The healthcare industry has evolved over the years, not only in terms of the innovations and improvements in patient care but in the way it connects with the patients as well. When it comes to reaching out to the audience, things have changed a lot as providers and organizations understand the need to have a strong online presence. People are keen to search about conditions and providers on the internet before they actually visit a doctor or hospital for diagnosis and treatment.
Since the internet is where the audience is, it becomes essential for providers to have a well-established digital marketing plan that makes them visible and ensures a trustworthy reputation. So if you run a clinic or healthcare facility, you need to have a proper strategy to reach your target audience online, engage them and build their trust in your expertise and services. Here are some key aspects of a result-oriented healthcare digital marketing plan.
A Feature-rich Website
To start with, a website is something that you must absolutely have to make yourself an online brand. This is your touchpoint with the potential patients and has a key influence on their decision to choose you as their provider. Since your healthcare website is supposed to replicate your brand, make sure that it makes a great first impression on the prospective patient who lands thereon. The idea is to have a perfect blend of look and feel.
Essentially, it should be appealing in appearance and have easy navigation to render a good user experience. Strong content elements like information related to your services, team, track record, infrastructure, and expertise can make an impact as well. Be sure to include patient testimonials as these add to your credibility. Blend these elements with good imagery for creating a story that is capable of impressing the visitor.
An Informative Blog
While an impressive website serves as the mainstay of your online presence, a blog is no less important. Healthcare is an industry that thrives on trust and the more information you serve to the potential patients, the more credibility you will gain. This is easily done by having an informative blog that serves rich, search-friendly content for potential patients.
The blog has a dual benefit for your online endeavors. Firstly, it positions you as a trustworthy provider that is concerned about patient care and wants them to be well-informed about conditions, symptoms, risks and treatments. Secondly, it improves your website’s ranking, traffic and engagement as patients are more likely to navigate to the website through a blog while searching for information online.
Robust SEO Strategy
The next significant aspect of a healthcare digital marketing plan is a strong SEO strategy that gets you positioned on the top of web searches. Even the best website and most informative blog will not get you traffic and engagement unless you figure out in searches. The idea is to optimize your website’s content with relevant keywords that the audience is most likely to search.
Besides keyword optimization, there are several other things that are covered in an SEO strategy. Parameters such as website speed and responsiveness are crucial because visitors are least likely to access a site that loads slowly or does not give a good mobile experience. Having an SEO team looking after your web presence, therefore, is not a choice but a necessity.
Educative Videos
In the article “Healthcare Marketing Trends”, Lauryn Preston explains that because the trends in the healthcare industry change with the times, the way healthcare providers advertise needs to change as well. Video marketing comes to the forefront in this context. The obvious reason is that potential patients are more interested in seeing things rather than reading them. A video of a doctor explaining his or her expertise or describing a condition and its treatment is more likely to get the attention and trust of the patient.
Similarly, you can leverage the video testimonials of real patients to increase patient engagement and build credibility for your clinic or organization. People are more likely to feel connected with real people rather than with textual stories. As a part of your healthcare digital marketing strategy, videos can be blended seamlessly within the website and propagated on popular video-sharing channels such as YouTube.
Engaging Social Media Strategy
Since social media is where the majority of the audience is, you cannot ignore this digital marketing channel at any cost. A provider or organization cannot expect to reach the audience unless it has a strong presence on social media. Building your presence on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter is essential to engage with the right kind of audience and extend your outreach.
Most players are creating doctor and patient communities as well. These communities enable patients to connect with healthcare professionals and other patients to share their views and ask their queries. An engaging social media strategy entails coming up with interesting and informational posts to keep in touch with the audience and stay in social conversations.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is another worthy aspect of a result-oriented healthcare digital marketing plan. Nothing works as communicating directly with your audience and this is exactly what personalized emails do. A solid database of targeted audience lies at the core of a successful email marketing strategy. You need to know your audience and build resourceful emails to be in connection with them regularly.
Try sending a monthly newsletter to keep them informed about the latest research studies and treatment options. You can also share the current industry developments, recent blogs, and videos to keep their attention. If you run an offer, do shoot out emails to get patients coming to avail it. Email marketing involves good planning and innovative ideas to stay connected with your audience.
A thoughtful blend of all these strategies lies at the center of a successful digital marketing plan for a healthcare player. Since establishing a robust online presence no longer remains a choice for this industry, you must have a dedicated digital marketing team to ensure that all these aspects are covered. This will definitely be a worthwhile investment because it has the potential to grow your audience and build the credibility of your brand online.
Community manager at Visual Contenting. Jacqueline loves to talk about social media trends, new technology and how they help businesses accelerate their marketing efforts.
