Knowing a few of todays strong healthcare marketing trends can help you gain more clients and grow your practice. Digital marketing is constantly evolving and it’s imperative that healthcare providers and marketers remain on trend to stay connected with their current and prospective clients. In fact, a whopping 72% of patients refer to the Internet for information about doctors, hospitals and medical treatments. If you’re lacking a strong web presence, you will greatly miss opportunities to increase awareness, retain clients and generate new ones.
In 2016, it is absolutely necessary to leverage online marketing tactics to be effective and experience growth in your company. We’ve gathered five healthcare marketing trends and tips to help you boost brand visibility, gain more clients, and connect with patients to keep them engaged with your practice.
Does your practice have a blog? If not, here are a few powerful statistics that show why you should begin educating your audience with a blogging platform:
Your blog will serve as the hub to executing your entire marketing strategy. You see, your blog positions your company to be found on Google through SEO practices, allows you to inform and educate your patients towards being proactive in their health, and be viewed as an expert in your niche.
When prospective clients are able to locate your content and be empowered by your message, this will help generate more qualified leads and clients to your practice. Create a blogging strategy where you’re consistently sharing valuable information to your audience.
Being on social media is not an option…it is a necessity. With 70% of the U.S. population now having at least one social networking profile, your patients are looking to follow and connect with you to stay in the know. Businesses are using social media to communicate with their clients, entertain, inspire and report on trending topics. It’s also a great outlet to humanize and create authentic online experiences from your brand.
Here are four simple tips to starting your social media marketing plan:
More Google searches take place on mobile devices than computers in 10 countries including the U.S. As a result, Google has started to favor sites that were mobile-friendly and penalize those that were not because of this rapid growth of mobile search usage.
When your site is mobile-ready, users are able to see and access your content smoothly and efficiently. Therefore, it’s important to take the steps necessary so patients can find your content and view it easily from their smartphone.
Building a subscriber list is the lifeline to your business. Many healthcare providers tend to only capture their current patients email addresses, neglecting to collect potential clients who may be interested in obtaining their services in the future.
By growing an email list of leads, you will position your practice for growth. Email marketing works 40 times better at getting customers than Facebook and Twitter, and compared to social media (Source:McKinsey). Email marketing has also yielded an average 4,300% return on investment for businesses in the United States.
Implementing sound email practices will offer amazing benefits to your practice. You can share your blog content, videos, and announcements. Focus on generating new leads from your website and social media marketing. Nurture your leads with valuable content and promote any new services or products that may benefit your audience.
Testimonials and user-generated content (content that comes directly from your customers in the form of social media post, email message, video, etc.) is extremely powerful for gaining new clients to your practice. It quickly builds trust with prospects and shows that what you’re doing is indeed, working.
Encourage your clients to share their good experiences with your brand. Host an Instagram contestwhere they upload quick 15 second videos expressing what they enjoy about coming to your practice. Be sure you give them your branded hashtag to use along with other popular hashtags in your niche to maximize exposure.
The good news about using Instagram is that users can easily share the same content on their Facebook platforms, creating that much more exposure, reach and influence for your brand.
Implementing these simple yet highly effective tactics into your online marketing will significantly increase brand awareness, boost follower engagement, generate new leads, and ultimately, new clients to your practice. Plan to execute this plan within the next 90 days and you’ll begin to experience a real difference in your online presence.
Much success!
