The mission of medicine is, of course, to help and to heal. But the practice of medicine is also an entrepreneurial endeavor. Clinics are also businesses, and to continue fulfilling the medical mission of caring for patients and families, they must be profitable.
That means healthcare systems and medical facilities are just like any other business insofar as they need effective marketing to help them grow and thrive. However, when it comes to marketing, healthcare practices face unique challenges.
Building Trust
Given the very real life-or-death consequences that apply in the healthcare industry, healthcare marketing must always be undertaken with a degree of gravity. Healthcare consumers may distrust clinicians who appear frivolous or cavalier in promoting their practices.
Thus, the onus is on healthcare marketers to overcome any initial reluctance the target audience may feel about healthcare marketing. Consumers may, at first, resist the idea of a healthcare provider advertising on social media, through email, or on television and radio.
However, if your content is strong and your tone earnest and professional, you will likely be able to leave a positive impression on your audience. This is especially true if you use your content strategically to provide valuable information that health consumers want and need.
For instance, you may use your website, blog, and social media accounts not only to provide information on your medical services but also to educate your audience on health topics or offer free advice. In this way, you build your reputation as a trusted authority and go-to resource for information relating to disease prevention and management, mental health, wellness, and related concerns.
Best of all, as you develop content that boosts your practice’s reputation, you’re going to be improving your search engine optimization (SEO) at the same time. The more credible your content and brand, the greater the likelihood that you will satisfy Google’s rigorous E-E-A-T algorithm and, thus, land a prime spot on a search engine results page.
Tailoring Content to Audience Needs
Another significant challenge in healthcare marketing is the burden of tailoring content to the needs of the target audience. In many cases, healthcare systems and clinics serve a vast patient demographic, treating patients of all ages, ethnicities, genders, and socioeconomic groups.
That means that market segmentation can be tough, especially if you’re a small practice with a limited marketing budget and a small marketing team. The good news, though, is that with a little creativity in your content development, you can reach people without either spending a king’s ransom or resorting to a scattershot approach that doesn’t really target any audience.
The wide variety and immense reach of today’s digital platforms means that you can affordably access a broad audience, using the media that will best suit the desired market segment. The key is to leverage every tool you can from the digital marketer’s toolbox, including email marketing, long-form blogs, videos, and podcasts.
As you do so, you must understand exactly who you are targeting through each channel. For example, millennials and Generation Z are more likely to engage with and respond to social media and video content than their older counterparts may be.
On the other hand, Generation X and baby boomers may prefer long-form content, direct emails, and podcasts, as well as traditional media channels, such as television and radio ads.
This can certainly get confusing, especially as you’re organizing publication dates and other important milestones in the meantime. To make the process more efficient, use different methods like process visualization. This provides visuals to the content publication calendar and breaks down each step. With it, you can focus on making your content more substantial rather than worrying about the minor anxieties that come with the process.
As you identify the media that will best reach each target segment, you will then want to align the content, from subject matter to presentation style, to the expectations of that segment.
Leveraging Online Reviews (Even Bad Ones)
One of the most important things you can do as a medical marketer is to cultivate a sense of community between clinicians, patients, families, and prospective patients. Building thriving online discussion forums, including soliciting patient reviews, is an ideal way to do this.
Inviting these reviews, though, means that there will inevitably be the occasional negative review. And while negative reviews can certainly be upsetting, they do not have to damage your clinic’s reputation.
Indeed, you can transform negative reviews into positive factors for your practice. This is because negative reviews often provide an invaluable opportunity to learn and improve in your practice. The information you glean from your patient’s complaints can be used to resolve service issues in the front office and deficiencies in care within your clinical team.
These practical improvements may then be integrated into your digital marketing. How you respond to negative reviews can be a powerful tool for not only mitigating the potential damage of a patient complaint but also for turning the complaint into a benefit. When audiences see that you react to negative reviews with respect, concern, and a sincere effort to resolve the issue, they’re likely to end up trusting and engaging with you even more.
Evaluate Your Marketing Efforts Afterward
The key downfall of many medical practices when initiating a new marketing strategy is setting it and forgetting it. If you’re not actively keeping tabs open on your marketing efforts and how they’re being received by potential patients, all your work up to this point would be wasted. The true question is: how will you continually evaluate your progress?
You can do this in a variety of ways. For one, qualitative methods should be relatively easy as a practitioner — you can give patients a survey when they first visit to ask how they found you initially. Even sparking conversations wouldn’t hurt with the right patient.
However, quantitative methods may give you a better overall picture of your progress. You’ll need to look for the right key performance indicators (KPIs), though. KPIs like revenue growth and customer acquisition are not only great indicators for your practice’s overall health, but they can also help you decide if your marketing efforts are doing any good or not.
Once you do your research, you can analyze the results and decide how you would like to regroup from there.
The Takeaway
Although there are always things you can do to improve your medical marketing, know that few practitioners get it right the first time. There is a reason you went to medical school rather than obtaining a degree in communications or marketing, after all.
However, understanding the various obstacles that arise and knowing how to overcome them can help physicians and marketers alike achieve exceptional growth. Effective medical marketing, indeed, is essential to cultivating a strong brand and building thriving relationships with patients, families, and healthcare consumers.
Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.
With a Bachelor’s in Health Science along with an MBA, Sarah Daren has a wealth of knowledge within both the health and business sectors. Her expertise in scaling and identifying ways tech can improve the lives of others has led Sarah to be a consultant for a number of startup businesses, most prominently in the wellness industry, wearable technology and health education. She implements her health knowledge into every aspect of her life with a focus on making America a healthier and safer place for future generations to come.
