There are several ways to win new patients. See how to do it in practice using Digital Marketing strategies! Digital Marketing for Health is based on the strategies that clinics, hospitals, insurance companies, pharmacies, suppliers and other companies in this sector use to attract new patients and customers.
The goal is to raise awareness of each brand and what they can offer. Despite being a consolidated and successful strategy in the market, some health institutions have a specific resistance to adopting this type of strategy. But why does this happen?
Culturally, other marketing actions draw more attention from those responsible for marketing these companies than the digital environment. Let’s go to the examples:
- Traditional media (TV, radio, among others);
- Events and congresses;
- Newspapers, billboards, etc.
But this reality has changed in recent years. We will explain how clinics and companies in the health area that have used Digital Marketing in their strategies have managed to stand out, increasing their billing while significantly improving patients’ routines!
How To Do Digital Marketing For Healthcare In Practice In 5 Steps?
When we talk about institutions like hospitals and clinics, we need to keep in mind the following fact: a person does not go to a website of this type of institution in search of entertainment.
It would help if you built consistent, reliable, and relevant content for your target audience. But then the question remains: how do we define what these people want to read and learn? Simple: you can compile data from the service area and schedule an appointment for exams.
With this data in hand, which can be collected via management tools or even spreadsheets, it is possible to see the hospital’s and clinic’s target audience, facilitating the work of marketing when producing the content.
This is just the beginning of the practical step-by-step you need to follow to build a good marketing strategy for the health area. To know all the details, follow the next ones below!
Step 1: Learn Everything About Your Audience
To keep the flow of patients or customers constantly in your business, you need a comprehensive Digital Marketing strategy focused on serving the right audience.
In addition to knowing your business like the back of your hand, you also need to understand better which patients to target. In Marketing Strategy, this is called developing a “patient persona” with the data we talked about earlier. This should be one of the focal points of your efforts.
A persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer profile. It is based on accurate data about behavior, demographics, personal histories, motivations, goals, challenges and concerns.
To find your persona profiles, ask yourself questions like:
- Who are my patients?
- How old are they on average?
- What’s your income?
- What jobs do they have?
- What makes them choose my company to solve their health-related problems?
- How are they paying for services or products?
This audience knowledge will empower the team to create a Digital Marketing strategy that works and gets the most return.
Step 2: Build An Intuitive Website/Blog
Marketing professionals should follow this advice in any industry. After all, it’s no use having a good service if your target audience can’t reach you.
It is necessary to have a lean website that passes the information clearly and concisely. We know that sometimes we don’t find this on the pages of companies in this sector. What’s the point of having an online scheduling tool if its link is lost amid various offers and newsletters?
The success of your Health Marketing strategy depends a lot on the quality of your website. Nothing will get new patients through your door faster than a beautiful website that clearly states who you are, what you can do for your patients and where they can find you.
It’s no use for your institution to be a reference in some exam or consultation if the user of your service doesn’t know about it! Therefore, it is necessary to have a website and blog that carry out this communication with quality.
About the blog, let’s check its role in the next step.
Step 3: Do Content Marketing
Remember when we said above that it is necessary to structure a website and blog with good quality? Well, it’s no use having that without also producing quality content.
Content Marketing and educational content is the most innovative way to attract new patients and customers to your healthcare business today. When we talk about Digital Marketing, the focus is on generating value for the end-user – in this case, the patient. And we also know that people always prefer to buy from experts.
Therefore, if your institution produces quality content to position itself as a specialist within a segment, there is an excellent chance that it will be able to capture more patients who are interested in that service.
Just think about the famous doctor’s analogy: whenever you get sick, and the doctor prescribes a medicine, the patient will hardly buy it since a specialist recommended it.
Remember: you have an audience that can buy your products or services. And that audience goes online to educate themselves before interacting and deciding. And that’s where any healthcare marketer can come in, creating great content to introduce your brand to the right audience at the right time.
Step 4: Increase The Number Of Patient Acquisition Channels
The world has evolved a lot in recent years. Today it is possible to carry out almost any activity from a smartphone and on the internet. So don’t limit your content creation efforts to just your website.
Content strategy isn’t just writing and praying that your content appears on the first page of search results. Also, consider posting original content on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Your business has many platforms to choose from and should make the most available tools. Therefore, working only with traditional means of marketing and customer service can negatively impact the user experience.
You can count on these channels to promote your content and other Marketing actions and use them as an online scheduling solution. This is vital for an institution’s marketing strategy in the healthcare area, and even WhatsApp can work as a solution! In addition to having a lower acquisition cost per patient, his experience is facilitated. We will list below the differences between an analogue appointment via phone, and the online one, to give you an idea:
- With online scheduling, there is no chance of line congestion, and an exam or appointment can be quickly scheduled, regardless of demand;
- The process can be completed in less than 2 minutes;
- The cost per service is in cents (80% cheaper).
Step 5: Count On A Marketing Automation Tool
After a service, the health institution must continue the relationship with its patients to ensure the most significant number of loyal customers. From presenting new procedures to talking about good health practices, this type of action, in addition to quality care, will make the patient come back when necessary for him.
But doing all this work manually is impossible. To know the best way to communicate with him on an ongoing basis, you need to know:
- How the patient is interacting with the institution’s website;
- What kind of content has he been consuming;
- Which communication channels do you use the most?
All this information can be tracked with a Marketing Automation solution. This is the cheapest and most intuitive way of carrying out this work, with features for monitoring and building nutrition flows. The nutrition flow, a feature that only this type of tool can offer, together with the content produced for the blog, is vital for the success of the marketing strategy!
Just do the following math: instead of hiring four marketing professionals (to take care of social media, blog management, Email Marketing and data analysis) and two salespeople (to qualify all opportunities), your company can count on a tool that performs all these functions, reducing the final cost of the operation. With a nutrition flow performing much of the relationship work and the tool centralizing the entire process simply and intuitively, the work becomes faster and more profitable.
Also Read: How To Execute A Small Business Marketing Strategy
