Digitization has encompassed every sector, including healthcare. Over 70% of American patients now go online to book an appointment. At the same time, over 90 million Americans use Google to research health issues. However, despite these numbers, the healthcare sector still struggles with powerful marketing tactics to get the word out about important things.
In the past, HIPAA regulations and FDA rulings made it hard for hospitals to market openly due to privacy and security concerns, limiting them to media like newspaper and paper ads. However, these guidelines have become relatively relaxed over time, allowing for a more substantial digital footprint.
Digital marketing can help hospitals connect with many patients at a time. This allows the healthcare system to provide personalized care, introduce technological advancements, and increase transparency. Therefore, a hospital should not hold back when it comes to marketing. Here’s why:
1)Increases Outreach
Over 40% of patients will research a hospital before booking an appointment. The more visible your hospital is online, the more patients will find their way to you. They can only do this by finding your hospital on search engines.
Therefore, as a healthcare administrator, you cannot skimp on the process of designing a well-structured website with a responsive layout. You can easily accomplish this by outsourcing the work to talented healthcare marketers.
By consulting leading digital marketing experts for the healthcare industry, you will get the opportunity to work on your hospital’s search engine optimization (SEO) organically. Strategic healthcare marketers will help you narrow down keywords such as ‘flexible insurance policies and help you attract clients with targeted and relevant content.
These professionals will also ensure your webpage flows well and is easy to engage with. As a result, your hospital will have informative page descriptions, excellent titles, and techniques like voice-activated search, catering to a diverse patient population.
2)Keeps Patients More Informed and Less Anxious
The lack of information, financial hurdles, and personal values work cohesively in making patients refuse treatment. The way COVID-19 was handled is a prime example of how misinformation and inadequate knowledge contribute to a global pandemic.
When there is a gap between patient care and access to healthcare facilities, it burdens the medical service industry and lets diseases thrive unabated.
Digital marketing can help curb patient anxiety and encourage them to stay in the loop about their health. Techniques like video marketing will help you create comprehensive presentations on different topics like complex surgeries, vaccines, outpatient facilities, and consultation programs your hospital offers.
This encourages patients to trust your facilities more, removes uncertainty about the procedure, and motivates them to register for an appointment. On the other hand, social media will empower you as a healthcare administrator to post interviews with your hospital’s doctors, share healthcare milestones, and provide links such as the patient portal.
3)Reduces Cost Per Acquisition
Digital marketing can help the healthcare sector reduce the cost of marketing by half. By retiring old school methods like printing advertisements and running TV commercials, you can save at least $400 per patient acquisition.
Digital tools like social media campaigns, YouTube advertisements, and even email marketing will make it easier to find your audience with minimal effort. Saving costs will benefit you as an administrator in focusing on patient care.
4)Better Data-Driven Decisions
You can make necessary adjustments to any campaign that is not going as planned through digital marketing analytics. Healthcare marketers have access to website traffic, brand awareness, click-through rates, and social engagements, which results in an influx of data. While working with these marketers, you can ensure that your digital marketing techniques coincide with the HIPAA policies and that patient data remains confidential.
You can do this by poking around in Google Analytics’ custom dimensions to limit how much to track and what information can get used for marketing. Google Analytics will help you differentiate the patient body into existing patients and non-patients. As a result, the advertisements will take pre-defined routes to spread information.
5)Locate Demographic And Work On Specialized Care
Through relevant keyword targeting, hashtags, and referral links, you will be able to generate tailored content by age, gender, ethnicity, location, healthcare conditions, and required facilities. This is highly beneficial for patients seeking highly specialized care.
For instance, if you have a popular children’s hospital, you should mention what makes your services suitable for pediatric care. These can include nurse practitioners with specializations in neonatal and childcare.
You may have accommodation for family members and guardians, comfortable bathrooms, sound-treated rooms for children on the spectrum, and methods such as non-invasive surgical methods with minimal scarring. Sharing your strengths will incentivize your desired demographic to look at your hospital for treatment instead of sticking to general care.
6)Enhances Patient Experience
Digital marketing can help patients connect to the services they need without any additional stress. Since you can reach and connect with patients faster, it boosts healthcare outcomes. On the other hand, patients are happier when seeking medical intervention without jumping through hurdles.
Social media also allows patients to follow your healthcare business’s public page, share social posts and even leave a comment. Make sure you gently encourage them to leave positive reviews, write favorable testimonials and recommend your facilities. These will boost your ratings, polish your SEO and make you the centerpiece of relevant search engine queries.
7)Increases One-On-One Engagement
Telehealth is a cornerstone of modern healthcare. Part of digital marketing is better communication channels. Medical spaces like Web MD now offer you as a doctor an opportunity to create public profiles and answer patient queries in real-time and promote your practice. You may even hold live video conferences, create specific content for particular conditions and link relevant websites.
Digital marketing can help revolutionize healthcare. Personalized care is far more beneficial to the growing population than generic healthcare options. By employing digital marketing, you will interact with a larger patient body, keep them informed and reduce the cost of advertising.
You also can provide specialized content to the relevant demographic for better treatment routes. From an administrative perspective, you get to use data to make decisions that will help you maintain patient confidentiality while marketing your hospital’s services.
