Marketing is crucial for the growth of healthcare organizations, but it requires a unique approach due to the sensitive nature of the industry. Copying and pasting marketing strategies from other industries can be detrimental to a healthcare organization’s reputation. To ensure credibility is maintained, it’s important to find a marketing strategy that not only sells the organization but also retains its integrity. Healthcare industry experts recommend the following effective and up-to-date marketing techniques for healthcare organizations:
1) Develop an active social media presence
Statistics show that over 40% of prospects claim social media would influence their choice of healthcare provider. Therefore, the better the reputation you have on social media the higher your chances of getting more new clients. Through channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, you can connect with prospects outside their appointment time. Constantly publishing informative text on such channels makes you a reliable choice when prospects need the services you’re offering. Furthermore, the same channels provide an avenue for your followers to promote your services when they’re happy with their experience.
2) Improve your internal communication
As you focus on external marketing, you should also maintain efficient internal communication. According to a McKinsey Global Institute study, an active connection between employees in an organization leads to a nearly 25% increase in productivity. Additionally, by building positive relationships with your employees, you can transform them into brand advocates. For instance, your employees can market your organization by word of mouth to their family and friends. With this strategy, reaching out to thousands of prospects is much easier.
3) Develop lead buckets
Nowadays, it’s more challenging to convince target clients to willingly give you their contact details. With so many spam messages stuffing their inboxes, most of them are cautious of any move that involves receiving more emails. As a result, adding engaged contacts to your email marketing newsletter takes a bit of tact. Luckily, the lead bucket is here to save the day. This strategy involves a mutual exchange between you and the target clients. You’ll be providing something beneficial in exchange for their contact details. You can offer things like:
- Free consultation
- eBooks
- Access to a group dedicated to patients
- The latest research on a particular health condition
- Free invitation to a workshop
The idea behind this technique is to offer your clients value in return for signing up with your organization. With time, you will be top of mind among this audience and these people will eventually try your services.
4) Try influencer marketing
If your target is brand validation, then you should try influencer marketing. To get the best result, try connecting with influencers in your industry. After all, their followers will most definitely align with your target audience. In order to do this effectively, start by searching for influencers in the healthcare or medical field. Once you’ve identified relevant influencers whose values align with those of your organization and who have a significant amount of engagement, you can connect with them. Make sure you build a relationship with these influencers before you start asking for favors. Commenting on their content and sharing valuable leads with them is a good place to start. Once you’ve built a positive relationship with your target influencers, you can start pitching collaboration opportunities to them. With their help, you can market your latest treatment ideas and reach a wider audience than before.
5) Create a digital presence
In many instances, health organizations center their marketing strategies on offline platforms. As a result of this, they lose out on potential opportunities. By establishing an active online presence, you can capture a wider client base. In fact, this approach has proven to be a resourceful technique in this industry over and over again. Imagine you own a private television channel, a channel that only patients can access. Most importantly, this channel lacks all sorts of distractions including alternative channels that can distract viewers.
This is exactly what you get when you develop a digital presence for your organization. With this strategy, you can create personalized and enticing content that will compel your target client to engage with you further and eventually become your patient. However, establishing a positive online presence is more than just creating content and pushing it at your target audience. You also need to contribute to conversations about your organization and the healthcare industry in general. It’s also helpful to respond to concerns or issues that your target audience raises online. By being active and engaged online, you present your organization as being informative and concerned over patient welfare.
6) Use messaging apps
Oftentimes, consumers are preoccupied with all sorts of noise during the day. With radio ads, TV, social media content, and emails, there is a lot of content to sift through every day. More often, the only way to have alone time is by blocking out this content or not logging into distracting apps to begin with. When your business is investing in marketing, having a detached audience is a great loss.
However, there’s still a loophole through which you can reach out to target clients without disrupting their peace. That’s messaging apps. Messaging apps are the only applications that remain active even after the user has blocked other apps. After all, they need these apps to keep in touch with family and friends Also, it’s unlikely for users to ignore incoming messages. By using these apps, you can get in touch with your patients. However, you still need to be careful about your approach and ensure you’re not spamming your audience on their messaging apps, otherwise they can also block you here.
7) Content marketing
The healthcare industry is personal by default. Therefore, unless a specific issue affects someone personally, it’s rare to find them researching it. As such, an effective marketing campaign in this sector is one that targets a certain problem in the community. Your content could comprise symptoms of the issue, how to manage it, and viable options for treatment. Besides targeting those suffering from the issue, you can also address their caregivers. Try creating different content for the same community, and if you discover one that applies to multiple communities, adapt it to other groups. Meanwhile, ensure your content is always relevant to your field or health organization.
8) Use video marketing
Irrespective of how effective they are as marketing tools, videos are the most underutilized pieces of content. When you employ video as a strategy, it has the powerful ability to capture and maintain the audience’s attention. In fact, according to a study on companies that leverage video marketing, about 90% of their audiences based their judgments of these brands on videos they saw. Through video marketing, you can provide insight into your healthcare organization.
You can also provide valuable behind-the-scenes footage that clients would love to view. You can use videos to share testimonies or stories from your patients. Oftentimes, it’s hard to argue with video content since the evidence is in front of your eyes. As a result, video marketing happens to be a credible marketing strategy to rely on. To maximize video marketing, consider sharing your content via:
- Website
- Blog posts
- Social media
- YouTube
Over to you
Are you ready to start the marketing campaign for your health organization? You can now try out the marketing techniques outlined above to obtain an outstanding result. If you need assistance implementing some of these techniques, you can reach out to PR professionals who know what it takes to run a successful campaign in this field. The PR specialists and content creators at Pressfarm have experience working with brands across several different niches. These include health to tech, fashion, sustainability, and everything in between.
In addition to this content creation and distribution strategy, all Pressfarm clients get access to a comprehensive media database. This database is home to over 1 million journalists across industries, including the medical and healthcare industry. They also design curated media lists for each of their clients, tailored to help you connect with relevant media professionals in your niche. If you need help tailoring the perfect press release to send to these media professionals, Pressfarm also offers templates that you can use. If you need help building brand awareness, then you’ve come to the right place. Sign up today and let the experts at Pressfarm help your brand get the publicity it deserves.