Do you run a hospital and wish to receive patients? here are 7 results-driven digital marketing strategies for hospitals, clinics and health centers.
Competitive advantage is a business asset, resource, process, or capability that is very difficult to copy or buy, and which provides a beneficial advantage over competitors in your industry. Experts classify competitive advantage into three categories: cost leadership, differentiation, and concentration.
In today’s digital world, whatever field of business you choose to pursue, you will need to thrive in digital marketing, customer engagement, and mobile websites and apps. Keep in mind that without it it will be very difficult for your business to gain an edge over the competition. In our modern times, consumers choose medical services and postpone or cancel elective procedures.
Why Search For Patients Online With Digital Marketing?
In addition, the general population is healthier and lives longer. Although the percentage of the population with chronic illnesses is still high, young consumers generally do not seek hospital services unless they are ill. For hospitals, it just means fewer patients, and less treatment means less revenue.
This, in turn, has led hospitals to advertise, research and motivate consumers to patronize their services. Today, hospitals compete with other hospitals and hospitals and lose money. They also lose money because the consumer simply chooses not to see a doctor at all due to the cost.
With this drop in hospital revenues, we have seen many hospital mergers and closures – hospital chains are buying out independent hospitals and community hospitals being closed. Teaching hospitals, which have always believed that their brand and reputation would help them stand out and start a business, are now realizing how they don’t get the traffic they are used to, even in their renowned specialties. global.
These factors have put enormous pressure on hospital marketing departments to find and attract more patients and to convince existing patients to return for additional services. Digital marketing in the healthcare industry not only allows marketers to target specific patient groups, but also helps build and maintain relationships with existing patients.
This has led to better campaigns, better ROMI, and increased patient engagement. Like marketing organizations in other industries, hospital executives now understand the growing competition and now hold their marketing departments accountable for metrics other than direct mail response rates.
Research has shown that digital marketing tactics can give healthcare marketers the metrics they now expect. In the past, hospitals did not need to search for patients like other industries did. Thus, the marketing departments of many hospitals did not have to do anything particularly targeted. But everything has changed; Hospitals currently compete for patients based on both cost and quality of care.
7 results-driven digital marketing strategies for hospitals
Please note that the healthcare industry is always on the lookout for the next technological breakthrough. Whether it’s a new and improved treatment, a pioneering institution, or the expansion of medical specialties, healthcare organizations are always striving to provide a higher standard of patient care.
The health sector, unlike many other sectors, serves a large audience. With today’s consumers increasingly reliant on apps and websites, the need to improve digital marketing is quickly becoming a necessity.
In fact, patients increasingly rely on websites to make health care decisions. In these modern times, it is becoming very important for hospitals to stay at the forefront of digital marketing and to keep their organization at the forefront of change, even online. Here are some of the ways you can use digital marketing as a competitive advantage for your hospital.
1. Create an easy to navigate website
Keep in mind that your hospital’s website is the face of your digital marketplace as well as your hospital. This is usually the first impression your facility makes and plays a big role in the patient’s decision to choose your facility or go elsewhere, so you want the user experience to be as easy as possible.
Chances are, if someone is on your website, they are looking for answers for themselves or a loved one and may want to find what they are looking for quickly so that they can take action. Also note that patients, and not just those in your area, are already looking for health information online, so make sure your website is patient-centric and easy to use.
2. Create an informational blog
It is very important to make it clear that your blog goes hand in hand with a strong and user-friendly website. With 1% of all Google searches related to medical symptoms, that’s 35 million searches on the internet every day. Consider taking advantage of all of this research with rich blog content that provides health information, questions answered, quick tips, and advice they can get without seeing a doctor.
Always plan your editorial calendar. on health months or other hot topics related to your hospital. Also, keep in mind that it is handy for people to read about other patients who have had a treatment, condition, or surgery they are facing, which can help increase your blog readership. .
While you can post reviews on various sites around your website, your blog is a great place to study the success of other patients in detail. Instead of short clips, blogs aim to show detailed patient stories, from diagnosis to recovery.
3. Define specific SEO attributes
It’s easy to create the most beautiful, informative, and top performing website, blog posts, emails and videos, but just as relevant as they can be if they aren’t. used. found? Note that in the search engine optimization (SEO) process, you can increase the quality and quantity of organic traffic by ranking your content for specific keywords that your patients will actually use in their searches.
For example, if you work in a hospital with multiple lines of service, you should perform keyword research with a tool like SEMrush or the HubSpot Keyword Tool to find the top ranked keywords to use on each page.
You will also want to know what keywords are currently driving traffic to your site as well as to your competition. Using those results, you choose a keyword with a lower difficulty score (so it’s not that hard to gauge) with a higher search volume.
It is very important that you base your content on this keyword and include it in your copy. To optimize a page around a specific service line, you should include it in the page title, H1, meta description, URL, alternate image tags, and in the main copy of the page .
You can create content around the same keyword and associated subtopics and link to this page. While the keywords are very important, they should look natural in the rest of the copy. Avoid overusing your keyword on the page; Google will punish you for “keyword stuffing” if your phrase appears too many times. Even if you want the words in the copy, the quality of the content is always appreciated.
4. Content Marketing
Indeed, it is impossible to build a successful SEO strategy without the right content. To be successful in the ever-changing healthcare industry, hospitals must continually post new content that allows them not only to find it, but also to collect leads.
From blog posts to social media updates, videos, eBooks, webinars and more, you need to create content that will allow you to find it online using the same search engines and social media channels that your target audience uses to learn about medical services and the products they use.
Note that this content, when properly organized and published, will increase your search engine rankings and generate new traffic to your site, as well as leads in the sales funnel, in the hopes of encouraging them to visit your practice or hospital to meet their needs. health needs.
Note that when the content is well organized, it grabs and holds people’s attention, keeps them interested, and successfully encourages them to take the desired action, such as clicking Next or Explore Mo. re when you pick up the phone to call. hospital or facility, or when you purchase your medical equipment, supplies, or insurance.
5.Resource your emails
Fortunately, patients always want to research information, but email is one way to stay ahead of the game. What if the information was in their inbox before they had to look for it? Keep in mind that by sending your email newsletter at least once a month, you will continue to educate patients by providing them with new content that they can apply to their health.
Meanwhile, the secret to doing this successfully is to provide your email database with a variety of information to best reflect your audience’s interests.
Use email personalization and segmentation based on the interests and needs of the recipient so that they receive their information. Consider submitting a video, trending blog post, or the latest industry news that will provide readers with insight into a variety of topics. Always plan ahead so that they are timely based on what is happening in your organization or in the healthcare industry.
6. Videos that educate and inspire
Note that patients, or rather the public, are increasingly turning to visual content. An industry report says that a third of online activity is spent watching videos. If you can get your doctors to speak on camera about their area of expertise, it will inevitably increase their credibility and attract an audience that seeks the experts your doctors have.
Watching a doctor on a video describing a condition or procedure can help a patient feel more comfortable with what they are going through, especially if they are seeing that doctor for treatment.
This is because video can make the patient feel like they have already met a doctor and increase their comfort level by observing their facial expressions, manners and even hearing their voice. Just like starting a blog, your videos are another suitable place for your comments.
The only thing better than reading another patient’s experience is seeing them in action via video and hearing the doctor, patient, and family members describe the experience from start to finish.
Without a doubt, video is a powerful tool; the lighting, music, and story structure work together to elicit emotion, telling a story in a way a blog entry can’t. These elements can evoke feelings of passion, hope, courage, fear and many more that the written word alone cannot capture.
7. Using a social media strategy
If your hospital isn’t taking advantage of the strong social media opportunities, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with your audience. Social media is a great promotional tool when used correctly. More than 60% of social media users are more likely to trust social media posts and physician activity than any other group, the report says.
So plan your posts wisely – make sure they’re written ahead of time, and feature varied content on your page. Your presence on social networks strengthens the experience of your patients.
While it’s hard to compete on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where many companies have held strong leadership positions over the years, you can win by focusing on new platforms. So, keep an eye out for new social media channels that are relevant to your audience and try to build your presence there before your competition.
8. Become a thought leader
Thought leadership is the pinnacle of digital marketing when it is realistically achievable! If you create and use these tools correctly, you have a huge chance to position your business as a point of reference for your buyers, content creators, and media around the world. Please note that this will lead to retain audiences and brand ambassadors who will promote your brand and solutions for you.
It goes without saying that by becoming a recognized industry leader and leveraging the power of networks and referrals, you will also increase your sales. Keep in mind that once you reach a leadership level, this can easily become one of your most important competitive advantages.
A robust digital marketing strategy for your hospital is most effective when managed in an optimized way, where each component syncs with each other rather than solo. In addition to regularly meeting with your team about your marketing strategy to discuss changes or updates, try to align and link these elements using a content management platform.
It will provide you with a platform to track the effectiveness of your efforts as needed. globally and identify areas for improvement. In fact, many healthcare establishments are already conducting their digital marketing efforts on HubSpot or other similar platforms.
Note that this helps them to rethink past efforts and more easily plan their future strategies. Indeed, platforms like HubSpot can support your marketing efforts with constant updates to help you better serve the healthcare industry and the users you attract.
