals can capitalize on this trend with video marketing on sites like YouTube and Instagram.

10. Do not neglect content marketing

Content marketing is extremely relevant in 2021. This type of marketing covers collateral materials such as videos, blogs, social media posts. Sharing this material online will promote a brand, attracting a clearly defined audience and improving retention with the existing audience.

Health content marketing can help medical providers build authority in their field, which is why it is such an important part of health PR and medical marketing in general. It is a key component of how social marketing in healthcare works.

Here are some examples of health content marketing:

• Health Tips
• Blog posts on relevant conditions
• “Meet the Doctor” Interviews
• podcasts
• AMA (Ask Me Anything) Virtual Sessions
• patient testimonials

The opportunities are practically endless.

11. Public relations publish your name

One thing that is universal, whether you are in b2b healthcare marketing or medical clinic marketing, is the need for a great PR strategy. A public relations team can help you get your name out there and tell people how you or your product is helping the community.

• A press release that tells the public about the good you do as a doctor can help improve your reputation.
• Being interviewed by the local press about the latest health issues facing your community creates a sense of familiarity and trust.
• An article covering your product and its benefits may spark the interest of other healthcare professionals.

All of these are just a few of the ways you can benefit from making public relations a part of your healthcare advertising strategy.

12. Track Your Health Marketing Strategy

It is essential that you keep track of your health marketing strategy. To get the best ROI from your strategy, track its performance with your preferred analytics software solution and adjust when data suggests it will perform better in a different way. tools likeAnalytical Googlethey are easy to implement and use. Measure using hard metrics. Revenue, CPL (cost per lead), traffic to your website, and landing page conversion rates are the best measure of whether or not you're on track with your campaign. Relying on data points instead of gut feeling will give you the best results. But if you are a doctor or health professional, you already know that.

Conclusion

The healthcare market is becoming increasingly competitive and it's the job of marketers to stay on top of the latest trends in healthcare marketing so they know how to convert leads into patients.

Digital healthcare marketing continues to evolve as technology continues to advance and create new marketing opportunities. It is important to combine the techniques discussed above in a way that makes them stand out from the crowd. In addition to technical methods (such as on-site SEO, creating a mobile-optimized website or app), healthcare professionals need to be aware of marketing strategies based on reputation and authenticity. Social marketing and word of mouth through UGC are just as important as technology solutions such as wearable technology and location-based SEO. Taking a 360 approach to putting together a digital health marketing plan will ultimately provide the best results.

Ready to start on your360 full cycle marketingplan for your practice or organization? reachcontacto@comboapp.comAnd let's start thinking about how we can help you!