Over the years, healthcare marketing has evolved to meet the needs of the patients and keep up with the digital age. Today, the internet has made it possible for hospitals to build websites where the public can get information about the services they provide and even contact their doctor without physically visiting the hospital.
Thanks to digital marketing, the healthcare industry has strengthened its reach while improving hospital services visibility in the online space. In this pandemic period, digital marketing has played a pivotal role in ensuring hospitals can reach their patients and other healthcare aspirants globally to deliver services and collaborate as they work together to defeat the virus.
Digital marketing in healthcare has become the need of the house, especially through the pandemic. It is essential for healthcare service providers to use digital marketing methods for service delivery. If your hospital has not embraced digital marketing, now is the right time to do so.
Here is everything you need to know about digital marketing in healthcare and how hospitals can improve service delivery post-Covid.
Table of Contents
There are many benefits associated with using digital marketing in the healthcare industry. With digital marketing, hospitals can attract more patients to their facility, and it is a cost-effective way of marketing service.
Using digital marketing to get new clients reduces your spending on advertisements. According to research, medical facilities spend at least £314 per patient to advertise on TV and print media. When implemented well, digital marketing offers at least a 50% slash in ads per patient.
Keeping track of patient’s information has been one of the most challenging aspects of the healthcare industry. Digital technology has helped to streamline data tracking processes, which makes service delivery faster. Digital marketing helps in collecting patient data for better decision-making and implementing better marketing strategies.
With digital marketing, a healthcare facility can target a specific demographic of patients based on their specializations. Digital marketing allows you to target patients based on location, sex, and age, among other specific attributes. This makes it easier for a facility to relate with patients while delivering a personalized experience.
Digital marketing should be in your onsite SEO checklist. One in every 20 searches on search engines is always healthcare-related. Digital marketing makes it possible for healthcare centers to place their services in front of their target audience. Digital marketing makes it easier for hospitals and healthcare services to rank highly on search results, making them more visible to their target audience.
Digital marketing gives healthcare marketers access to professional digital software and tools that can be used to scale marketing campaigns for better performance and to acquire quality leads.
For any business, keeping the client happy should be at the center of every marketing strategy. In the healthcare industry, at least 77% of patients search online for services before booking appointments. This makes the patient experience on a hospital website highly important.
Hospitals are focusing on delivering the best online experience to potential patients to attract more leads and boost ROI.
While video-based health-related content had been around for a while, the breakthrough for this trend has been the possibilities created for video content by advancements in technology. Video content is more effective for communicating important information. Social media adaptation of video content like Facebook Live has made it possible for users to create presentations, take interviews, live-stream, and deliver news in real-time.
The Covid pandemic has increased the need for effective communication between patients and healthcare facilities. This need for effective communication presents an opportunity for hospitals and healthcare facilities to build their brand by humanizing communication methods. Today, more than 50% of adults prefer to purchase from companies that show a willingness to protect their clients against Covid.
To keep up with this trend, healthcare marketing personnel should work on making their communication trustworthy, helpful, and compassionate. For instance, a hospital can base its digital communication to include information about the latest symptoms, treatment options, and vaccination trends on covid-19.
Based on research, at least 70% of consumers lose trust in a brand if they feel that it values profit over people. In the coming year, what brands say and do will be scrutinized closely, especially in healthcare. Medical facilities need to offer transparency, establish their brand as an authority in their field, and cement their good reputation.
Building on a facility’s PR is also ideal in creating brand awareness. Show your target market what causes your brand supports and take time to participate in community engagement by moderating community forums using medical experts from your facility.
In 2021, healthcare chatbots are used to improve efficiency in service delivery and even for accuracy in symptom detection and identifications of disease. They are also used in post-recovery care, preventive care, and feedback.
Medical facilities are using chatbots to automate repetitive, low-level tasks that medical facility representatives and healthcare professionals previously did. You can use chatbots to schedule appointments, check for symptoms, avail information, provide support, and enhance the patient’s experience.
When these simple, monotonous tasks are entrusted to a chatbot, the representative or healthcare professional gets more free time to focus on other, more complicated tasks.
Chatbots deliver a wide range of benefits in line with cementing a facility’s reputation as an authority in medicine. With chatbots, a facility can instantly provide critical information to patients, ensure availability on chat around the clock, and build a rapport with clients while offering assistance.
Hospitals and healthcare facilities have shifted their digital marketing practices to include more informative content driven by the communities and patients’ needs, fears, and questions. Some have gone further to take part in listening tours and hosting input sessions to understand the gaps in medical service delivery and how they can fill the gap.
Mos hospitals are taking advantage of digital platforms to tell their covid stories. These platforms include social media, online communities, forums, earned media, and through own wellness sites.
One of the steps taken by some hospitals to producing high-quality, helpful, and high-value webinars via webinar platforms to reach patients, stakeholders, caregivers, board members, donors, local businesses, first responders, and government officials. This method of fostering human interaction has facilitated faster communication for targeted interactions and information and has allowed hospitals to showcase their clinical expertise in the healthcare system.
Hospitals have had to develop new tools like online screenings to make it easier for patients to seek and get medical help. Medical practitioners have also had to create new ways to see their patients, like through virtual visits to reduce person-to-person contact to curb the spread of the virus.
Consumer habits and how the world works, in general, have changed tremendously in the last two years. For any medical facility to survive post-covid, it needs to adopt effective post-covid digital marketing strategies.
Now more than ever, medical professionals need to demonstrate leadership by offering education to the public to make it easier for them to make informed decisions about their health and that of their communities.
This is the perfect opportunity for medical professionals to strengthen their brand by offering help to the communities they serve. They can use this platform to demonstrate how their hospital mission aligns with their effort to fight the virus. Doing what is best for the public now will help to strengthen a brand in the future.
Digital transformation in healthcare and the incorporation of telemedicine is an effective way of positing the practice for the future. Telemedicine offers a wide range of options where you can choose to fully integrate it into your system or partially utilizing it to deliver services to your patients. Telemedicine is the medical practice method of the future that protects the practitioner and the patient. As patients and doctors get used to this method of service delivery in the covid-19 period, it is likely to become the healthcare norm post-covid.
Medical facilities should take up paid search campaigns to put their business in front of their clients to remain open. With Google search ads, you can be sure that you will reach patients in need of your services. This is an ideal addition to anyone offering telemedicine services.
SEO or search engine optimization is a long-term digital marketing strategy that needs to be continuous. Hospitals should reallocate budgets from traditional advertising to SEO in digital marketing.
With effective SEO, healthcare professionals can avail relevant content to help their patients keep safe and healthy while improving search engine ranking and overall SEO. In the future, topics related to covid-19 will continue to dominate search engines as the public consumes the information even more rapidly.
The use of social media has grown tremendously during the pandemic period. Users are using these platforms to search for reliable information about covid-19. Healthcare facilities should create visibility on these platforms by creating educative and informative content that answers users’ questions about the pandemic.
Having a social media presence is an effective digital marketing skill that helps immerse users into a brand and create a reputation as an expert in your field by offering accurate data about the pandemic.
Without a doubt, digital marketing continues to play an essential role in healthcare. By understanding the effects of the pandemic on digital marketing, healthcare marketing departments can take the necessary steps to ensure they adapt to the changes to remain credible, reliable, and reputable in the healthcare sector.
The study of consumer behavior has become increasingly important in today's competitive business landscape. As…
Navigating the tax filing process requires attention to detail, and understanding the key tax forms…
The world of web development is undeniably ever-evolving where frameworks serve as the backbone for…
When a couple decides to live apart, it is never easy and rarely a simple…
Are you looking for healthier ways to sleep? You're not by yourself. We are suffering…
From eating more plants and fewer animal products to thrift shopping to score high-end clothes,…
This website uses cookies.