4 Digital Marketing Strategies You Should Consider
When we think about what the healthcare industry looked like about 20 years ago, it has made some serious strides in terms of its advancement and improvement in servicing patients. Technology has been a large influence on this improvement as services become more refined and equipment becomes advanced.
Similarly, technology and digital advancements have also influenced how users search for particular services and products within healthcare. As a result, healthcare businesses have had to adapt to this new user behaviour to ensure they can stay relevant in an extremely competitive industry.
It’s more important than ever that healthcare businesses utilise digital marketing and the strategies they have to offer. Without them, you’re unlikely to have a presence online and patients won’t be able to find your services and what you offer. If you’re a relatively new business or a business that needs to grow their patient log, there are specific digital marketing strategies that you can adopt to achieve this.
Here are digital marketing strategies that you should definitely consider to help increase your brand awareness and encourage more users to use your services.
Target keywords through a PPC campaign
Did you know that data suggests Google generates around 3.5 billion searches daily? It’s an incredible number and strongly indicates that when a user is starting their online journey, the first place they’d go to is a search engine. It’s ideal when searching for products, services and information and the same can be said for medical services and information. With search engine results being so competitive, it’s important that you can be found on search engines.
One way to wiggle your way out of the competition is through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. It is a strategy that does require a little investment, but it can provide immediate success. By targeting specific keywords related to your services, you can appear towards the top of search engine results when users search for these terms.
For example, if you’re a medical professional that specialises in cosmetic surgery, a user may search for “rhinoplasty manchester” to see what local practices provide the service. By targeting this keyword term in a PPC campaign, your website will appear high in the search results for users to see straight away and make it more noticeable.
Try organic search optimisation as an alternative
Perhaps you’re still quite early in your opening and don’t quite have the budget to invest in a PPC campaign. In that case, be sure you still have a long-term SEO strategy in place. SEO stands for search engine optimisation and this involves the process of optimising your website to meet the ranking factors that allow your website to rank higher in the search results.
Each of the pages you have on your website should optimise for different health-related keyword terms for the services that you provide. This way, you’re more likely to rank higher for them in the search results. It’s important to remember, however, that SEO is a long term digital marketing strategy so you shouldn’t expect the results immediately and it will take around 6 months before you begin to see the benefits of the optimisations.
Make the most of social media networks to increase your brand awareness
If you’re a new business, you’ll want to make the efforts to increase your brand awareness and get your name out there. Social media is a great way to achieve this. Although it may not be the first digital marketing strategy you think of when it comes to healthcare, more and more businesses in practically every industry have adopted social media to increase their brand authority.
Some social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter and Instagram which are some of the most popular. By creating a social media healthcare marketing strategy for your business, it can help to increase your brand awareness and attract new patients to your practice. It can also be a great way to re-engage your existing patients if you feel their engagement has become a little stale recently. Be sure that whatever posts that you publish are engaging and informative for your users.
Ensure your website is easy to navigate
Before you even consider the marketing strategies above first and foremost you need to make sure that your website is easy to use and navigate for your users. It’s important to remember that the website will be the place where your users will become more familiar with your services and what you do, and inevitably it’ll be here where they’ll make an inquiry with you or register to be your patient.
This is why the information that you have on your website needs to be well-written and informative for your users. They also need to be able to navigate the website properly and make sure they can find what they’re looking for easily.
Final thoughts
Users are becoming more comfortable with technology and we’re seeing a strong shift into a digital world. In order to stay relevant within the healthcare industry, you need to be able to adapt to these changes in user behaviour and build new methods to attract new patients. If you don’t, you’re more than likely to fall behind the rest of your competitors.
