Digital marketing allows healthcare organizations to make the best use of modern internet-based technologies and tools to gather more customers in a cost-effective manner.
We are in what many call the digital age. People now look for information, services, and goods on the internet before they turn to local alternatives. Even then, information about local alternatives is taken through online sources of information. This digital era of doing business has changed the way that companies, organizations, and firms operate.
In order to make the most out of the digital tools that businesses today have access to, organizations need to implement well-thought-out digital marketing strategies. Digital marketing strategies use mediums such as social media platforms, websites, videos, emails, and more to create a successful marketing campaign.
But for healthcare organizations, digital marketing goes further than just marketing. Digital marketing for healthcare organizations often involves the usage of practices that actively improve patient and customer engagement which in turn then leads to improved patient experiences for those patients and customers.
It is for that reason that healthcare organizations – no matter if they are a group healthcare practice, a small hospital, a large chain of hospitals, or a pharmaceutical company – need to adopt digital marketing strategies.
Digital marketing
Digital marketing is a new yet vast component of the overall marketing mix, which seeks to use, utilize and optimize the various Internet and online-based digital technologies to promote a brand, product, or service.
New is a relative word when it comes to digital marketing since it has been around since the early 1990s, with the very first banner ad being introduced in 1994 by AT&T. Over the years, as the Internet has evolved so have digital marketing practices that are utilized by businesses.
One of the most important things to understand about digital marketing is significantly inbound marketing. Traditional marketing activities, on the other hand, are outbound in nature. Outbound marketing seeks to create interest in a product, service, or brand in their customers. Think of the ads that you see when you are watching TV or even the ads that come when you are watching movies on OTT platforms like Netflix.
For digital marketing, the idea is to create valuable content and share it (mostly for free) to get customers interested in what your business has to offer. Outbound marketing is more aggressive in nature and seeks to guarantee conversions while inbound marketing is more subtle and seeks to influence people with targeted messages.
This is not to say that digital marketing is devoid of any form of outbound marketing, but just that it has a higher share of more subtle inbound marketing practices. These inbound focused digital marketing practices are both cost-effective and more useful in today’s digital age.
Inbound marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing while being more effective at the same time. 57% of companies have started to acquire customers through digital marketing while the companies that regularly upload blog posts (a form of digital marketing) earn 55% more web traffic.
Importance of digital marketing for healthcare organizations
The healthcare industry has never been able to wholly adopt marketing strategies as they exist in other industries. Healthcare marketing strategies have their own needs and requirements when it comes to marketing and thus techniques and strategies are adapted for a better fit.
Similarly, digital healthcare marketing has some important distinctions from digital marketing in general. For example, the importance of inbound marketing is much higher and the importance of creating and sharing valuable content is also much more relevant.
8 out of 10 patients in the US first look online about their symptoms, treatment, and more. The patient journey begins on people’s web browsers. These customers are not necessarily going to be swayed by advertisements but by valuable information and content in the form of blogs, FAQs, videos, and more.
Strategies and Best Practices
Digital marketing has plenty of strategies and practices that executives can adopt for their healthcare business. Here are some in particular that we think work best for almost all healthcare organizations regardless of their size or specialty.
Focusing on content
We don’t think we can reiterate this enough, for digital healthcare marketing content remains the most important factor. Valuable content will lead to increased traffic for your business’ website as customers want to look for solutions to their problems.
Improving local SEO
Improving your digital marketing’s Search Engine Optimization by focusing on customers that are in your nearby area. This allows your business to only put your primary focus on the customers that would realistically choose your healthcare practices as it is close enough to them physically. This also makes your digital marketing campaigns more cost-effective, as you avoid unnecessary competition with other businesses from other areas.
Creating email campaigns
Email marketing is one of the most effective mediums of marketing today, giving a 4100% ROI. Email marketing campaigns allow your healthcare business to create loyal customers even before they start paying you for your services.
Investing in PPC campaigns
SEO is not a fast process and if your healthcare business has not built a website before then it may take time for your digital marketing campaign to grow with purely organic methods. Using pay-per-click advertising campaigns can speed up your business establishment as an online authority in its niche.
Conclusion
Digital marketing is an important part of modern business practices and has to be adopted by just about every organization at this point. Healthcare organizations are no exception to this rule and need to improve their digital marketing strategies to be successful in the digital world.
BraveLabs provides healthcare organizations with digital marketing campaigns that realize conversions and leads. Contact BraveLabs, the full-service healthcare marketing agency, for more information on how digital marketing can help your business in particular.
