Digital marketing : Have you ever considered using online media to promote your healthcare business? If you have, then are you gaining the maximum results out of it? Now let us see how you can make the most of digital media to make your healthcare services popular among online users. Let’s take this step by step.
1. The Website
Do you often put efforts into improving your website? If not, it’s time you do. Because even though healthcare is a service sector, the website is the online face of your organization. So it’s important to maintain a good image here as well. Take these points to note for making your presence exceptional:
Mobile-optimised: Make it mobile optimized, because people are gonna reach you more through these little screens for bookings, appointments, enquiries or for general info.
Loading Speed: The website loading speed should be taken into account because if it takes a long time to load, the users may leave your website right away.
Valuable content: Make content that people want to see and read (avoid copy-pasting some good content you saw elsewhere, let it be unique and fresh). You can even use your website as a platform for knowledge sharing and gain some trust among the users. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices can help your website gain more visibility among your target audience.
SSL Certificate: If you’re planning for a payment gateway, don’t forget to get the SSL certificate, especially when you have an online booking system or a pharmacy.
2. Organic Visibility
What good is it if you have a website and no one comes to it? For bringing more traffic, you need to put up valid and keyword optimized content. Here comes the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). These efforts can drive sustained traffic to your website in the long run.
Here are some points to keep in mind:
Keep your website user-friendly, focus more on UI and UX (User Interface and User Experience).
Use blogs as a tool to answer people’s questions. Keep it flowing on a weekly basis with lots of updated and relevant information. It can also be related to a specific health day.
Optimize the keywords relevant to your organization or business. Try to even focus on keywords with higher search volume and low competition. Most people only go for the important keywords like ‘best hospital’, ‘top surgeon near me’ etc. but there are many other keywords with equal search volume which you can consider. For eg: ‘the symptoms of asthma’ or ‘treatment for arthritis’ or even about a diagnostic test.
Generalize the content so that people will come to you for information rather than for appointments. This can improve your traffic rate and thus ensuring Google that you’re a good and reliable provider in healthcare.
Don’t forget to update the outdated content present on your site. Remove previously posted event news and also keep in mind to change the booking schedule according to the doctors’ availability. And lastly, keep a good number of interlinks inside.
3. Social Media Profiles
It is very essential to maintain a good presence across all the online mediums. Besides the website, there are other channels for you to make your existence known. It is also necessary to keep your organization’s social profiles like FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc active and updated. Keeping your profiles updated can aid you to gain the trust of your audience.
These channels can also be used as a medium to share your knowledge which can prompt the viewers to consider you when a need arises because no one wants to be a patient every day but when they need medical assistance, it’s important to be seen. A share-worthy content can always deliver us the advantage of an online ‘word of mouth’. Also, these activities help your organization to become a brand that people recognize quickly.
4. Paid Promotions
Unlike other sectors, healthcare is more personal and needs highly personalized marketing. The targeted audience should be able to easily connect with the message that you convey. You must remember that the audience here can be general or those seeking specific information or can be someone looking for emergency service. So understanding your target audience is very crucial.
There are many ways in which paid promotion can be done online and here are two out of the many that can be used in healthcare:
1. Google ADs
Google is a platform where people come to seek answers to their problems. Targeting these people in search engines using the relevant keywords can bring in more patient conversions.
2. Social media campaigns
If you’re planning to create general awareness about your brand or any particular treatment or a health camp, social media is the best platform that you can use. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc contain millions of users of which you can either target a specific audience for your ads or you can take advantage of the entire list. Either way, people will come to know about what you want them to know.
5. Video Content
Video promotions is a trend that became so prominent in this decade. The influence of a video can outshine any other format. People find videos to be easily engaging and that’s why it is important in healthcare as well. Sharing the testimonial videos of your patients can lift the confidence of other potential patients to book their consultations with you. Also, valuable information shared via videos can pass on from one user to others through various digital platforms. You can even upload short videos where your doctors are speaking about a particular illness and ways to prevent it. It will benefit you for sure.
Just like any other industry, healthcare has also evolved through Digital marketing. Always remember, everything that is said above is interdependent.
If you are planning to start or are ready to change the way you are executing Digital marketing, you need to find the perfect marketing mix for your brand. If you have any questions on how to get the best out of your healthcare business through Digital marketing, you can connect with our experts.