Healthcare Marketing: Everything You Need To Know

Providing good care to your patients is the most important thing. However, what they do not tell is the fact that times are changing, quickly. The way you used to entice your potential patients to trust your skills and experience, is not the same anymore. Today, it is all about the online world, and thus knowing how to create a good marketing plan is a must.

Most patients today will check out reviews online, but other patients. They will not listen to what they see on the TV or hear over the phone. Instead they prefer to read experiences of other individuals who have gone through the same kind of procedures. After a survey that was done in the US, it seems that 8 out 10 people would rather trust online reviews than just personal recommendations.

So instead of relying on their friends or family, they would read reviews from strangers online and then decide whether to visit a certain clinic or hospital. This is why having an online presence is definitely one of the most important things you need to consider. Here is everything you need to know about healthcare marketing and why it matters. 

What is healthcare marketing?

In order to get yourself out there you need a good marketing plan. Healthcare marketing is an effort to reach potential patients on the internet. Creating a successful marketing plan is not that easy, which is why you have many professionals specializing in healthcare marketing, if you are interested. Just check them out.

There are a couple of things that can help make a healthcare marketing strategy successful… starting with SEO. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the practice of being able to move up in the search engine rankings, thus increasing the organic web traffic. SEO can be broken up into Off-Page SEO, Technical SEO, and On-Page SEO.

Then you have the Paid Advertising, which is a great strategy that is often not utilized enough in healthcare marketing. Let’s also not forget about Online Reputation Managing; a process of optimizing your reviews online and being visible across social media platforms. This is a lot to take in, so if you are interested in learning more, just continue reading.

Search Engine Optimization

If you want to attract new patients in the online world, you need to be in the first couple of results. More often than not, people will not go further than the first page of Google. Your website/services need to be offered within the top results after a potential patient has searched for certain keywords.

When talking about healthcare organizations and medical practices, this all boils down to optimizing your website. This is one of the easiest and best thing you can do in order to attract new patients who are local, or in your area. Aiming to be one of the top results means that you will be getting most of the traffic.

In case you still do not understand much about SEO, you can always do your own research online. Keep in mind that you can also just hire professionals to help you out. All you really have to understand is that being SEO friendly can do wonders for your marketing strategy.

Create an online presence

Do you know how to properly advertise yourself? There are the good and the bad ways to go about this. One of the easiest ways to get the attention of your potential patients is to simply start a blog that will be related to your medical field or practices you offer.

Posting articles on a regular basis, whether it is daily or weekly, will definitely increase the chances of your patients choosing you over your competitors. Keep in mind that the links will not just appear by themselves, and although you published an article, you need to find a way to advertise it through authoritative 3rd party sites.

You could also be active on relevant websites. Share your professional medical opinion, and make sure that you are professional online, just as you would be with a patient. These are just a couple of many ways that you can create an online presence, so find a way that best suits you!

Paid Advertising

Although you could always start by creating great content and waiting for SEO to start working, there is a much faster way to get good traffic. Paid advertising is quite underutilized when talking about healthcare professionals, so you should consider taking advantage of it.

The quickest way to grab everyone’s attention is to be advertised on platforms that have a lot of traffic, such as Google, Bing, Instagram, Facebook and many others. You are free to do your research and pay for the advertisements. You can also hire a professional to help you choose the right place and create the perfect AD that will catch the attention of your potential patients. 

Reviews are important!

One thing that many people tend to forget is the importance of reviews. Allowing your patients to let others know more about your services and their overall experiences is crucial. As it was mentioned at the beginning, patients tend to believe reviews online more than their family and friends. Thus, letting your patients share their experience will bring in more patients. 

Final word

Being able to develop a good marketing strategy that will be tailored to the healthcare you can provide, is the best thing you can do for your medical practice. A good strategy will help grown and scale your medical practice, and you will be able to put yourself ahead of the competition. 

However, if you do not know much about online healthcare marketing, you should hire a professional to help you out. In today’s online world that is not a difficult task, and with a good healthcare marketing agency you will be able to take your marketing to the next level and thus get more patients.