Digitisation means that what’s trending today is out of fashion tomorrow, so if you want your healthcare marketing strategy to be successful, you really need to keep your finger on the pulse of industry trends. Trends in healthcare marketing change all the time so if you’re running a medical or dental practice, here are our most effective marketing tips for the year ahead.
Healthcare Email Marketing Is Alive And Well
A few years ago, when social media advocates wanted us all to make the shift to social channels, we heard all about the death of email marketing and how it would turn into the proverbial white elephant over time. Fast forward a decade and a bit, and that hasn’t happened at all.
The move to mobile marketing has actually served healthcare email marketing well –because now patients have access to their emails in the palms of their hands, wherever they go.
Mobile Comes First
It isn’t news by any stretch, but in case you need to be reminded: mobile should be one of the cornerstones of your digital marketing strategies. Your patient is impatient: busy and always on the go. However, he or she is connected to that smartphone day in and day out. And wherever that patient may go, Google is guiding him or her all the way.
How does this translate into your strategy? Well firstly you need to ensure that you’re on Google’s Maps, quite literally. Make sure you have a My Business page and claim your address, marking very clearly what you do.
In your My Business page you’ll be able to
- Stipulate your business category
- Provide a quick dial phone number so that users can call you directly from the search page
- State your business hours so an emergency patient knows if you’re open or not without having to make the call
- Give a description of what you do and offer to inform prospective patients
- Collect your Google reviews so that new patients can see why they should make an appointment with you and how other patients have enjoyed using your services.
This gives your potential new patient the option to see a snapshot or summary of your most important information in just one click.
Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
There’s no excuse, given the plethora of healthcare marketing agencies out there, to have a website that doesn’t perform exceptionally on mobile. Don’t make your patient work too hard to contact you or find the answer to that burning question – otherwise he or she will just go elsewhere.
Get in touch with your target audience and realise that the easier the experience is, the more likely that patient is to make a booking with you.
Optimise Your Website
Probably one of the most effective marketing tips we can give you is to remember that your website is not a “set it and forget it” tool. Just having the website out there isn’t enough, and no guarantee that new patients will actually find it.
The competitive digital landscape in Australia means that plenty of healthcare businesses are vying for patients and are employing strategic tactics to beat you to the finish line. What do we mean?
There are various techniques that you can employ to improve your website’s performance, because not all medical websites are created equal. Sure you might be a dentist, but stating just that is not necessarily going to connect you to the patient in need of dental implants or a tooth extraction.
Your website needs to be optimised to appear for the services that you specialise in. Your patient is searching for a specific need, so your website should provide a clear answer to the query that is typed into the search bar. So what can you do? Here are some options:
Consider a video
There’s a reason that Youtube is the world’s second largest search engine, and that’s because consumers just love video. If you want to improve your organic (unpaid) search performance, a video could get you there.
Organic content marketing gets you off to a good start
There is a huge selection of keywords that can be used to direct online queries to your website and it’s unlikely that your website site map will be able to accommodate all of them. That means you will need to consider digital marketing strategies in order to have all the keywords represented on your website. You will need goals, and a plan of how to achieve them.
You will need to add new content to your website on a regular basis. And this could take different forms like:
Blogging and article creation
Medical and dental patients are looking for information. They do not understand your industry the way you do, and they feel better about using a new service provider when they have established a bond of trust with you first. Often this means browsing your website, reading a few articles and feeling like you have the expertise and chair-side manner to assist with their problems.
For this to happen you need a content base. This shows that you are helpful, proactive and dedicated.
It also gives a more reassuring impression to the patient because it seems like everything is covered. If you are not thorough with the content that you market, a patient may assume that because a service is not there, you do not offer it.
The kinds of answers that your content should provide hinge on
- What ailment do I have?
- Where can this ailment be treated?
- Who is the best practitioner to do this?
- How can I make an appointment?
So how do you craft content that ticks all the right boxes?
Well, ultimately, the more natural your language, the more effective it is. Answering the patient at their level is the best course of action. Think of it as a conversation with the patient, and pre-empt the questions that get asked most frequently. It’s beneficial to work with a healthcare marketing agency so that professional terms and technical jargon can be replaced with lingo that your users will understand.
Want to know how you can get these trends in healthcare marketing to benefit your medical or dental practice? Please get in touch with us on 1300 163 058 and let’s talk digital marketing strategies.
