There are over 6,100 hospitals in the United States.
With that much competition, how can you make your healthcare facility stand out among facilities with large marketing budgets and a team of business development representatives? Here are some tips to help you improve your healthcare marketing strategy.
1. Evaluate Your Previous Patients and Services Rendered
Creating a healthcare marketing scheme will force you to evaluate your current system. Audit the previous clients or patients and the services they’ve received.
You cannot effectively market until you know who your potential audience, client or patient is. Marketing to a baby boomer in the middle of retirement will look much different than marketing to a millennial starting a family.
Dig into your previous patient data, and develop your average patient profile. Factors such as age, services received and insurance type should be used as the baseline for your marketing efforts.
The answers to these questions will help you create a marketing strategy for your audience or audiences. You will receive much better returns for your marketing dollars spent.
2. Your Healthcare Website
Did you know that 80 percent of patients search for healthcare issues online?
Creating a quality healthcare marketing strategy will involve using your website as the foundation. Your website should clearly define your operations team, your services, and your location.
Besides appearance and content, you will also need to make sure your website is optimized for page load speed and on-page search engine optimization.
Patient engagement matters too, you should create multiple points of contact for your potential lead. This can be done via online chat or contact forms for potential leads who are unable to use their phone during specific times of the day.
3. Showcase Your Credentials, Awards and Knowledge
Great content leads to great marketing outcomes, but you’ll need to display or prove your credibility as a business and medical professional.
Use your website to showcase your credentials and knowledge about your services. Your content strategy should involve having your medical professionals review content and approve before posting. If that isn’t an option, make sure your marketing company or marketing director is able to vet all content with credible resources available on the internet.
4. Focus on a Good Mobile Experience
Marketing companies understand the value of making your website mobile-friendly. Google understands this. They have updated algorithms that award mobile-enabled sites with better rankings. If you do not have a mobile-friendly version of your site, you’ll risk valuable rankings for specific search terms related to your industry.
5. You Can Show, Not Just Tell
Smart healthcare marketing means you can show your clients what you’re doing and not just tell them about your services. You can use video.
Engage the viewer.
Youtube garners more web searches than the smaller search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com
Thus, your healthcare marketing strategy can and should involve video.
Many people find doctors and healthcare professionals intimidating. A professional video can turn physicians into real people and reduce white-coat syndrome, which makes so many people afraid of doctors.
Make sure your video is of high quality. Do not just rely on a selfie with your phone or a Snapchat video. A media team will put together a great video that adequately represents your brand.
A combination of great content and great producing will help you make the best video you can to showcase your clinic.
6. Boost Your Reputation
Nothing matters more than your reputation in the business. You can boost your online reputation in a few different ways.
- Have a professional looking website and make sure it displays your accreditations, certified staff and past client experiences throughout website browsing experience.
- Get more reviews, ethically. Develop a strategy to have your staff suggest getting reviews to your Google Business profile or Facebook page.
- Find a few established directories like BBB, Yelp and Psychology Today to list your business on. These directories can be valuable for display of credibility, but also help generate new clients that wouldn’t have found you through regular search results.
To get a customer to walk through your doors, they need to trust you. So make sure the marketing techniques you use make your business trustworthy.
Have a professional marketing company put together your website. This will boost the trust a client has in you as you look trustworthy.
Marketing Matters
Excellent healthcare marketing can increase your patient acquisition and remind former patients of your services.
Learn more about the best marketing services available by visiting our website.